When this admirable colorist wishes a brighter or more incisive sonority than one of this kind, he resorts to dissonances, and especially to the interval of the "second"—notes adjacent in the scale. The opening measures of "Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut" (Figure XIX) afford an example of this in a quiet tone; more clangorous qualities of it will be found in "Masques," "L'île joyeuse," and "Jardins sous la pluie." The first example illustrates what was said of the simplicity for the mind, whatever the complexity for the ear, of this kind of tone-combination. The chords contain a good many notes each; but there emerges only one melody, and that rather obvious.
Figure XIX. "Et la lune descend sur la temple qui fut."
The same search for rich or brilliant color that led to this use of "seconds," carried a little further, brought the composer to that whole-tone scale (or scale entirely made up of "seconds," as C, D, E, F-sharp, G-sharp, A-sharp, C) which he has used with such irresistible appeal. He has, to be sure, no patent right in it. Moussorgsky, Borodine, and others had used it before him; his French contemporaries have used it with skill; and now that it is common property some have even elicited from it strains of plangent force and manly energy foreign to Debussy's temperament. The fact remains that he has made it peculiarly his own by the subtlety, variety, and charm of his employment of it, as may be seen, for example, throughout "Voiles," in the first book of Préludes, and in scattered measures in almost any of his pieces. The whole-tone scale is indeed pre-ordained by nature as a goal to which such an art as Debussy's inevitably tends; its clashing tones feed the greedy ear with the richest diet the gamut can provide; at the same time the equivocal character of the chords, or rather the single chord (the so-called "augmented triad") that can harmonize it, and the self-contradictoriness of its tones from the point of view of the older scale, do away with the sense of key and even of momentary repose, and leave us groping in a tonal night in which, since there is nothing to be observed, we can give ourselves up undisturbed to dreaming.
Debussy is thus a true child of his time in his quest of the sensuous, and a true child of his country in the subtlety with which he pursues it. His Gallic taste saves him from the coarseness of so much of the contemporary Teutonic art; and while his aim is no more spiritual than that of the Germans, he prefers innuendo, implication, and understatement to the gross exaggeration of Strauss, the vehemence in platitude of Mahler, and the plodding literalness of Reger. Thus opposing, as he has so effectively done, the ideal of mere force, reducing in "Pelléas" the mammoth modern orchestra to a handful of men skilfully exploited, substituting the most elusive sonorities of the piano for the crashing magnificence of the Liszt school, everywhere insisting on subtle quality rather than overwhelming quantity, he has exercised one of the most beneficial of influences against vulgarity of the bumptious type. But sybaritism, too, has its own vulgarity; the question of aim is fundamental in art; and in judging the distinction of Debussy's aims we cannot evade the question whether physical pleasure, however refined, is the highest good an artist can seek. His charm, beyond doubt, is great enough to justify his popularity. Yet it would be regrettable if the student of modern French music, satisfied with this charm, were to neglect the less popular but more virile, more profound, and more spiritual music of César Franck, Ernest Chausson, and Vincent d'Indy.
Note: Claude Debussy died in Paris, March 26, 1918.
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