Impatience has some similarities with Memory in that both have a chorale-like episode. Only in this allegory the episode is not sad but pompous and impatient. The accents marked in bars 24 and 27 could even be played with a ‘ Bartok pizzicato‘ for a heightened effect. The score extract above shows the three very different textures used in this movement: the chorale, a static sostenuto section and the ‘impatient’ angular melody and accompaniment.
It is now so common as to be conventional to express impatience with priggish and moralising stories for children; stories of the old-fashioned sort that concern things like the sinfulness of theft; . . . Adults have reacted against such morality, be-cause they know that it often stands for immorality. They know that such platitudes have been used by hypocrites and pharisees, by cunning or perversion. But the child knows nothing about cunning or perversion. He sees nothing but the moral ideals themselves, and he simply sees that they are true. Because they are.