You must listen without always wanting to compare with the musical basis you already have. You must imagine that you inherited from you ancestors different compartments in the musical part of your brain. Now when you hear a piece of music from the pre-classic, classic, or romantic periods, the sounds fall without any trouble and agreeably into the already prepared compartments. But when music for which you have no prepared compartments strikes your ear, what happens? Either the music remains outside you or you force it with all your might into one of these compartments, although it does not fit. The compartment is either too long or too short, either too narrow or too wide, and that hurts you and you blame the music. But in reality you are to blame, because you force it into a compartment into which it does not fit, instead of calmly, passively, quietly, and without opposition, helping the music to build a new compartment for itself.
—Ernst Toch , 1932
