How great a difference is there between that process and Mr. Strauss's attempt to convey to us in music the conversation of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza or the anger of the knight at seeing the false Dulcinea? The centre of gravity is outside the music. So it is in "Ein Heldenleben," Strauss's strongest composition, and in his other tone poems. Tschaïkowsky, on the other hand, was content to write "Pathetique"--even more than was needed--over his sixth symphony, and let it stand with that. His "Romeo and Juliet" overture fantasia is dependent upon itself alone for its artistic justification. The centre of æsthetic gravity is in the work. Let us, however, give Mr. Strauss the benefit of his own utterances. In 1897, in speaking of "Also sprach Zarathustra" he said: "I did not intend to write philosophical music, nor to portray Nietzsche's great work musically. I meant to convey musically an idea of the development of the human race from its origin through the various phases of development (religious as well as scientific) up to Nietzsche's idea of the Uebermensch, the Beyond-Man of Goethe." As a London critic remarked at the time, "even this is a tall order." Of course Mr. Strauss's word must be accepted. But before the present writer lies an elaborate pamphlet of some forty pages by Frederick Roesch and Eberhard Koenig, entitled "Ein Heldenleben, Tondichtung für Grosses Orchester, von Richard Strauss." It reproduces sixty-eight themes from the tone poem and has a long and laborious explanation of the composer's purpose and meaning. There are similar programme notes for other works by this composer. Persons who admit the iniquity of such explanations stoutly maintain that Mr. Strauss does not approve of them. The one before us was published by F. E. C. Leuckart, of Leipsic. On the last page are advertised several compositions by Strauss published by the same person. Furthermore, previous to the production of the "Symphonia Domestica" in New York last March, Mr. Strauss had steadfastly denied that there was any programme for the work. "It represents simply a day in my family life," he said. These statements were repeated in the official programme note of the concert, written by my colleague, H. E. Krehbiel, of the New York _Tribune_. The day after the concert the New York _Times_ published a detailed programme of the symphony, furnished to the writer, Richard Aldrich, by Dr. Strauss, and that programme was more elaborate and materialistic than any imagined by uninformed gropers after the composer's meaning.