Dissonance--in the sense in which we understand dissonance to-day--plays a comparatively unimportant part in his technical method.

The climax of the second of the "Sea Pieces"-- "From a Wandering Iceberg"-- marks about as extreme a point of harmonic conflict as he ever touches.

Nor has he been profoundly affected by the passion for unbridled chromaticism engendered in modern music by the procedures of Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner.

Even in the earlier of the orchestral works, "Hamlet and Ophelia" and "Lancelot and Elaine"-- both written in Germany in the days when the genius of Wagner was an ambient and inescapable flame--the writing is comparatively free from chromatic effects.

On the other hand, he is far less audaciously diatonic than Richard Strauss.