His preferences in the matter of his own music were not very definite.  In 1903, when he had finished all that he was to write, he expressed a preference for the “Dirge” from the “Indian” suite above anything that he had composed.  “Of all my music,” he confessed at this time, “the ‘Dirge’ in the ‘Indian’ suite pleases me most.  It affects me deeply and did when I was writing it.  In it an Indian woman laments the death of her son; but to me, as I wrote it, it seemed to express a world-sorrow rather than a particularised grief.”  His estimate of the value of the music has, naturally, no extraordinary importance; but my conviction is that, in this instance, his judgment was correct.  As to the sonatas, he cared most for the “Keltic”; after that, for the “Eroica,” as a whole; though I doubt whether there was anything in the two that he cared for quite as he did for the Largo in the “Tragica” and certain parts of the “Norse.”  He felt concerning the “Keltic” that there was hardly a bar in it that he wanted changed, that he had scarcely ever written any thing so rounded, so complete, in which the joining was so invisible.  He played it con amore, and it grew to be part of himself as no other of his works ever did.  Technically, it was never hard for him, whereas he found the “Eroica” exhausting, physically and mentally.

Of the smaller works he preferred the “Sea Pieces,” as a whole, above all the others; yet there were single things in each of the other sets for which he cared perhaps as much.  Of the “Sea Pieces” those he liked best were:  “To the Sea,” “From the Depths,” “In Mid-Ocean”; of the “Fireside Tales”:  the “Haunted House,” “Salamander,” “’Brer Rabbit”; and he had a tender feeling for “In a German Forest,” which always seemed to bring back the Frankfort days to his memory.  Of the “New England Idyls,” his favorites were:  “In Deep Woods,” “Mid-Winter,” “From a Log Cabin.”

In his composition he was growing away from piano work,—­he felt that the future must mean larger, probably orchestral, forms, for him, and his dream of an ultimate leisure was a dream for which his friends can be thankful.  He did not end with despair at his heart that the distracting work, the yearly drudgery, were to go on forever.

His preferences in music were governed by the independence which characterised his intellectual judgments.  Of the moderns, Wagner was his god; for Liszt he had an unbounded admiration, though he detected the showman, the mere juggler, in him; Tchaikovsky stirred him mightily; Brahms did not as a rule give him pleasure, though certain of that master’s more fertile moments compelled his appreciation.  Grieg he delighted in.  To him he dedicated both his “Norse” and “Keltic” sonatas.  In response to his request for permission to inscribe the first of these to his eminent contemporary, he received from Grieg the following delectable letter—­one of the Norwegian’s very few attempts at English composition (I quote it verbatim; the spelling is Grieg’s):—­