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.