Then, too, in the back of his mind there was the feeling that, while he was perfectly willing to offer the best that the musical world afforded in his magazine, his readers were primarily women, and the appeal of music, after all, he felt was largely, if not wholly, to the feminine nature.

It was very satisfying to him to hear his wife play in the evening; but when it came to public concerts, they were not for his masculine nature.

In other words, Bok shared the all too common masculine notion that music is for women and has little place in the lives of men.
One day Josef Hofmann gave Bok an entirely new point of view.

The artist was rehearsing in Philadelphia for an appearance with the orchestra, and the pianist was telling Bok and his wife of the desire of Leopold Stokowski, who had recently become conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, to eliminate encores from his symphonic programmes; he wanted to begin the experiment with Hofmann's appearance that week.

This was a novel thought to Bok: why eliminate encores from any concert?
If he liked the way any performer played, he had always done his share to secure an encore.