The insistence by some of the specific images evoked by certain selections can be disheartening to those lovers of music who accept such interpretations as fact and are disappointed in their inability to experience the same reaction as others, especially if the others are recognized musicians. “It is obvious that the power of music to depict objects, situations or ideas is extremely indefinite. No matter how specific a pictorial or dramatic program the composer may have in mind to present through his music, the listener will never get that program from the music itself. If the hearer is told what the music is supposed to depict he will imagine the incidents and fit them into the music. Or if he is given a title it will suggest to him a train of imagery which he will read into the composition. And if he is given neither title nor program his fancy might take him on a mental journey, the direction of which will depend upon his mood, his mental set, his physical condition, his past experience, and numerous other subjective factors, for which music serves as a stimulus, but all of which lies outside of the music itself.”[35] Thus when Rubinstein read into the “Second Ballade” of Chopin the story of a wild flower caught by a gust of wind, the struggles of the flower and its final breaking, he confused the issue by adding a second interpretation to the music which was inspired by Mickiewicz’s poem, “Switez Lake,” the story of which is totally different. When Gilman played this same song for his students there were many interpretations which ran the gamut from “meaningless” to “creeping assassins.”[35] * * * * * Beethoven’s complaints of his interpreters and expounders were frequent and bitter, but we must turn to the writings of the more literary musicians, Mendelssohn and Schumann, for coherent expressions on the subject. Mendelssohn wrote, “What any music I like expresses for me is not thoughts too indefinite to clothe in words, but too definite. If you asked me what I thought on the occasion in question, I say, the song itself precisely as it stands.” Schumann’s position as regards verbal readings of music may be gathered from the following passage: “Critics always wish to know what the composer himself cannot tell them; and critics sometimes hardly understand the tenth part of what they talk about. Good heavens! will the day ever come when people will cease to ask us what we mean by our divine compositions? Pick out the fifths, but leave us in peace.”[40] Some musical selections have been written to accompany a subject. Those who know the story of _The Barber of Seville_ may associate the aria “Largo al Factotum” with the despair of an over-worked barber, but the same song might have been written to accompany almost any lively subject and for people who have never heard the story and who do not understand Italian, it is just a bright song, possibly humorous. As Gurney says: