I was…attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing simple music, blamed for deserting modernism, accused of renouncing my true Russian heritage. People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals cried sacrilege : The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone. To them all my answer was and is the same: You respect, but I love.

Expositions and Developments (1959), pp. 113-114