But all his efforts were for naught, and he ended up very depressed. The ethnic consciousness and modern outlook in the nationalistic Eastern European composers Antonin Dvorak and Peter Tchaikovsky, the French impressionists Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and the Russian modernists Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky had a big impact on Kuo. They spurred him to think about musical composition.
直到郭芝苑接觸東歐德佛札克、柴可夫斯基等國民樂派，和法國德布西、拉威爾等印象派曲風，以及現代樂派普羅高菲夫、史特拉汶斯基等人的音樂後，深深被他們作品中流露的民族性、現代性所感動，開始有學習作曲的想法。