[M]usic requires active coöperation by the hearer. - Walter Raymond Spalding

The Development, beginning in measure 132, is a striking example of how difficult it was—even for an exponent of freedom in musical expression like Schumann—to break loose from the shackles of arbitrary form.

It may be granted that Debussy's melodic line is very fluid and elastic, like Wagner's "continuous melody," not definitely sectionalized by balanced phrases or set cadences. But it surely has its own right to existence—music being pre-eminently the art of freedom—and let us remember that Nature herself has melting outlines, shadowy vistas and subtle rhythms. Debussy, in fact, is the poet of the "indefinite" and the "suggestive" and his music has had great influence in freeing expression from scholastic bond.

The sensational style of Prometheus is augmented by the use of a color machine which flashes upon a screen hues supposed to supplement the various moods of the music. How many of these experiments will be incorporated into the accepted idiom of music, time alone will tell; but they prove conclusively that modern music is thoroughly awake and is proving true to that spirit of freedom which is the breath of its being.