[Footnote A:  If language and association, as against the place of birth, may define nationality, we have in Cesar Franck another worthy expression of French art in the symphony.  He was born at Liege in 1822; he died in 1890.]

The novelty of his style, together with the lateness of his acclaim (of which it was the probable cause), have marked him as more modern than others who were born long after him.

The works of Franck, in other lines of oratorio and chamber music, show a clear personality, quite apart from a prevailing modern spirit.  A certain charm of settled melancholy seems to inhere in his wonted style.  A mystic is Franck in his dominant moods, with a special sense and power for subtle harmonic process, ever groping in a spiritual discontent with defined tonality.

A glance at the detail of his art discloses Franck as one of the main harmonists of his age, with Wagner and Grieg.  Only, his harmonic manner was blended if not balanced by a stronger, sounder counterpoint than either of the others.  But with all the originality of his style we cannot escape a sense of the stereotype, that indeed inheres in all music that depends mainly on an harmonic process.  His harmonic ideas, that often seem inconsequential, in the main merely surprise rather than move or please.  The enharmonic principle is almost too predominant,—­an element that ought never to be more than occasional.  For it is founded not upon ideal, natural harmony, but upon a conventional compromise, an expedient compelled by the limitation of instruments.  This over-stress appears far stronger in the music of Franck’s followers, above all in their frequent use of the whole tone “scale” which can have no other rationale than a violent extension of the enharmonic principle.[A] With a certain quality of kaleidoscope, there is besides (in the harmonic manner of Cesar Franck) an infinitesimal kind of progress in smallest steps.  It is a dangerous form of ingenuity, to which the French are perhaps most prone,—­an originality mainly in details.

[Footnote A:  Absolute harmony would count many more than the semitones of which our music takes cognizance.  For purpose of convenience on the keyboard the semitonal raising of one note is merged in the lowering of the next higher degree in the scale.  However charming for occasional surprise may be such a substitution, a continuous, pervading use cannot but destroy the essential beauty of harmony and the clear sense of tonality; moreover it is mechanical in process, devoid of poetic fancy, purely chaotic in effect.  There is ever a danger of confusing the novel in art with new beauty.]

And yet we must praise in the French master a wonderful workmanship and a profound sincerity of sentiment.  He shows probably the highest point to which a style that is mainly harmonic may rise.  But when he employs his broader mastery of tonal architecture, he attains a rare height of lofty feeling, with reaches of true dramatic passion.