Some of d'Indy's earlier music he had heard and admired: but that he would have cared for such a score as Debussy's "La Mer" I very much doubt.

I remember his amusement over what he called the "queerness" of a sonata by the Belgian Lekeu for violin and piano, which he had read or heard.

It is likely that he would have found little to attract him in the more characteristic music of d'Indy, Debussy, and Ravel; his instincts and temperament led him into a wholly different region of expression.

He was a prophet of modernity; but it was a modernity that he alone exemplifies: it has no exact parallel.
Concerning the classics he had his own views.

Of Bach he wrote that he believed him to have accomplished his work as "one of the world's mightiest tone-poets not by means of the contrapuntal methods of his day, but in spite of them.