“To understand and write of living things,
Try first to drive away the soul,
The parts will then remain within your hand!”
A. I have never found fault with these parts, excepting, perhaps, that I said the working out of the second theme is, in proportion to the first theme, too extensive; in fact, there is nothing of the future contained in the overture.
Q. No future?
A. I mean to say, no music of the future—not even a chromatic scale for the fundamental key—it moves entirely in the common form:
Principal theme—d minor;
Second theme—f major;
Return to fundamental key;
Second theme—d major, and conclusion in this key.