After Tchaikovsky had acceded to Balakirev’s request, and sent him the chief subjects of his overture, he received the following answer, which caused him to make some modifications in the work:-- “ ... As your overture is all but finished, and will soon be played, I will tell you what I think of it quite frankly (I do not use this word in Zaremba’s sense). The first subject does not please me at all. Perhaps it improves in the working out--I cannot say--but in the crude state in which it lies before me it has neither strength nor beauty, and does not sufficiently suggest the character of Father Lawrence. Here something like one of Liszt’s chorales--in the old Catholic Church style--would be very appropriate (_The Night Procession_, _Hunnenschlacht_, and _St. Elizabeth_); your motive is of quite a different order, in the style of a quartet by Haydn, that genius of “burgher” music which induces a fierce thirst for beer. There is nothing of old-world Catholicism about it; it recalls rather the type of Gogol’s _Comrade Kunz_, who wanted to cut off his nose to save the money he spent on snuff. But possibly in its development your motive may turn out quite differently, in which case I will eat my own words. “As to the B minor theme, it seems to me less a theme than a lovely introduction to one, and after the agitated movement in C major, something very forcible and energetic should follow. I take it for granted that it will really be so, and that you were too lazy to write out the context. “The first theme in D flat major is very pretty, although rather colourless. The second, in the same key, is simply fascinating. I often play it, and would like to hug you for it. It has the sweetness of love, its tenderness, its longing, in a word, so much that must appeal to the heart of that immoral German, Albrecht. I have only one thing to say against this theme: it does not sufficiently express a mystic, inward, spiritual love, but rather a fantastic passionate glow which has hardly any nuance of Italian sentiment. Romeo and Juliet were not Persian lovers, but Europeans. I do not know if you will understand what I am driving at--I always feel the lack of appropriate words when I speak of music, and I am obliged to have recourse to comparison in order to explain myself. One subject in which spiritual love is well expressed--according to my ideas--is the second theme in Schumann’s overture, _The Bride of Messina_. The subject has its weak side too; it is morbid and somewhat sentimental at the end, but the fundamental emotion is sincere.