 The brief " Sea Song " of 1907 was an early attempt by Grainger to write " beatless " music . This work , initially set over 14 irregular bars and occupying about 15 seconds of performing time , was a forerunner of Grainger 's free music experiments of the 1930s . Grainger wrote : " It seems to me absurd to live in an age of flying , and yet not be able to execute tonal glides and curves " . The idea of tonal freedom , he said , had been in his head since as a boy of eleven or twelve he had observed the wave @-@ movements in the sea . " Out in nature we hear all kinds of lovely and touching " free " ( non @-@ harmonic ) combinations of tones ; yet we are unable to take up these beauties ... into the art of music because of our archaic notions of harmony " . In a 1941 letter to Scott , Grainger acknowledged that he had failed to produce any large @-@ scale works in the manner of a Bach oratorio , a Wagner opera or a Brahms symphony , but excused this failure on the grounds that all his works prior to the mid @-@ 1930s had been mere preparations for his free music . 
