confiding stranger straightway into that iron bed, the "sonata
form," or perhaps even the third rondo form, for we have quite an
assortment. Should the idea survive and grow too large for the
bed, and if we have learned to love it too much to cut off its
feet and thus make it fit (as did that old robber of Attica), why
we run the risk of having some critic wise in his theoretical
knowledge, say, as was and is said of Chopin, "He is weak in
sonata form!"

In art our opinions must, in all cases, rest directly on the
thing under consideration and not on what is written about it.
Without a thorough knowledge of music, including its history and
development, and, above all, musical "sympathy," individual
criticism is, of course, valueless; at the same time the
acquirement of this knowledge and sympathy is not difficult, and
I hope that we may yet have a public in America that shall be
capable of forming its own ideas, and not be influenced by
tradition, criticism, or fashion.

Every person with even the very smallest love and sympathy for art
possesses ideas which are valuable to that art. From the tiniest
seeds sometimes the greatest trees are grown. Why, therefore,
allow these tender germs of individualism to be smothered by that
flourishing, arrogant bay tree of tradition--fashion, authority,
convention, etc.

No art form is so fleeting and so subject to the dictates of
fashion as opera. It has always been the plaything of fashion,
and suffers from its changes.