I
In a previous chapter we have mentioned the work of a generation of French song writers who represent the old and conservative school. In the present chapter we are concerned solely with the new and much more admirable French school of lyricism. But the distinction between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ generations is not, of course, a distinction of time. Some of the old generation are now living and writing in the second decade of the twentieth century, while some of the originators of the new had begun their innovations as far back as the late seventies. This overlapping of individuals is inevitable where one school supplants another. For that reason we are here dealing with composers who, judged solely by dates, should have been treated as belonging to the last third of the nineteenth century.
It is well to keep in mind this overlapping. It will help us to see how fashions change in the world of art. The whole story of the transition from the old to the new in French music is of extraordinary interest. The change seemed to come at a bound, with Debussy’s first tone poems and piano pieces. But as a matter of fact no great change comes about in this way. It germinates and nourishes itself for a long time unseen before it is ready to strike out as an independent force.
Scandinavian and French Song-Writers.
Top: Emil Sjögren and Christian Sinding
Bottom: Gabriel Pierné and Gabriel Fauré
The change is gradual, usually not more than half conscious. It would hardly be wrong to say that the whole change, up to a certain point, is accidental. But it is often difficult to study such a transition in its early stages. And the peculiar interest of Fauré’s songs consists in the fact that they enable us to study the whole preliminary transition from the old to the new in French music, in simple terms and in steady development. Fauré was in a sense the laboratory for the new French impressionistic school. His experiments suggested dimly what could be done. His groping achievements showed how one might set about to do it. In his songs, from the earliest to the latest we see in successive stages of development the harmonic procedure of the new school.
What was this change? What distinguished the old school from the new? It is worth while to answer this question briefly before touching Fauré’s work in order to have some touchstone to hold up to the songs when we come to look at them. In general terms the change from the old to the new in French music was a change from the conscious, the deliberate, the intelligent to the subconscious, the subjective, the sensuous. The older composers sought always to appeal in some degree to the hearer’s judgment, to please his sense of design, to speak with chastened clearness. We have often, in the course of this book, had occasion to mention the coldness and conventionality of the French music of the nineteenth century. Now the newer composers reacted against all this and set out to change it. In place of judgment they would have feeling; in place of the brain they would have the nerves. What matter about the sense of design if the effect was beautiful? What matter whether or not you adjudge it to be good, so long as you feel it to be good? In the new French music the intelligence can usually go to sleep. Intelligence is in the music (or rather it was in the making of the music) but it keeps out of sight. All the hearer needs is to surrender himself to the sensations. He needs delicate ears and responsive nerves. If he has these he will get poetry and pictures out of the music in plenty. In other words, it is our old conflict between knowledge and experience, between judging and feeling, between the brain and the senses.
Considered concretely, the change from the old to the new was a change which broke down completely all the old rules of musical harmony. The old harmony is represented at its purest in the chorales of Johann Sebastian Bach. It was a system of harmony based on pure (triad) chords, with dissonances properly prepared and resolved. In the old harmony each chord was like a chiselled block of stone, sharply differentiated from every other; the stones must fit well together, but they must always be distinct. The new system of harmony was founded upon the dissonance used for the sake of its effect on the ear. Queer mixtures of dissonance were used freely to produce an unusual impression on the ear, an impression which soon took on the name ‘color.’ Chords were now merged and confused, instead of being kept distinct. Tonalities and musical ‘keys’ were now becoming meaningless in a system whose notes rarely agreed with any tonality. The whole effect was that of being in a world of pure sensation, a world that seemed to be without reason and was therefore the better adapted to being felt. Along with the tendency toward vagueness in harmony came a tendency toward vagueness in melody. Various notes of the ordinary major scale would be altered at the whim of the composer and the surprises resulting were a fruitful source of sensuous effects. This freedom in the use of scales tended toward the now famous ‘whole-toned’ scale—a thing popularly supposed to have been invented by Wagner, but used, in reality, in the early days of Wagner by the Russian Dargomijsky. The whole-toned scale makes every interval a whole step, thus robbing the scale of all internal variety and of any tonic or central ‘pivotal’ point. This would seem to rob the scale of its possibilities for color. But curiously enough, it actually increased them. For as long as the scale is strange, our ears will inevitably compare it with the scale with which we are familiar. The result is a constant succession of surprises to our ears and senses—in short an increase in the sensuous element. The newer school also uses the chromatic element to a great extent. In this it was only continuing the work of Wagner in his ‘Tristan.’ But there was this difference: that whereas in Wagner’s procedure the chromatic element was chiefly in the movement of the individual voices, the chords being constituted much as before, in the new French school both the voice leading and the chord building make free use of the semitone. To sum up, the new tendency is characterized concretely by vagueness of chord and of scale (with a continual tendency toward the whole-toned scale); by a free use of unprepared dissonance chosen chiefly for its sensuous effect; and by its constant effort to rid itself of the domination of a set key.
Gabriel Fauré (born 1845) started exactly on a par with the other French song writers of the seventies. His melody was tenuous and colorless; his harmony was thin and regular. Very gradually and very steadily he developed his colorful and unconventional harmony and a type of melody which, without being declamatory, was irregular and intimately fused with the accompaniment. Besides this cautious radical development, Fauré had a fairly generous fund of musical ideas and a sense of form and design superior to that of most of his contemporaries. It is doubtful if any one of his songs could be called first-class in absolute musical value. But his general standard was unusually high and steady. In nearly every case his songs are finished works of art. His faculty of self-criticism was keen and his attitude toward his art sincere. Though never a man of power, he possessed a lively intelligence which served to make him one of the most important figures in the French musical transition. He was not a pioneer in the more strenuous sense of the word. But he was truly a forerunner.
His earliest songs show little that is distinctive beyond a sensitive feeling for design and proportion. The best of them are ‘May,’ ‘In the Ruins of an Abbey,’ and ‘Alone.’ In the ‘Tuscan Serenade’ we catch perhaps the first definite note of a change. It is a very slight indication, but it is truly a foreshadowing of the development which was destined to be shown in his songs and in all modern French music. The indication we are referring to is in the following phrase: