This exercise Puccini speaks of was the equivalent to the composition demanded by our Universities before a student passes to the degree of Bachelor of Music. With this _Capriccio Sinfonica_ Puccini made his first mark as a rising composer. It was not apparently an entirely spontaneous outpouring, for he wrote it on all sorts of odd scraps of paper, just as the mood took him. It is curious to note that although in his general character he had made a radical change from waywardness to a steady determination and purposeful endeavour towards one definite goal, his methods of work and his music writing remained, to this day in fact, as very typical of the carelessness of the artistic temperament. His scores were, and still are, exceedingly difficult to decipher. Both Bazzini and Ponchielli were much attached to the promising young musician, but his handwriting--more particularly his way of setting down notes on paper--was more than once a great trial to their patience. Bazzini on one occasion inquired about this final exercise, and Ponchielli replied: "I really cannot tell you anything yet about it. Puccini brings me every lesson such a vile scrawl, that I confess, up to the present, I do no more than stare at it in despair." When Ponchielli came to sit down and study the score of this Capriccio, the black-beetle-like splotches on the untidy manuscript did not prevent the worth of the music from coming through and making its appeal to the kindly teacher's mind. Both Bazzini and he were struck by its freedom, its freshness, its general grip of the orchestra. It was performed at one of the Conservatory concerts, and Puccini's fame, heralded by the critic Filippi, who wrote in a special article in the _Perseveranza_ about the first performance, travelled round Milan. It is interesting to read what Filippi said about the first serious work by the future hope, operatically speaking, of young Italy: "Puccini has decidedly a musical temperament, especially as a symphonist, having unity of style and personality of character. There are more of such qualities in this Capriccio than are found in most composers of to-day, thorough grasp of style, a quick sense of colour, an inventive genius. The ideas are bright, strong, effective. He is not concerned with uncertainties, but fills up his scheme with harmonic boldness, and knits the whole together logically and with perfect order." This discerning writer goes on to speak of the skilful way in which the melodic material is worked up, and the general feeling for movement, states that it called forth the warmest enthusiasm, and dubs it by far the most promising work of that year. Faccio, a well-known conductor, made arrangements to have it played at an orchestral concert, and Puccini wrote with joy and alacrity to his mother to arrange to have the parts copied, asking to have sent to him, without a moment's delay, twelve first violin parts, ten seconds, nine violas, eight cellos, and seven basses.