“I hope you will not think I am boasting, if I say that my appeal to inspiration is very rarely in vain. In other words, that power which I have already described as a capricious guest has long since become fast friends with me, so that we are inseparable, and it only deserts me when my material existence is beset by untoward circumstances and its presence is of no avail. Under normal conditions I may say there is no hour of the day in which I cannot compose. Sometimes I observe with curiosity that uninterrupted activity, which--independent of the subject of any conversation I may be carrying on--continues its course in that department of my brain which is devoted to music. Sometimes it takes a preparatory form--that is, the consideration of all details that concern the elaboration of some projected work; another time it may be an entirely new and independent musical idea, and I make an effort to hold it fast in my memory. Whence does it come? It is an inscrutable mystery. “Now I will try to describe my actual procedure in composition. But not until _after dinner_. _Au revoir._ If you only knew how _difficult_, yet at the same time how _pleasant_ it is to talk to you about all this! “_Two o’clock._ “I usually write my sketches on the first piece of paper to hand. I jot them down in the most abbreviated form. A melody never stands alone, but invariably with the harmonies which belong to it. These two elements of music, together with the rhythm, must never be separated; every melodic idea brings its own inevitable harmony and its suitable rhythm. If the harmony is very intricate, I set down in the sketch a few details as to the working out of the parts; when the harmony is quite simple, I only put in the bass, or a figured bass, and sometimes not even this. If the sketch is intended for an orchestral work, the ideas appear ready-coloured by some special instrumental combination. The original plan of instrumentation often undergoes some modifications.