This reminded me of the following story from John Cage: When I asked Schoenberg to teach me, he said, "You probably can't afford my price." I said, "Don't ment

This reminded me of the following story from John Cage: When I asked Schoenberg to teach me, he said, "You probably can't afford my price." I said, "Don't mention it; I don't have any money." He said, "Will you devote your life to music?" This time I said "Yes." He said he would teach me free of charge. I gave up painting and concentrated on music. After two years it became clear to both of us that I had no feeling for harmony. For Schoenberg, harmony was not just coloristic: it was structural. It was the means one used to distinguish one part of a composition from another. Therefore he said I'd never be able to write music. "Why not?" "You'll come to a wall and won't be able to get through." "Then I'll spend my life knocking my head against that wall." (I read it in his book Silence, but I grabbed this text from https://www.johncage.org/autobiographical_statement.html https://www.johncage.org/autobiographical_statement.html)