In the 15th and 16th centuries every one wrote motets, masses and madrigals; in the 17th century every one wrote suites and from this time on, opera; in the 18th, sonata form; in the 19th, sonatas and short romantic pieces. In the 20th century, no one form is used more than another, but all forms are undergoing changes as the composers reach out for freedom. This is the day of the large orchestra and of the small chamber music groups; symphonies have been replaced by the shorter symphonic poem, the tendency being for short forms. The four-hour music drama has given way to the one-act operas, and the dance drama or ballet as the Russian Diaghilev introduced it, is a 20th century development. The orchestral writing has changed greatly from the methods of Berlioz, Wagner and Strauss, for while they were masters of large mass effects, the composers of today are treating each instrument individually, in other words, they are using orchestration, poly-instrumentally! In chamber music, we have the string quartet, but in addition, many experiments are being made in combining instruments of unrelated families, like strings, wind, brass and percussion, as we find in Stravinsky’s chamber music.
It is often said that modern music has no melody, but it would be more correct to say that it has new melody, resulting from the attempt to push aside old forms, old harmonies, old rhythms; now we have arrived at a new era of polyphony, abounding in dissonance, that often is cacophonous rather than harmonious. We call this period the Polyformic era.
Another Renaissance
The men who ushered in this Polyformic era were Claude Debussy in Paris, Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna, and Alexander Scriabin in Russia. Richard Strauss, then at his height, is a good example of the overlapping of two periods, for he represents the classical German school of the 19th century, and has also pointed the way to the future. Igor Stravinsky, although younger, is one of the strongest factors in this new Renaissance which in scope and power reminds us of the rebirth of learning in the Middle Ages.
Another cause for the breaking away from old forms and conditions was the World War, which cut off the composers from the usual sources of musical supply, and forced them to develop their own ideas. This led to new groups arising in all parts of the world, who, rebelling against restraint, put wild experiments in the place of time honored customs.
Claude Achille Debussy
Although Claude Achille Debussy (1862–1918) was almost forty when the 20th century came in, only in this century has his work been known and imitated. He was the direct outcome of a movement in France, after the Franco-Prussian War to develop French music along the lines started by Rameau and Couperin. This meant breaking away from the classic models of Beethoven and the dramatic music of Wagner. He exchanged the romantic style of Schumann and Chopin for a new impressionistic style.
Claude Debussy was born in St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. He attended the Paris Conservatory when he was eleven and studied with Marmontel, Lavignac and Guiraud. In 1884, with a cantata, L’Enfant Prodigue, he won the Prix de Rome which has started the career of so many French composers! During this, his first period, he wrote many lovely songs to poems by Verlaine and Baudelaire, the same impressionistic poets who inspired Charles Martin Loeffler in America; Suite Bergamasque, which includes the lovely Clair de Lune (Moonlight); the work which first brought him fame, L’Après-midi d’un Faune (Afternoon of a Faun); the beautiful string quartet; Chansons de Bilitis; Three Nocturnes for Orchestra, and the unique opera Pelleas and Melisande, which took him ten years to write! It was first given in the Paris Opéra Comique (1902).
In this opera, Debussy showed himself an innovator; it was a new kind of harmony and melody and never before had an opera like it been written. He gave an exact impression in music of Maeterlinck’s imaginative, mystic play. This is not a case where music drowns the meaning of the story but each word is colored and interpreted by the music. Debussy accomplished what the Camerata, Gluck and Wagner tried to do. By the time he wrote Pelleas and Melisande, his style was established and the proof of his high attainment is seen in his many imitators.
He worked very slowly and carefully and often destroyed what had taken him hours to write. Although an innovator, he was a deep student well grounded in the traditions of the past, a lover of Mozart and of the 18th century French writers, and when he seemingly broke all rules he gave something new in their place, not in the spirit of experiment but of sincere conviction.