city. I am sure that a hankering to hear Wagner in Munich was the inspiration for my first trip to Europe. Up until about the year 1918, in fact, my enthusiasm for the art under discussion sustained me in the belief that I should be writing about music throughout the length and breadth of my career. About that date I began to nourish doubts; sketches foreshadowing my future fictions began to appear in my books; I became uneasy in the concert hall; in short, I began to realize that I was nearly through. The last two papers in this volume reflect some of the reasons for this metamorphosis.
Certainly, I do not regret those years. They supplied me with not a little knowledge and experience; they served to introduce me, in one way or another, to most of the famous people of the period, but when a thing is done, it is done, at least so far as I am concerned. I have not entered an opera house for several seasons, and my recent attendance on the concert hall has been limited to a few special occasions.
I am delighted to see that many of my suggestions and prophecies have been realized. When I published my book about Spanish music, not one orchestral composition by a Spaniard, at least so far as I am aware, had yet been performed in our concert halls. This absurd state of affairs has since been remedied. Stravinsky,
