There  are  those,  indeed,  who  find  no  music  in  the  broken
rhythms,  the  mounting  minor,  of  a  harmony  which  the
Russian  composers  have  only  recently  begun  to  make
comprehensible  to  Western  ears.  For  myself,  I  know
too  httle  of  music  to  tell  what  relation  it  may  bear  to
the  antique  modes.  But  I  can  Usten,  as  long  as  musi-
cians will  perform,  to  those  infinite  repetitions,  that
insistent  sounding  of  the  minor  key.  It  pleases  me  to
hear  in  them  a  music  come  from  far  away  —  from  un-
known river  gorges,  from  camp-fires  glimmering  on
great  plains.  There  are  flashes,  too,  of  light,  of  song,
the  playing  of  shepherds'  pipes,  the  swoop  of  horsemen,
and  sudden  outcries  of  savagery.  But  the  note  to  which
it  all  comes  back  is  the  monotone  of  a  primitive  life,
like  the  day-long  beat  of  camel  bells.  And  more  than
all,  it  is  the  mood  of  Asia,  elsewhere  so  rarely  under-
stood, which  is  neither  lightness  nor  despair.
