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8/18/2019 (Debussy) Portrait of Debussy 11, Debussy in Perspective
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Portrait of Debussy. 11: Debussy in Perspective
Edward Lockspeiser
The Musical Times, Vol. 109, No. 1508. (Oct., 1968), pp. 904-906.
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1
ebussy in Perspective
Portrait of Debussy-1
Edw ard L ockspeiser
This is the 1 th and last article in our Portrait of
Debussy series in which we have attemp ted to build
a composite portrait of Debussy the musician through
examination of the impressioiz he left on other com-
posers. Previous articles were:
Debussy and Stravinsky (Jeremy Noble), Jan 1967, pp.22-5
Debussy an d Bartok (Anthony Cross), Feb 1967, pp.125-31
Debussy a nd Schoenberg ( Robert Henderson), March 1967,
pp.222-6
Debussy and Puccini (Mosco Carner), June 1967, pp.502-5
Debussy and English Music (Peter J Pirie), July 1967,
pp.599-601
Debussy and French Music (Rollo Myers). Oct 1967,
pp.899-901
Debussy and Koechlin miall O'Loughlin), Nov 1967,
pp.993-6
Debussy and Messiaen (Roger Smalley), Feb 1968, pp.
179 21
~e b; us and Italian Music (John
C
G.
Waterhouse),
May 1968, pp.414-8
Debussy and Boulez (G. W. Hopkins), Aug 1968, pp.710-4
Debussy died 50 years ago, and his changing impact
on th e musical mind du ring this period c an very well
be assessed under three interrelated headings. So
much one gathers from earlier studies in this series
where, of course, these successive phases of
Debussy's influence appe ar quite naturally to merge
int o each other. Nevertheless, it is easy to discern in
certain of these essays (particularly those showing
the connections with Schoenberg and with the
Italian musicians) the original profile that emerged
of Debussy in the European scene, that is to say a
nationalist figure, a Frenchman recovering the
native qualities in music of order, distinction,
elegance, and accuracy of perception.
Immediately, in this national conception, one is
thrown back to the cross currents of a 'Musical
United States' , as Romain Rolland saw the Euro-
pea n musical world of his time, to that characteristic
approa ch of the 1920s when Edward Dent took upon
himself the delicate role of offsetting the Latin and
the Teutonic elements in the new spirit that was
breaking through. 'Across everyone's musical
territory there flows a River Rhine', declared
Busoni. H ow remote are these national distinctions
in our age of the mechanical diffusion of music
I t
is almost as if one were supp orting a rival claim for
the supremacy of the French or the Italian styles in
the 18th century, or taking sides in the conflicts of
the
Guerre des Boufons.
Yet i t was as a com-
poser reacting against the Wagnerian domination
that Debussy was presented in England by his early
crit ics, Edwin Evans and Jean-Aubry.
To day this view has long been transcended. When
the history of the nationalist movements in music up
to th e close of World W ar I comes to be written, we
shall be able to assess quite dispassionately Debussy's
statu re in the freedom-loving Europ e of his time. In
the meantime, referring to Debussy's reputation
in
Italy, Mr Waterhouse draws attention to the fierce
xenophobic prejudices of Italian musicians, persist-
ing until the 1930s. M r Hend erson, similarly,
quotes an extraordinary statement of Schoenberg:
'Much of the harmony used by [Debussy] was dis-
covered independently in Germany'. Perhap s it was,
but the limitations of a restricted nationalist outlook
made it impossible to perceive the significance of
Debussy's innovations. Hence also the amazing
view of Schnabel that Debussy was merely a sophis-
ticated Chaminade.
One cannot of course expect
critics to concur on value judgm ents; they would
no t be critics if they did. In all assessm ents of this
kind, however, the publications of the
Cahiers
Romain Rolland, consisting chiefly of Rolland's
correspondence, will be invaluable. Covering the
whole field of European music from Saint-Saens to
Strauss, Debussy, Mahler, and Stravinsky, these
publications a lso branch ou t into adjacent social and
psychological spheres. M ateria l is thus offered for
a study of the vast hinterland of Debussy's w0rk.l
Equally important is the manner in which an
artist's unconscious mind determines the elements of
his style and his technique. This brings us to ou r
second consideration, the functions and methods of
musical analysis. Quotation s in earlier studies in this
series fro m Debussy's work reveal his technical con -
nections with Puccini, Ba rtok and others. On the
other hand , attemp ts, in other publications, to dis-
close the secrets of Debussy's art by means of
analysis based on conventional notions of harmony
are no t always successful; they are likely to be con -
fined to problem s of nomenclature. Are the funda-
mentals of a cho rd in French m usic of the period of
Debussy transferred to one of the middle voices in
order to allow greater harmo nic freedom, as Jacques
Chailley suggests,' o r are they simple chord inver-
sions? Th e first view is poetically m ore appealing ;
the second is nearer the truth.
Is the dissonant
major 2nd in certain chords from Pellias 'a bee in the
flower', as Messiaen
suggest^,^
or is the dissonance
caused merely by an upper pedal point?
Ambiguities and speculations of this kind ab oun d
in analyses of Debussy's musical language, and they
are likely t o persist until we com e to terms, possibly
by the use of a scientific method, with Debussy's
essentially physical notio ns of harm ony . Cezan ne
said of Monet, whose art had been reduced to an
accurate rendering of optical sensations, that 'he is
nothing bu t an eye'. Of Debussy it may be said, in
the same superior sense, that he is nothing but an
ear. This comes near to a purely realistic app roac h.
Indeed we have evidence of Debussy's awareness of
'Debussy is frequently mentioned in Rolland's correspondence,
particularly in the volume, translated into English in 1968,
devoted to Richard Strauss. Another important source 1s the
Journal de . AnnPes rle guerre (Paris 1952) giving details of the
activities of Debussy and ~travlnsk;. Rolland's correspondence
with Debussy still awaits publication. The latest issue of the
Cahiers, vol 17, includes Rolland's correspondence with Saint-
SaEns and also with Freud.
2'Berlioz'. special number of La Revue musicale (1956), ccxxxiii,
1956
8Technique de mon langcrge n?usical(1944) , i, 40-1 the passage i n
question is ex 4 in 'Debussy and Messlaen' (Smalley), Feb p.128
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this approach in his statement: 'Music has hitherto
been established o n a false principle. Th ere has been
too much concern with writing; music has been
written for th e paper when in fact it is conceived fo r
the ears.'
Ult imately i t was the new approach to the ar t of
hearing th at is likely to give us the key t o Debussy's
musical sensibility.Wusicians and scientists were in
some stra nge way conscious of the fact, in the 1890s,
that we cannot trust our ears. As Sir James Jeans
says in
Science and Music,
'All the art, all the man-
nerisms [in the performance of a symphony] are
embodied in one single curve'. And he add s: 'The
curve is the symphony', that is to say the symphony
is not the score, nor even the performance, but the
sound curve as it is received by the ear . This is
entirely pertinent to the Impressionist musical
aesthetic. Recent research, based on the theories of
the physicists Helmholtz and Charles Henry,j who
investigated the sensations of to ne and light and who
exerted a wide influence on theorists of music and
painting, show th at the ear. like the eye, is an incom-
plete receptive instrume nt. Th e artists, like the
scientists, were however explorers in sound and
light: they wanted to discover afresh the distinctions
between consonance and dissonance, or the relative
values of colour. This brings the whole Impressionist
movement into a sharper focus. Earlier ideas of
Impressionism as a veiled or an obscure art, dream-
like in character, are now, in view of our concern
with the phenomenon of sound in contemporary
music, replaced by a more scientific conception.
'Impressionism', says the ar t historian Rent. Huy ghe
of Monet 's
Sunrise,
'perceiving light instead of
forms , sees reality a s a flow of energy, thus an ticipat-
in g m od er n ~ c i e n c e . ~n the musical sphere Impres-
sionism similarly perceives sound instead of forms.
Ultimately, therefore, we have illustrations of this
principle by means of electronic music and other
purely soun d-prod ucing devices.
Pleas are frequently made in Debussy's writings
for an understanding of his music according to a
scheme of sensations. His notices for La Revue
blanche, later reproduced in
M
Croche, are them-
selves 'impressions', as he emphasizes, and his use of
this term in his weekly articles demonstrates his
affinities with the aesthetic and the scientific writers
of his time , includingthechallengingfigureof Charles
He nry .' Debussy, moreover, is merciless in his con-
demnation of any kind of functional approach to
musical analysis. 'People forget that as children they
given here of the theories of Helmholtz and Riem ann, and of a
pioneer in musical psychology, Carl Stumpf.
Th ar le s Henry (1859-1926) was an Alsatian scientist who was a
researcher in mathematics and physics and also in the theory
and aesthetics of music and
painting.
In 1894-5 he wrote a
series of articles. 'L'Esthetique des forrnes' for
L a R e ~ i ~ elanche
to which Debussy later contribute d as a critic. Henry's musical
studies. including commentaries on the technique of Debussy
together with papers on musical aesthetics and on the new
sonorities of the orchestra, are ciiscussed in L 'O e u1 ,r e p s ~ c h o -
biophjsiq ire de Charley Henry by F . Warrain (Paris. 1931). The
connecuons between the theoretical works of Henry and the
Ideas of Debussy may be traced in
Srurar and thr Science
o
Paint ing by H. I. Homer (Cambridge. Mass, 1964).
eAr t and thr Spir i t o f Ma n
(London. 1962).
'see A.
B Jackson.
La Revue b lnn( .hr: Orig ine, I t i fi i len
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n est pas la NeurasthCnie, ce n est pas non plus
1 Hypocondrie. C est le dklicieux ma1 de I idke i
choisir entre toutes .12 Translating this into present-
day terms we should say: This is not a neurosis nor
a depression; it is the delightful sense of unease
which possesses one in facing an infinitude of possi-
bilities . This notion did not remain peculiar to
Debussy. Stravinsky in his Poetics of MusicT3
similarly defined this attitude.
As for myself, I experience a sort of terror when,
at the moment of setting to work and finding
myself before the infinitude of possibilities that
present themselves I have the feeling that every-
thing is permissible to me, the best and the
worst; if nothing offers me any resistance, then
any effort is inconceivable, and I cannot use
anything as a basis, and consequently every
undertaking becomes futile.
The nearest Debussy came to this chancy, aleatory
view of music is surely in a passage in
Ibtria
in
which a random violin solo, unexpectedly extin-
guished by the woodwinds, suddenly finds itself
jumbled up with a tambourine; this then leads, as if
the conductor had thought it up on the spur of the
moment, to some violent strumming on the strings
relieved by an oboe tune which seems to be brought
in from nowhere.14
These two symposia, the Paris conference of 1962
and the present series of studies, will no doubt be
seen to close a stage in the investigation of Debussy s
influence. For the next stage more basic material is
required. We need above all a large-scale
catalogue
raisonnk
of Debussy s works showing the where-
abouts of MSS the relevance of sketches, notational
differences in editions, and the s tate of the unfinished
works, together with an historic account of the
inception and production of each work. The methods
of Kochel need to be applied; but more than this we
wish to study the changing phases of Debussy s
work. The original draft of
L aprds-midi d un jaune,
now suppressed, needs to be re-edited with an
adequate commentary demonstrating the manner in
which Debussy worked. Early unpublished works
illustrating the development of Debussy s style
include the
comtdie hkroique, Diane au bois
and the
opera
Rodrigue et Chimdne.
We should also like to
see a reconstruction of extracts of La Saulaie, the
companion piece to La damoiselle tlue (that is to say
the available sketches and the libretto). Preparatory
2Let tres n4di tes
a
Andre Caplet
(Monaco, 1957)
I3French version, 1942; Eng l~sh ranslation, 1947
l4fig 61 of the score
or unfinished works such as these are likely to offer
penetrating glimpses into the workings of a com-
poser s mind. The early study on
Pellias et Mkli-
sande
by Maurice Emmanuel was valuable in its
time, but it needs to be replaced by a different kind
of study showing the evolution of Debussy s musical
ideas in the various drafts and scores of the opera.
Leon Vallas has drawn attention15 to Debussy s
setting of a section of Villiers de I Isle Adam s
Axel
which, though it remains unknown, nevertheless
indicates his attraction at a n early date to the world
of
Pellkas.
We need also a critical edition of Debussy s pub-
lished articles, not merely the arbitrary selection
assembled for the posthumously published
M
Croche. Other unpublished literary works, including
the play Frdres en art, should throw light on
Debussy s ideas on the relationship of the arts. In
all this we are interested in what the French call
des
pidces (authentic unpublished material for research
material). Various letters of Stravinsky to Debussy,
and of Bartok, giving his opinions of Debussy, have
appeared in auction
catalogue^ ^^
They are of great
value in assessing the relationships with Debussy of
these composers but, as research-workers so often
discover, they are likely to be kept hidden away by
their jealous possessors. Finally, to satisfy scholars
who still believe in the dictum of Buffon,
le style est
I homme mCme and
indeed how else can style be
defined?-we need an annotated critical edition of
Debussy s letters. These should include not only
those already published, many of which appear in
truncated form, but the vast number of unpublished
letters. Obviously, this is an undertaking that cannot
be attempted before a considerable lapse of time.
But a complete correspondence of this kind is
bound eventually, like the correspondence of
Wagner and Mozart, to throw up so many psycho-
logical problems relating to the artist and his work
that we must be prepared, in contemplation of this
task a t a remote date, to tackle the whole subject of
Debussy s evaluation afresh.
SCla ude Debussy et son tenrps
(2nd edn, 1958, p.140)
"Stravinsky's recollections of statements made to him by
Debussy are not always reliable. On the controversial question
of the influence of Mussorgsky Stravinsky writes:' (Debussy)
said he had discovered M~ sSor gskywhen he found some of the
music lying untouched on Mme von Meck's piano ( i e 1880-2)'
(Expos i t ions and Developments , 1959, p.138). This is hardly
substantiated by Debussy's letter of June 23, 1908: . Mous-
sorgsky, don't j'ai pu constater dans un voyage que je fis en
Russie, il y a une vingtaine d'annkes, que personne ne prononce
le nom. Ce n'est qu'en France que j'ai commence a le connaitre'
(M. Dietschy,
La Pass ion dr Claud? Drbussy,
1962, p.197).
APPOINTMENTS, AWARDS
Francis Cameron has been appointed Assistant Director of the
New South Wales Conservatorium of Music, Sydney, Australia
Sergiu Comissiona has been appointed conductor and artistic
director of the Baltimore SO for the next three years.
George won
the 1968 Pulitzer
Prize
in
music for his
Echoes of rime and the river.
Desmond .Hunter has won the first prize for organ a t the
Antwerp Conservatoire: he was also awarded the Firmin
Swinnen and the Callaerts prizes.
Martin Jones has won the first Myra Hess Award.
Christopher Seaman for the last four years timpanist of the
LPO, has heen apbointed assistant conductor of the BBC
Scottish.
Ruth Hamilton Smith has won the Maggie Teyte biennial prize.
Associated Board Medallists, JuneIJuly 1968: Grade 8, Andrew
Leavett (gold), Stephen Hamill (silver); Grade
7,
Jennifer
Moody (gold), Sarah Wayman, Trevor Hughes, Sheila Wilson
(silver); Grade 6, Alison Bury, Robert Steed, Lorraine Wood
(gold), Paul Barritt, Richard S~mpsonsliver).
9 6