Paradoxes Abound in Arnold's music, and while in most instances they need not be understood in order to appreciate the music (for it is, as Hugo Cole has suggested, ‘so clear, so self-sufficient, so much to be enjoyed for its own sake’), in terms of the Symphony the idea deserves further consideration. The basic paradox is this: that the composer's particularily prolific form of eclecticism is at odds with the conceptual and technical demands of symphonic form. In his well-considered definition of the Symphony, Robert Simpson states that it is a ‘profoundly inclusive’ form, one in which all the diverse elements of music are brought together to make an organic and dynamic whole. It is active in all possible ways; ‘no evasions are tolerable in the attempt to achieve the highest state or organization of which music is capable’. Eclecticism, then, would appear first to present problems of technical integration, and second to give an overly diffuse aural result.