The thought can almost be ventured that Stillman-Kelley was the first composer to use the post-Wagnerian harmonic vocabulary without the result sounding like Wagner. If a heroic instinct for thematic development in the face of the harmonic orgies of the time contributed to this achievement, it was secondary to a contribution of even greater distinction. This more original contribution may be termed the application of a geometrical poetic sense to the new harmony. Of the tyrant that enslaved the composers of the time Stillman-Kelley promptly made himself the master. Out of the new material he generated for his use _harmonic motives_, symmetrical blocks of harmony, bearing a particular relation to his thematic material, and, by the application of these well-defined and well-rounded harmonic motives to his formal structure, he attained, at a stroke, the employment of the new medium, the preservation of clarity and order, and thereto a new musical personality. He did not recede to an archaic classical purism and offer the familiar excuse of those who found in Wagner the ruination of pure music. He advanced bravely on to the dangerous ground of the new territory and made it his own without sacrificing the fundamental classical character of his ideals and without losing his wits. Both in spirit and technique Stillman-Kelley's artistic personality may be seen in microcosmic scope, as it were, in his highly individual song, 'Israfel' to the poem of Edgar Allan Poe. Here are the serene beauty, the highly imaginative harmonic tinting, the touch of the fantastic, the formal amplitude and symmetry, the predominance of phantasy over passion, which characterize all of the composer's work. The companion song, 'Eldorado,' on Poe's poem of that name, is equally typical of the composer's genius, though strongly contrasted with 'Israfel' in subject. Stillman-Kelley first became known through his intensely characteristic and 'atmospheric' music for 'Macbeth,' dating from early days in San Francisco. This he has in later years revised and cast in the form of an orchestral suite, composing for the play a wholly new overture of momentous proportions. This is a massive and sombre work, dealing with the conflict of conscience and evil ambition, its murky content being relieved only by the introduction of a theme of the joys of Gaelic royalty, which later on assumes a grim aspect, being stated in conjunction with the theme of ambition.