I finished reading “The Story of an African Farm” by Olive Schreiner, tonight, and sat for some time in such an ecstatic revelry as it is rarely my lot to enjoy. A grand book! – what joy it is to find one more treasure to add to the store that slowly accumulates thru one’s life – that store of great minds, great works of art, and expressions that peculiarly belong to us. They come generally out of a clear sky, unheralded. I was filled with a joyous warmth of feeling, and sat thinking of some of the things that I love some of the human beings who mean so much to me. Bertha was playing Christmas Hymns on the piano in the same room, and happened to be playing 56. ”Good King Wenceslas” when I finished reading. This melody has for me a strange character; particularly the end, the last three notes “- do-fa-do –“ of equal length. I can’t explain the mystery that seems to be in that simple phrase. I call it the arc of wonder; I felt a warm regard for that unknown man who conceived that melody with its odd ending – just how or why did he do it that way? Only because he felt a genuine “wonder” over what he was expressing. The ordinary song maker would have written “do-sol-do” or “do-me-do” or even “do-re-do” – but they would not have done. He belonged to my “store” –
As tho I had not had enough for one evening I played thru my new Sibelius records, the sixth symphony. This symphony grows rapidly in power + beauty; it fills me with happiness, and has that unaccountable manner of doing that belongs only to Sibelius. No one else could have put that finish to the first movement that he did – if pressed I doubt he could tell why he did so and yet it is so absolutely right.
Charles Burchfield, December 19, 1934