be no doubt of the delight of these flashes of the
modern French poet,--a delicate charm as beguiling as the bolder, warmer
harmonies of the earlier German. Instead of the broad exultation of
Wagner there is in Debussy the subtle, insinuating dissonance. Nor is
the French composer wanting in audacious strokes. Once for all he stood
the emancipator of the art from the stern rule of individual vocal
procedure. He cut the Gordian knot of harmonic pedagogy by the mere
weapon of poetic elision. He simply omitted the obvious link by a
license ancient in poetry and even in prose. He devised in his harmonies
the paradox, that is the essence of art, that the necessary step somehow
becomes unnecessary. Though Wagner plunges without ceremony into his
languorous chords, he carefully resolves their further course. Debussy
has them tumbling in headlong descent like sportive leviathans in his
sea of sound. Moreover he has broken these fetters of a small punctilio
without losing the sense of a true harmonic sequence. Nay, by the very
riotous revel of upper harmonies he has stressed the more clearly the
path of the fundamental tone. When he enters the higher sanctuary of
pure concerted voices, he is fully aware of the fine rigor of its rites.
And finally his mischievous abandon never leads him to do violence to
the profoundest element of the art, of organic design.[B]

[Footnote A: As the lower overtones, discovered by a later science,
clearly confirm the tonal system of the major scale, slowly evolved in
the career of the art,--so the upper overtones are said to justify the
whole-tone process. At best this is a case of the devil quoting
scripture. The main recurring overtones, which are lower and audible,
are all in support of a clear prevailing tonality.]

[Footnote B: In the drama Debussy avoids the question of form by
treating the music as mere scenic background. Wagner, in his later
works, attempted the impossible of combining a tonal with the dramatic
plot. In both composers, to carry on the comparison beyond the technical
phase, is a certain reaching for the primeval, in feeling as in
tonality. Here they are part of a larger movement of their age. The
subjects of their dramas are chosen from the same period of mediaeval
legend, strongly surcharged in both composers with a spirit of fatalism
where tragedy and love are indissolubly blended.]

_"THE SEA." THREE SYMPHONIC SKETCHES_

_I.--From Dawn to Noon on the Sea._ In awesome