At home I finished composing and tidying up my Musical Letter to Zakharov. I had had the idea for this in Helsingfors, working out all the text and music as I walked along embankments and sat in a Finnish café. The music is of course not serious, but it is, I think, the first time that I have composed away from the piano.

Don't laugh, it's not at all a bad method. When I got back to St Petersburg and sat down to play on the piano what I had written, to start with I hated it, but a day later I already liked it.