If Maurice Ravel, as shown in his ballet _Daphnis et Chloé_, was a pioneer in poly-harmony, Alfred Casella, of Italian parentage but of French education, has gone considerably further. Similar tendencies may be found in the music of Bartók, Kodály and other Hungarians. It seemed formerly that Strauss had pushed the dissonant contrapuntal style as far as it could go, but his style is virtually conventional beside that of the later Schönberg. Schönberg has already passed through several evolutionary stages, but his mature idiom abjures tonality to an incredible extent, and he forces the procedures of free counterpoint to such audacious disregard of even unconventional euphony that few can compass his musical message. Time may prove, however, that tonality is a needless convention, and it is possible to declare that there is nothing illogical in his contrapuntal system. It lies in the extravagant extension of principles of dissonance which have already been accepted. It is indubitable that Schönberg succeeds in expressing moods previously unknown to musical literature, and it is conceivable that music may encompass unheard-of developments in this direction, just as poly-harmony has already proved extremely fruitful. The developments of poly-harmony and dissonant contrapuntal style prophesy the near inadequacy of our present musical scale. Busoni and others have long since advocated a piano in which the sharps and flats should have separate keys. As music advanced from the modes to the major and minor keys, and finally to the chromatic scale, so the necessity for a new scale may constitute logically the next momentous problem in musical art. Within recent years, the barriers of nationalism have become relaxed. An almost involuntary interchange of idioms has caused music to take on an international character despite a certain maintenance of racial traits. Eclecticism is becoming to a certain extent universal. Achievement is too easily communicable from one country to another. In some respects music was more interesting when it was more parochial. To prophesy that music is near to anarchy is to convict one's self of approaching senility, for the ferment of the revolutionary element has always existed in art. Since the time of Wagner and Liszt, however, musical development has proceeded with such extreme rapidity as to endanger the endurance of our traditional material. Poly-harmony, dissonant counterpoint and the agitation for a new scale are suspicious indications. Disregarding the future, however, let us realize that the diversity and complexity of modern music is enthralling, and that most of us can readily endure it as it now is for a little longer. EDWARD BURLINGAME HILL. May, 1915. CONTENTS OF VOLUME THREE PAGE Introduction by Edward Burlingame Hill vii CHAPTER