One morning when I arrived at the abandoned school house in Arlington where he now lives, he was sitting at the old piano, singing a single tone at the top of his raucous composer's voice, and banging a single chord at intervals over and over. He refused to be interrupted in this pursuit, and after an hour or so, I insisted on knowing what the idea was. “I'm trying over this damned chord,” said he, “to see whether it still sounds superb after so many hearings…. If I find I still like it after trying it over several thousand times, it'll stand the test of time, all right!”