Nielsen himself was ambiguous about his attitudes to late Romantic German music and to nationalism in music. He wrote to the Dutch composer Julius Röntgen in 1909 "I am surprised by the technical skills of the Germans nowadays, and I cannot help thinking that all this delight in complication must exhaust itself. I foresee a completely new art of pure archaic virtue. What do you think about songs sung in unison? We must go back ... to the pure and the clear." On the other hand, he wrote in 1925 "Nothing destroys music more than nationalism does ... and it is impossible to deliver national music on request."