ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about a composer, scientist, inventor, philosopher and Rear-Admiral Jean Cras was a French musician. But this French musician was also Proper Breton. As Jean Cras entered his fourth decade, the rumblings of war had begun to reverberate throughout Europe, the gaite and grandeur of la belle epoque rapidly disappearing. Cras' musical and emotional epicentre during this turbulent decade was Polypheme. The compositions to be discussed in this chapter herald, chiefly, Cras' growing predilection for pentatonicism within a conservative yet expansive harmonic vocabulary. Samain's and Cras' despairing protagonist did not, as we will learn, proffer evil, but underwent a spiritual transformation that generated virtue from vice, a moral tenet that struck at the very heart of Cras' faith. The fervour and consistency of Cras' religious convictions entreat one to accept as inevitable the projection of his moral training, and reasoning, into composition.
