"He is assuredly the greatest musician that our country can boast of and yet showered with honours, glory, fame, Gabriel Fauré was until yesterday not the least known, but the most badly known in our country. Because he produced above all works of medium dimensions, many thought him to be nothing more than a lesser figure, a 'poeta minor' of music; because he always avoided that grandiloquence which most of Franck's pupils confused with true grandeur; because he is generally happy with moderate means in chamber music he was given the pejorative tag of 'salon musician.' As if the size mattered, or the noise of the music, or the weight of the score, as if in music the content should always be measured by the size of the shell."