Sentence:  That after all his years of effort to become a composer , he should now , now when he was still stoutly replying to the critics of his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences , be so close to a success in <WSD>music</WSD> and have to reject it . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  an artistic form of auditory communication incorporating instrumental or vocal tones in a structured and continuous manner