A purely scientific basis must be shunned in any direct approach of the art whether critical or creative,—­alone for the fatal allurement of a separate research.  The truth is that a spirit of fantastic experiment, started by the mystic manner of a Cesar Franck, sought a sanction in the phenomena of acoustics.  So it is likely that the enharmonic process of Franck led to the strained use of the whole-tone scale (of which we have spoken above) by a further departure from tonality.[A] And yet, in all truth, there can 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