At the same time, there is a distinct possibility that the present period of Ornstein's composition is not a time of preparation for a new flight. There is a distinct possibility that it represents an unwholesome slackening. After all, may it not be that he has flinched? Stronger men than he have succumbed to a hostile world. And Ornstein has found the world very hostile. He has found America absolutely unprepared for his art, possessed with no technique to cope with it. He has very largely been operating in a void. It is not so much that he has been tried and found wanting. He has not even been heard. Because the musical world has been unable to follow him, it has dismissed him entirely from its consciousness. Scarcely a critic has been able to express what it is about his music that he likes or dislikes. They have either ridiculed him or written cordially about him without saying anything. There is nothing more demoralizing for the artist. At present they are even classing him with Prokofief. The virtuosi have shown a like timidity. Scarcely a one has dared perform his music. Many have refrained out of policy, unwilling to forfeit any applause. Others have no doubt quite sincerely refused to perform any music that sounded cacophonous to them. For the army of musicians is almost entirely composed of rearguard. Not a single one of the orchestral conductors in New York has dared consider performing his "Sinfonietta," to say nothing of the early and comparatively accessible "Marche funebre" and "A la chinoise." Of the Philharmonic Society, of course, one expects nothing. But one might suppose that the various organizations allegedly "friendly" to music, eager for the cause of the "new" and the "modern," would see to it that the musician whom such an authority as Ernest Bloch has declared to be the single composer in America who displays positive signs of genius, was given his opportunity. The contrary has been the case. D'Indy's foolish war symphony, the works of Henry Hadley, of Rachmaninoff, of David Stanley Smith, even of Dvorsky, that person who exists as little in the field of composition as he does in Biarritz, have received and do receive the attention of our powerful ones. It would be small wonder, then, if an artist like Ornstein, who, like every real artist, requires the contact of other minds and cannot go on producing, hopeless of attaining performance and exhibition, had finally flinched and wearied of his efforts, and suddenly found himself writing such music as the intelligences of his fellow-craftsmen can reasonably be expected to comprehend.