It seems strange to say that by means of music one could say the most commonplace thing, as, for instance: 'I am going to take a walk'; yet this is precisely what the Chinese have been doing for centuries.

For such things, however, our word-symbols do perfectly well, and such a symbolising of musical sounds must detract, I think, from the high mission of music: which, as I conceive, is neither to be an agent for expressing material things; nor to utter pretty sounds to amuse the ear; nor a sensuous excitant to fire the blood, or a sedative to lull the senses: it is a _language_, but a language of the intangible, a kind of soul-language.

It appeals directly to the _Seelenzustaende_ it springs from, for it is the natural expression of it, rather than, like words, a translation of it into set stereotyped symbols which may or may not be accepted for what they were intended to denote by the writer"-- a _credo_ which sums up in fairly complete form his theory of music-making, whatever validity it may have as a philosophical generalisation.
In regard to the sadly vexed question of musical nationalism, especially in its relation to America, his position was definite and positive.

His views on this subject may well be quoted somewhat in detail, since they have not always been justly represented or fully understood.

In the following excerpt, from a lecture on "Folk-Music," he pays his respects to Dvorak's "New World" symphony, and touches upon his own attitude toward the case as exemplified in his "Indian" suite: "A man is generally something different from the clothes he wears or the business he is occupied with; but when we do see a man identified with his clothes we think but little of him.