“You ask me, my friend, if I have known love other than platonic. Yes and no. If the question had been differently put, if you had asked me whether I had ever found complete happiness in love, I should have replied no, and again, no. Besides, I think the answer to this question is to be heard in my music. If, however, you ask me whether I have felt the whole power and inexpressible stress of love, I must reply yes, yes, yes; for often and often have I striven to render in music all the anguish and the bliss of love. Whether I have been successful I do not know, or rather I leave others to judge. I do not in the least agree with you that music cannot interpret the universal nature of love. On the contrary, I think only music is capable of doing so. You say words are necessary. O no! This is just where words are not needed, and where they have no power; a more eloquent language comes in, which is music. Look at the poetical forms to which poets have recourse in order to sing of love; they simply usurp the spheres which belong inseparably to music. Words clothed in poetical forms cease to be mere words; they become partly music. The best proof that love-poetry is really more music than words lies in the fact that such poetry--if you read it carefully from the point of view of words rather than of music--contains very little meaning. (I refer you to the poet Fet, whom I greatly admire.) And yet it has a meaning, and a very profound one, although it is more musical than literary. “I am delighted that you value instrumental music so highly. Your observation that words often spoil music and degrade it from its highest level is perfectly true. I have often felt this very keenly, and perhaps therein lies the reason why I am more successful with instrumental than with vocal music.” On February 10th (22nd), Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony was performed for the first time at one of the symphony concerts of the Russian Musical Society. It did not produce, either upon the public or the Press, that impression which the composer had confidently awaited. Most of the papers passed it over in silence, and the remainder only record an indifferent success, both for the work and its performance. _To N. F. von Meck._ “FLORENCE, _February_ 12_th_ (24_th_), 1878.