In an interview published a few years before his death he declared his opinion to be that "song writing should follow declamation"-- that the composer "should declaim the poems in sounds: the attention of the hearer should be fixed upon the central point of declamation.

The accompaniment should be merely a background for the words.

Harmony is a frightful den for the small composer to get into--it leads him into frightful nonsense.

Too often the accompaniment of a song becomes a piano fantasie with no resemblance to the melody.

Colour and harmony under such conditions mislead the composer; he uses it instead of the line which he at the moment is setting, and obscures the central point, the words, by richness of tissue and overdressing; and all modern music is labouring under that.