combinations, as such, his polyphonic skill is responsible for much of
the solidity of his fabric. His pages, particularly in the more recent
works, are studded with examples of felicitous and dexterous
counterpoint--poetically significant, and of the most elastic and
untrammelled contrivance. Even in passages of a merely episodic
character, one is struck with the vitality and importance of his inner
voices. Dissonance--in the sense in which we understand dissonance
to-day--plays a comparatively unimportant part in his technical
method. The climax of the second of the "Sea Pieces"--"From a
Wandering Iceberg"--marks about as extreme a point of harmonic
conflict as he ever touches. Nor has he been profoundly affected by
the passion for unbridled chromaticism engendered in modern music by
the procedures of Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner. Even in the earlier of
the orchestral works, "Hamlet and Ophelia" and "Lancelot and
Elaine"--both written in Germany in the days when the genius of Wagner
was an ambient and inescapable flame--the writing is comparatively
free from chromatic effects. On the other hand, he is far less
audaciously diatonic than Richard Strauss. His style is, in fact, a
subtle blend of opposing tendencies.

That his songs constitute almost a third of the entire bulk of his
work is not without significance; for his melodic gift is, probably,
the most notable possession of his art. His insistence upon the value
and importance of the _melos_ was, indeed, one of his cardinal tenets;
and he is, in his practice,--whether writing for the voice, for piano,
or for orchestra,--inveterately and frankly melodic: melodic with a
suppleness, a breadth, a freshness and spontaneity which are anything
but common in the typical music of our day. It is a curious experience
to turn from the music of such typical moderns as Loeffler and
Debussy, with its elusive melodic contours, its continual avoidance of