Be that as it may, however, MacDowell's achievement is of the former order.
His harmonic method is ingenious and pliable.

An over-insistence upon certain formulas--eloquent enough in themselves--has been charged against it, and the accusation is not without foundation.

MacDowell is exceedingly fond, for instance, of suspensions in the chord of the diminished seventh.

There is scarcely a page throughout his later work in which one does not encounter this effect in but slightly varied form.

Yet there is a continual richness in his harmonic texture.