On the other hand Appalachia has grown very dear to me. I have had two orchestral rehearsals of it & am delighted to be performing it. There are some damned high violin passages in it, and the high celli in the Giocoso variation are difficult too. But as I said, I find the whole thing superb and as rich as an entire life. We shall yet live to see Buths agreeing with enthusiasm, just as in the meantime he has become converted to Zarathustra. His critical remarks derive for the most part straight from the schoolroom, e.g. re the repeated theme in Appalachia, first in C then in F, which I find particularly beautiful, it is just as if the tragic moment were already being foreshadowed in it, as if the theme wanted to say: I am not as harmless as may at first appear.