Musicians of to-day

by Romain Rolland

In speaking of the moral reasons of the success of Pelléas et Mélisande, I would like to draw your attention to a form of thought which is not confined to France, but which is common nowadays in a section of the more distinguished members of European society, and which has found expression in Pelléas et Mélisande. The atmosphere in which Maeterlinck's drama moves makes one feel the melancholy resignation of the will to Fate. We are shown that nothing can change the order of events; that, despite our proud illusions, we are not master of ourselves, but the servant of unknown and irresistible forces, which direct the whole tragicomedy of our lives. We are told that no man is responsible for what he likes and what he loves—that is if he knows what he likes and loves—and that he lives and dies without knowing why.

These fatalistic ideas, reflecting the lassitude of the intellectual aristocracy of Europe, have been wonderfully translated into music by Debussy; and when you feel the poetic and sensual charm of the music, the ideas become fascinating and intoxicating, and their spirit is very infectious. For there is in all music an hypnotic power which is able to reduce the mind to a state of voluptuous submission.

The cause of the artistic success of Pelléas et Mélisande is of a more specially French character, and marks a reaction that is at once legitimate, natural, and inevitable; I would even say it is vital—a reaction of French genius against foreign art, and especially against Wagnerian art and its awkward representatives in France.

Is the Wagnerian drama perfectly adapted to German genius? I do not think so; but that is a question which I will leave German musicians to decide. For ourselves, we have the right to assert that the form of Wagnerian drama is antipathetic to the spirit of French people—to their artistic taste, to their ideas about the theatre, and to their musical feeling. This form may have forced itself upon us, and, by the right of victorious genius, may have strongly influenced the French mind, and may do so again; but nothing will ever make it anything but a stranger in our land.

It is not necessary to dwell upon the differences of taste. The Wagnerian ideal is, before everything else, an ideal of power. Wagner's passional and intellectual exaltation and his mystic sensualism are poured out like a fiery torrent, which sweeps away and burns all before it, taking no heed of barriers. Such an art cannot be bound by ordinary rules; it has no need to fear bad taste—and I commend it. But it is easy to understand that other ideals exist, and that another art might be as expressive by its proprieties and niceties as by its richness and force. And this former art—our own—is not so much a reaction against Wagnerian art as a reaction against its caricatures in France and the consequent abuse of an ill-regulated power.

Genius has a right to be what it will—to trample underfoot, if it wishes, taste and morals and the whole of society. But when those who are not geniuses wish to do the same thing they only make themselves ridiculous and odious. There have been too many monkey Wagners in France. During the last ten or twenty years scarcely one French musician has escaped Wagner's influence. One understands only too well the revolt of the French mind, in the name of naturalness and good taste, against exaggerations and extremes of passion, whether sincere or not. Pelléas et Mélisande came as a manifestation of this revolt. It is an uncompromising reaction against over-emphasis and excess, and against anything that oversteps the limits of the imagination. This distaste of exaggerated words and sentiments results in what is like a fear of showing the feelings at all, even when they are most deeply stirred. With Debussy the passions almost whisper; and it is by the imperceptible vibrations of the melodic line that the love in the hearts of the unhappy couple is shown, by the timid "Oh, why are you going?" at the end of the first act, and the quiet "I love you, too," in the last scene but one. Think of the wild lamentations of the dying Ysolde, and then of the death of Mélisande, without cries and without words.

From a scenic point of view, Pelléas et Mélisande is also quite opposed to the Bayreuth ideal. The vast proportions—almost immoderate proportions—of the Wagnerian drama, its compact structure and the intense concentration of mind which from beginning to end holds these enormous works and their ideology together, and which is often displayed at the expense of the action and even the emotions, are as far removed as they can be from the French love of clear, logical, and temperate action. The little pictures of Pelléas et Mélisande, small and sharply cut, each marking without stress a new stage in the evolution of the drama, are built up in quite a different way from those of the Wagnerian theatre.

And, as if he wished to accentuate this antagonism, the author of Pelléas et Mélisande is now writing a Tristan, whose plot is taken from an old French poem, the text of which has been recently brought to light by M. Bédier. In its calm and lofty strain it is a wonderful contrast to Wagner's savage and pedantic, though sublime poem.

But it is especially by the manner in which they conceive the respective relationships of poetry and music to opera that the two composers differ. With Wagner, music is the kernel of the opera, the glowing focus, the centre of attraction; it absorbs everything, and it stands absolutely first. But that is not the French conception. The musical stage, as we conceive it in France (if not what we actually possess), should present such a combination of the arts as go to make an harmonious whole. We demand that an equal balance shall be kept between poetry and music; and if their equilibrium must be a little upset, we should prefer that poetry was not the loser, as its utterance is more conscious and rational. That was Gluck's aim; and because he realised it so well he gained a reputation among the French public which nothing will destroy. Debussy's strength lies in the methods by which he has approached this ideal of musical temperateness and disinterestedness, and in the way he has placed his genius as a composer at the service of the drama. He has never sought to dominate Maeterlinck's poem, or to swallow it up in a torrent of music; he has made it so much a part of himself that at the present time no Frenchman is able to think of a passage in the play without Debussy's music singing at the same time within him.

But apart from all these reasons that make the work important in the history of opera, there are purely musical reasons for its success, which are of deeper significance still.[200] Pelléas et Mélisande has brought about a reform in the dramatic music of France. This reform is concerned with several things, and, first of all, with recitative.