"Rubinstein's style bears a cosmopolitan stamp. He confused nationality in music with a kind of dry ethnography, and thought the question hardly worth a composer's study. A passage which occurs in his 'Music and its Representatives' (Moscow, 1891) shows his views on this subject. 'It seems to me,' he writes, 'that the national spirit of a composer's native land must always impregnate his works, even when he lives in a strange land and speaks its language. Look for instance at Handel, Gluck and Mozart. But there is a kind of premeditated nationalism now in vogue. It is very interesting, but to my mind it cannot pretend to awaken universal sympathies, and can merely arouse an ethnographical interest. This is proved by the fact that a melody that will bring tears to the eyes of a Finlander will leave a Spaniard cold; and that a dance rhythm that would set a Hungarian dancing would not move an Italian.' Rubinstein [comments Cheshikin], is presuming that the whole essence of nationality in music lies not in the structure of melody, or in harmony, but in a dance rhythm. It is not surprising that holding these superficial views his operas based on Russian life are not distinguished for their musical colour, and that he is only unconsciously and instinctively successful when he uses the oriental colouring which is in keeping with his descent. He cultivated the commonly accepted forms of melodic opera which were the fashion in the first half of the nineteenth century. His musical horizon was bounded by Meyerbeer. He held Wagner in something like horror, and kept contemptuous silence about all the Russian composers who followed Glinka. This may be partly explicable on the ground of his principles, which did not admit the claims of declamatory opera; but it was partly a policy of tit for tat, because Serov and 'the mighty band' had trounced Rubinstein unsparingly during the 'sixties for his Teutonic tendencies in his double capacity as head of the I. R. M. S. and Director of the Conservatoire. Narrow and conventional forms, especially as regards his arias; melody as the sole ideal in opera; an indeterminate cosmopolitan style, and now and again a successful reflection of the oriental spirit--these are the distinguishing characteristics of all Rubinstein's Russian operas from _Dmitri Donskoi_ to _Goriousha_."[26]