He never composed at the piano, in the ordinary meaning of the phrase.

That is to say, he never sat down to the piano with the idea that he wanted to compose a song or a piano piece.

But sometime, when he might be improvising, as he was fond of doing when alone, a theme, an idea, might come to him, and almost before he knew it he had sketched something in a rudimentary form.

He had a fancy that the technique of composition suffered as much as that of the piano if it was allowed to go for weeks and months without exercise.

The constant work and excitement that his winters in Boston and New York involved, made it necessary for him to let days and weeks slip by with no creative work accomplished.