Chapter X: Debussy and the Ultra-Modernists

Impressionism in Music--Claude Debussy, the pioneer of
the 'atmospheric' school; his career, his works and his
influence--Maurice Ravel, his life and work--Alfred Bruneau;
Gustave Charpentier--Paul Dukas--Miscellany; Albert Roussel and
Florent Schmitt.

The trend of ultra-modern French music has been so swift in its development that the significant episodes crowd upon one another's heels when they do not stride along side by side. Within a year or two after the death of César Franck and Edouard Lalo, while Saint-Saëns was in the full tide of his ceaseless productivity, while Massenet, then famed as the composer of _Manon_, was shortly to meditate his _Thaïs_ and _La Navarraise_, while the irrepressible Chabrier was beginning to pay the toll of his strenuous activity, while Fauré's songs had already won recognition for their subtle mixtures of sensuousness and mysticism, while d'Indy and Chausson were evolving their individuality on the lines laid down by their revered master, there arose strikingly new principles of musical expression, involving a new æsthetic standpoint, an enlargement of harmonic resource, supplying a new and vital idiom which is perhaps the most characteristically Gallic of the ultra-modern movements centred in Paris. These principles have crystallized into the impressionistic or 'atmospheric' school, whose rise during the past fifteen or twenty years has been little short of meteoric.

The subject of parallelism between the arts with a definite interacting influence is a fertile one for discussion. While but little space can be devoted here to enlargement upon this topic, it may be observed that with the advance of culture the intervening time before one art reacts upon another becomes shorter. If the Renaissance was relatively slow in affecting music, the revolutionary outbreaks of 1830 and 1848 were more nearly synchronous, while in the case of realism and impressionism, the resulting confluence of principles was nearly simultaneous. Fortunately the basic methods of impressionism in painting and poetry are so well understood that no definition of their purposes is needful beyond a reminder that they aim to subordinate detail in favor of the effect as a whole. In music impressionism is obtained by procedures analogous if markedly dissimilar from those employed in painting. The results are alike in that both arts have gained enormously in scope of subject as well as in greater brilliancy, elusive poetry and human significance in their treatment.

I

It is not too much to say that Claude Debussy may be considered as the real originator of impressionism in music, although he did not begin to compose in this manner. But Debussy's success has brought forth a host of imitators in France, Russia, England, and even the United States, while so essentially Teutonic a composer as Max Reger has passed through a Debussian phase. Another composer who has contributed to the development of impressionistic method is Maurice Ravel, and he undoubtedly has derived much from Debussy. At the same time he displays many original characteristics which have nothing in common with Debussy, and hence he cannot be dismissed as a mere echo of the older composer. Impressionism has become so essentially a part of ultra-modern French musical evolution as to merit a clear exposition of its claims and the achievements of its founders.

Claude-Achille Debussy was born at St. Germain-en-Laye, not far from Paris, August 22, 1862. His father was ambitious to make a sailor of his son, but a certain Mme. Mautet, whose son was a brother-in-law of Paul Verlaine, herself a pupil of Chopin, was so impressed by the boy's piano playing that she prepared him for entrance into the Paris Conservatory. He obtained medals in solfeggio and piano playing, but was less fortunate in the harmony class. In the class of Émile Durand the study of harmony resolved itself into an effort to discover the 'author's harmony' for a given bass or soprano, hampered by rules 'as arbitrary as those of bridge.'[61] Debussy also entered Franck's organ class at the Conservatory, but here also he was at odds with the master, whose urgings 'modulate, modulate!' during the pupil's improvizations seemed too often without point. In 1879 Debussy journeyed to Russia with Mme. Metch, the wife of a Russian railway constructor, in the capacity of domestic pianist. He made slight acquaintance with Balakireff, Borodine, and Rimsky-Korsakoff, but never came across Moussorgsky, who was destined later to exercise so marked an influence upon his dramatic methods. The dominant expression which he brought back from Russia was that of the fantastic gypsy music, whose rhapsodic and improvisatory character addressed itself readily to his fancy. At last Debussy entered the composition class of Ernest Guiraud, and here his ability quickly asserted itself. After a mention in counterpoint and fugue in 1882, he obtained a second _prix de Rome_ in 1885, and the first prize in the year following with the cantata 'The Prodigal Son,' entitling him to study in Rome at governmental expense.

From Rome Debussy sent back to the Institute, as required, a portion of a setting of Heine's lyrical drama _Almanzor_, a suite for women's voices and orchestra, 'Spring,' recently published in a revision for orchestra alone; a setting of Rossetti's 'The Blessed Damozel' for voices and orchestra (finished after his return to Paris), and a fantasy for piano and orchestra which has never been published or performed.

On his return to Paris Debussy made the acquaintance of Moussorgsky's _Boris Godounoff_ in the first edition, before the revisions and alterations made by Rimsky-Korsakoff. This work was an immense revelation of the possibilities of a simple yet poignant dramatic style, and undoubtedly was fraught with suggestion to the future composer of _Pelléas_. A visit to Bayreuth in 1889, where he heard _Tristan_, _Parsifal_, and the _Meistersinger_, showed Wagner in a new light to Debussy. But on repeating the trip in the following year he returned disillusionized and henceforth Wagner ceased to exert any influence whatever upon him. For some time at this period Debussy was generously aided by the publisher Georges Hartmann, who had likewise encouraged de Castillon and Massenet. During these years Debussy composed many piano pieces and songs, among them the _Arabesques_ (1888), the _Ballade_, _Danse_, _Mazurka_, _Reverie_, _Nocturne_, and the _Suite Bergamasque_, all dating from 1890. These piano pieces exhibit Debussy as a frankly melodic composer of indubitable refinement and imagination, in a vein not far removed from that of Massenet, although possessing more distinction and poetic sentiment. Among the songs the early _Nuit d'étoiles_ (1876), _Fleur des blés_ (1878), and _Beau Soir_ (1878) are experimental, the last of the three being the most interesting. The 'Three Melodies' (1880), containing the songs _La Belle au bois dormant_, _Voici que le Printemps_, and _Paysage sentimental_, the _Ariettes oubliées_ (1888, but revised later) show a marked progress in concreteness of mood and harmonic subtlety. Three songs (1890) on texts by Verlaine, _L'Échelonnement des haies_, _La Mer est plus belle_, and _Le Son du Cor s'afflige_, and the _Cinq poëmes de Baudelaire_ (1890), show a further evolution of lyric delineation. If the latter are unequal (_Le Balcon_ and _Le jet d'eau_ are the most vital) they at least demonstrate an æsthetic ferment toward the later Debussy. _Mandoline_ (also 1890) is also a direct premonition of a maturer style. In confirmation of this steady evolution one must recall that side by side with the palpable influence of Massenet in the cantata 'The Prodigal Son' (especially in the prelude) and in the second movement of the suite 'Spring' there were likewise harmonic individualities and expressive sentiments in the first movement of the suite, and in the delicately pre-Raphaelitic 'Blessed Damozel' which presage the developments to come.

However, the direct stimulus which guided Debussy in his search for personal enfranchisement did not come from musical sources,[62] but from association with poets, literary critics, and painters. From 1885 onwards,[63] the symbolist poets Gustave Kahn, Pierre Louys, Francis Vielé-Griffin, Stuart Merrill, Paul Verlaine, Henri de Regnier, the painter Whistler, and many others were in the habit of meeting at the house of Stéphane Mallarmé, the symbolist poet, for discussion on a variety of æsthetic topics. The _Salon de la Rose-Croix_, formed by French painters as an outcome of pre-Raphaelite influence, grew out of these meetings. Verlaine and Mallarmé had founded the 'Wagnerian Review' as a medium for exposition of the essential unity of all the arts. As a result of these critical inquiries and debates, Debussy was struck with the possibility of attempting to transfer impressionistic and symbolistic theories into the domain of music.

The first concrete instance of a deliberate embodiment of impressionistic method is to be found in the exquisite 'Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun' (1882), founded on the poem by Mallarmé. Here Debussy succeeded admirably in translating the vague symbolism of the poem into music of languorous mood and ineffably delicate poetry. This brief piece, novel and striking in both harmonic and expressive idiom, marks a departure into a field of fertile consequence and far-reaching import both intrinsically and historically.

It was in the summer of 1892, also, that Debussy quite by chance came across Maeterlinck's play _Pelléas et Mélisande_. Both the intensely human elements in the drama and its sensitive symbolism made a strong appeal to Debussy's newly awakened æsthetic instincts and, after obtaining permission to utilize the play as an opera text, he at once set to work upon it. For ten years Debussy labored upon _Pelléas_ with a patient striving to realize in music its humanitarian sentiment, its creative poetry and its tragedy. During these years of gradual distillation of thought he attained slowly but surely the inimitable style of his maturity. But in the meantime he composed also in various other fields.

Already the songs, _Fêtes galantes_ (1892), on Verlaine's poems showed in their delicately impressionistic introspection that the 'Afternoon of a Faun' was no casual experiment. Similarly, the _Proses Lyriques_ (1893), although unequal, exhibit clearly, especially in the songs _De Rêve_ and _De Grève_, a formulation of the whole-tone idiom, which was later to become a characteristic feature of Debussy's style. A string quartet (also 1893) was, by virtue of its inevitable restriction, a momentary abandonment of the impressionistic ideal, but within these limitations Debussy achieved an astonishing individuality, charm of mood, and clearcut workmanship, particularly in the thoughtful, slow movement and the piquant scherzo. In 1898 he returned to the impressionistic vein with three _Chansons de Bilitis_ from the like-named volume of poems by Pierre Louys. The naïveté, humor, and penetrating poetry of these lyrics were akin to the imaginative vein of the _Fêtes galantes_.

In the following year Debussy gave a larger affirmation of his impressionistic creed with the Nocturnes for orchestra entitled 'Clouds,' 'Festivals,' and 'Sirens' (the latter with a chorus of women's voices). These pieces, although avowedly programmistic, do not attempt realistic tone-painting, but aim rather to suggest impressionistic moods growing out of their titles. The slow procession of clouds, the dazzling intermingling of groups of revellers, the elusive seduction of imaginary sirens are pictured with an atmospheric verity that far transcends the possibilities of realistic standpoint. Musically the Nocturnes are distinguished by their intrinsic potency of expression, their basic formal coherence and logic of development, their concreteness of mood, and their picturesqueness of detail. The use of a chorus of women's voices, vocalizing without text, a feature already employed in 'Spring,' was not original to Debussy, for Berlioz had already employed it in his highly dramatic but little known Funeral March for the last scene of 'Hamlet' (1848). But Debussy's highly coloristic and ingenious application of the medium greatly enhances the pervasive poetry of this Nocturne, and transforms it into a virtual novelty. Not the least interesting harmonic consideration of this piece is the use, with some definite system, of the whole-tone scale, which Debussy later exploited so remarkably, and of which up to this time only transient suggestions had appeared.

During his long contemplative absorption in _Pelléas_ Debussy had not entirely neglected composition for the piano. A _Marche écossaise_ 'on a popular theme' ('The Earl of Ross's March') for four hands (1891, orchestrated in 1908) is piquant and vivacious without being particularly characteristic. A 'Little Suite' for the same combination (1894), if somewhat slight musically, is pleasing for its clarity and simple directness. In 1901, however, Debussy showed a far more definite originality, both pianistically and harmonically, in a set of three pieces entitled _Pour le Piano_, with the subtitles 'Prelude,' 'Sarabande' and 'Toccata.' If the prelude suggests something of the style of Bach, if the Sarabande is to a certain extent a modernization of the gravity of Rameau, and the toccata bears a resemblance in its fiery impulsiveness to Domenico Scarlatti, these pieces are none the less positively characteristic of Debussy in their fundamentals. The frank use of the whole-tone scale in the prelude, the harmonic boldness of the sarabande with its sequences of sevenths, and the ingenious piano figures in the toccata are the external evidences of a basically individual conception. If these pieces do not display the impressionism that is indigenous to the later Debussy, they represent a transition stage of far from negligible interest.

With the performances in 1902 of _Pelléas et Mélisande_ at the Opéra Comique Debussy attained an immediate and definite renown. There was abundance of opposition, disparagement, and ill-natured criticism, but the work was too obviously significant to be downed by it. To begin with it was epoch-making in the annals of French dramatic art in that it marked a complete enfranchisement from the influence of Wagner. Debussy had been censured for saying that melody in the voice parts (that is, _formal_ melody) was 'anti-dramatic,' but his by no means unmelodic recitative with its fastidious attention to finesse of declamation justified the restriction of the melodic element to the orchestra. If the dramatic style of _Pelléas_, in its economy of musical emphasis, was directly modelled upon Moussorgsky's _Boris_, the evolution of this idea in which the orchestra throughout, with the exception of a few climaxes, maintained a transparent delicacy of sonority, established a new conception of dramatic style as well as new resources in sensibility of timbre. Harmonically, _Pelléas_ shows both a surprising unity (considering that it occupied Debussy for ten years at a transitional phase of his career) and a remarkable extension of devices scarcely more than hinted at in his earlier works. It is difficult to formulate these innovations briefly, but they may be grouped under three general headings. First, an æsthetic abrogation of certain conventional harmonic procedures; the free use of consecutive fifths and octaves, sequences of seventh chords (in which Fauré definitely anticipated Debussy), and of ninths. In these seemingly anarchistic over-rulings of tradition Debussy was guided by a sure and hyper-sensitive instinct. Second, the employment of modal harmonization, sometimes strict but more often free, with a singularly felicitous dramatic connotation. Third, the development of a logical manner founded on the whole-tone scale. Debussy cannot claim that he originated the whole-tone scale, since it was used by Dargomijsky in the third act of 'The Stone Guest' (1869), by various neo-Russians, notably Rimsky-Korsakoff, by Chabrier, Fauré, and d'Indy (in the second act of _Fervaal_); nevertheless he can be said to have made this idiom his own by his flexible and discriminating manipulation of its resources. Debussy does not employ the whole-tone scale as monotonously as is often supposed. On the contrary, one of the marked features of his harmonic style is its resourceful variety.

Debussy's use of motives constitutes the very antipodes of Wagner's somewhat cumbrous symphonic development of them. If at first Debussy's treatment seems too fluid and lacking in continuity, a closer study of the score (especially in the orchestral version) will reveal not only a flexible adaptation of motives to the dramatic situations, but a logical and constructive development often with considerable contrapuntal dexterity. Furthermore, a formal coherence is maintained without the artifices of symphonic development.

But the import of _Pelléas_ does not consist merely in the historical or technical value of its innovating features, although this is patent. It resides primarily in the basic poignancy with which the music illustrates and reinforces the touching drama by Maeterlinck, as well as its intrinsic surpassing beauty and poetic thrall. It is because Debussy has characterized the innocent, gentle Mélisande, the ardent Pelléas, Golaud haggard with jealousy, the childlike carelessness of Yniold during a questioning of such import to his father, with such searching fidelity to the creations of the poet that we find music and drama in accord to an extent seldom witnessed in the history of opera. It is because Debussy has brought such freshness of musical invention and profound aptness of interpretation in such scenes as the discovery of Mélisande by Golaud, the questioning end of Act I, the animated scene between Pelléas and Mélisande in Act II, their long love scene in