They gave me a seat in the front row [at the Moscow Free Theatre] and I watched and listened to a mime performance: The Veil of Pierrette, based on the one-act play by Schnitzler with music by Dohnányi. I was asked (by Mardzhanov, Saradzhev and the actors) what I thought of this art form, clearly in hopes that I would agree to write a score for a mime production. During the interval they took me backstage and generally looked after me most attentively. My conclusion was that as a genre mime can be successful so long as the action is continuous and every bar of the music corresponds to a specific action on stage. But if a long stretch of music is used to illustrate the drama on a large scale without descending to detail, the result can be tedious and rather silly.