I've been composing, Bunny remarked, a wonderful thing, and I was getting along splendidly until the telephone set me off by ringing in the identical key as that in which I was writing. I couldn't think of another dissonance. I quit!
Noises usually inspire you, suggested Campaspe.
Always, until today. I wrote a queer, strange thing, created after a creaking door. The maid broke china. I used the crash. Even the sound of soapy suds, rubbed up and down, up and down, was good for a little piece.
What are you writing now, Bunny, a symphony? queried John Armstrong.
Mr. Titus Hugg looked at the stock-broker with disgust.
A symphony! Say, don't you know this is the twentieth century? A symphony! Does your firm sell spinning-wheel stock? Music has got to be less tenuous; all this going on and going over is finished. Brevity, that's what we want now. All the old stuff is too long. My new pieces are over in five or six bars, one of them in only two. Do you want to hear it?
I could stand two bars, John Armstrong replied.
Bunny disregarded the insult; Paul, Harold, and Campaspe all urged him to play. He sat down before the Steinway grand, looking portentous.
La pavane pour une Infante defunte, he read the title of the piece of music on the rack in front of him. One sees that everywhere now, just as in the eighties,
