I was born on July 1904 in Duluth, Minnesota, and have often wondered if the chill of my native climate generated my preference for the ‘coolth’ of Classicism in the arts to the excessive warmth of Romanticism. During my freshman year in high school my family moved to Minneapolis where summer heat and humidity reinforced my dislike of climatic-musical ‘Fahrenheight’. But years later I learned to detest Midwestern winters as heartily as Czerny exercises, and not until I moved to California in 1939 did I achieve thermal composure and, with it, musical equanimity to the point where I am happy with both Mozart and Brahms.