Once more the newspapers explained; the battle was won,
and the no-encore rule has prevailed at the Philadelphia Orchestra
concerts from that day to this, with the public entirely resigned to
the idea and satisfied with the reason therefor.
But the bewildered Bok could not make out exactly what had happened to
his preconceived notion about symphonic music. He attended the
following Saturday evening concert; listened to a Brahms symphony that
pleased him even more than had "The New World," and when, two weeks
later, he heard the Tschaikowski "Pathetique" and later the
"Unfinished" symphony, by Schubert, and a Beethoven symphony, attracted
by each in turn, he realized that his prejudice against the whole
question of symphonic music had been both wrongly conceived and
baseless.
He now began to see the possibility of a whole world of beauty which up
to that time had been closed to him, and he made up his mind that he
would enter it. Somehow or other, he found the appeal of music did not
confine itself to women; it seemed to have a message for men.
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