III
At the present time it is difficult to regard Alfred Bruneau (born 1857) as a pioneer. His style is extremely thin and his melody seems at first glance to be cut from the same piece as Massenet’s. But it is as an innovator that Bruneau is chiefly valued in France. In the early nineties, when Debussy was still an unknown experimenter (a ‘crazy man,’ like all radical innovators in their early years), he was thrilling Paris with his strange, new expressive harmonies, accurately delineating moods and suggesting colors. His operas, to librettos or adaptations from Zola, were a new thing in France. He experimented largely with unconventional harmonies and phrases for the voice which fell into no known category. Paris was at first puzzled, but quickly caught the idea. This was because, while Bruneau’s music was truly an innovation and absolutely in line with the work of the new French school, it was based on an idiom that France knew well and was managed so cautiously that the novelties were clear to the audience without being painful. By this time Bruneau seems little more than a composer of a past generation. Yet we must give him full credit for courage, for artistic feeling, and for considerable musical creativeness. His songs are not many. The Lieds de France (words by Catulle Mendès) are simple lyrics somewhat in the older traditional style of French songs, executed with a wealth of the most delicate suggestion of color. ‘The Gay Vagabond’ is in Bruneau’s most typical style—a clear-cut and flowing melody over the simplest of chords, with the unusual features so discreetly written that at first hearing they hardly seem to be there at all.
Paul Vidal (born 1863) is only by courtesy included in the present chapter. He has escaped the curse of the old French school but his talent lies not at all in the field of innovation. He is a born lyricist, spontaneous, fresh, graceful. He is master of more than one style, as his settings of Shakespeare’s lyrics prove. The ‘Winter Song,’ from ‘Love’s Labor Lost,’ preserves a certain archaic flavor that is charming. The Psaume nuptial is grandiose but not pompous, an invigorating piece of honest music. In the children’s song, ‘The Play Leader,’ Vidal attempts the descriptive, with a liberal use of dissonance and modern harmony, but it is evident that he has no natural turn toward the new style. Yet the song is dainty and picturesque. The Ariette ‘Were I a Sunbeam’ and the ‘Address to the Well Beloved,’ as well as a more recent song, ‘Loving,’ are well worth knowing for their simple musicianly beauty, and Madame la fée is a model of delicate lyricism. In his more ambitious mood Vidal is represented by ‘Thine Eyes.’ But he is a composer to whom we turn not for stimulation in technical matters, but for simple beauty. His songs are in that class which can hardly enter into a history at all, but are delightful byways to turn to for mere pleasure.
Gustave Charpentier (born 1860), composer of the world-famous opera ‘Louise,’ has written a handful of songs, some of superior quality. The Chansons à danser are written in imitation of the old French dances, the spirit and the form being caught with keen insight. The best of the group is the ‘Sarabande.’ In the Fleurs du mal he is working in more familiar vein—that spirit of intense and somewhat chaotic emotionalism that distinguishes his operas. When we list the fifteen Poèmes chantés we have named all his songs. Charpentier’s style is modern and genuinely French, but it is sharply distinguished from that of Debussy and Ravel. It is a development of that of Massenet (whose pupil Charpentier was), but it is developed an immense distance beyond ‘Thaïs.’ It contains more of the flesh (and more of the open air) than Debussy ever shows. ‘Atmosphere’ for its own sake enters into his work not at all. Everything is expressive and nearly everything expressive of human emotions. The musical style is admirably adapted to the purpose, choosing from the modern French technique just those elements which it can use. It makes constant use of detached or irregular phrases of melody and these it interweaves in great abundance into the harmonic texture. Charpentier strikes an admirable middle path in modern French music, being neither too intellectual, like d’lndy, nor too technical, like Ravel.
IV
Concerning Claude Debussy (born 1862) the world is not yet decided. At one time he seemed the supreme innovator and the master tone-poet of modern times. Nothing so utterly new had ever come to people’s ears since ‘Tristan,’ or probably since the later symphonies of Beethoven. He was for a number of years the chief spokesman for the ultra-modern to the whole world. For fully ten years he worked away, striving for the vision he had before him, until recognition finally came. From this very fact we may assume that he is an entirely sincere artist and not a charlatan as he was once considered. And, because he could work so consistently in his own style, he seemed to the world supremely creative. Possibly sober opinion has modified somewhat the opinion of ten years ago, when Pelléas et Mélisande was a startling novelty. The technical power with which he presented an absolutely new case remains as admirable as ever. But opinion of the absolute musical value of his work is somewhat diminishing, now that we are accustomed to the idiom. In plain words, it is beginning to be understood that Debussy repeats himself more than do most great composers, certainly more than a composer of the first rank would do. Moreover, his music does not hold a place in people’s hearts. It is truly expressive of delicate moods (moods in which the nerves and senses are chiefly involved); but it does not express the things that are nearest to human beings. At bottom, the variety possible to Debussy’s style is slight. He has painted many pictures, bearing many different titles, but all are mere rearrangements of the same figures and setting.
We find, to a greater extent than with most composers, that his whole art is fairly represented in his songs. They are numerous. And they are of a very high order of musicianship. It is evident Debussy put the best he had into these songs. They are luxuriant with the finest inventions of his remarkable technique. Not one is carelessly executed. Not one but is in some degree truly creative. Whether simple or abstruse, they make no concessions to popular effect. Some are valuable chiefly in their parts; as a whole they are not firmly bound. But others are admirable in design and proportion. In most of them the accompaniment is so luxuriant that set form goes by the board; the song consists of its various parts. But in the accumulation of these various sensuous effects we get a new kind of unity. It is the unity of the impressionist painters—a synthesis performed in the observer or listener instead of being performed in the work itself. To speak concretely, the various parts reveal sometimes little to connect them with each other; they seem little amenable to any formal scheme. But when the listener simply listens, without trying to apply mental standards, he finds that he has lived through a single and definite experience.
It is hard to speak in detail of Debussy’s songs. They present so many individual elements of interest that, if they are to be studied at all, they must be studied in the concrete. Any attempt to describe or characterize them at a distance must be vague and colorless. We can only point out a few of the songs that stand out from the others by reason of great technical originality or impressionistic power. Debussy gained the grand Prix de Rome in 1884 and spent the next three years in Italy. His prize cantata, ‘The Prodigal Son,’ shows evidences of the impressionistic style, but, being offered to please a conservative committee, was kept in reserve. But Debussy knew what he wanted to do and promptly sent back from the Villa Medici a work which the committee could not accept because of its daring style. Even then he was approaching maturity in the manner which made him famous. The first of the well known songs were published in 1890 and were probably written in the course of the five years just preceding. They are not so involved as the later songs, but they cannot be called experimental works. The Mandoline, a masterly little genre song, has attained great popularity, and ‘The Fountain’ shows the composer working on a most elaborate scale with a fully developed technical method. We should also mention in this place the famous aria, ‘Azaël,’ from ‘The Prodigal Son.’ The most strongly creative of Debussy’s works (exclusive of the opera) seem to centre around the year 1904. And here we find some of the best songs. We may instance the five fine ‘Poems’ from Baudelaire. In these Debussy is putting forth his very best. The Harmonies du soir may be taken as an epitome of his whole harmonic method. ‘The Balcony’ is very long and rich in descriptive imagination. The Jet d’eau and ‘The Death of Lovers’ should also be mentioned from this group. ‘The Faun’ and ‘The Grotto,’ from the same period, show Debussy at his best. The former in particular reveals him admirably as a painter of pictures in tones. Among the fairly simple songs (always the best for the student who is approaching a new style) we may mention Beau soir and the Romance. The Proses lyriques are very ambitious, very long, and very difficult. Even the most capable singer will find it hard to hold them unified when they are sung. The voice part is free, not exactly declamatory, but fragmentary and merged with the symphonic comment which is the accompaniment. Of the four Les Fleurs is perhaps the best, while the last, Le soir, is the simplest and the most approachable. The Chansons de Bilitis are more emotional and not so good. But the three ‘Ballads of François Villon,’ published in 1910, are masterpieces. The Prayer to the Virgin Mary is admirably pathetic, and the third, ‘The Ladies of Paris,’ shows Debussy in his sprightly vein, which he manages with capital humor and verve. The Fêtes galantes (words by Verlaine) include two very typical songs, En Sourdine and Clair de lune; the second extremely successful in the creating of ‘atmosphere’ and the first unusually appealing in melody. Finally we may mention the Ariettes oubliées, published in 1913, which include one admirable song, the ‘Belgian Landscape,’ which is clear and picturesque.
Maurice Ravel (born 1875) has a more vital talent than Debussy. Though the idiom he uses is remarkably similar, he manipulates it with greater incisiveness of effect and hence can make it expressive of emotion and physical energy to a greater extent. Where Debussy avoids the harsh and crude, Ravel often delights in it. Moreover, of late years, he has shown a marked change in his style (which cannot be said of Debussy). For, while the radical French music of the nineties was preëminently harmonic (insisting on the absolute effect of strange chords for its effect), Ravel has made his increasingly polyphonic. This he seems to have got from the Russian, Stravinsky. Undoubtedly this is a more vigorous method and especially one which is capable of a longer life and more variety of expression. And with it Ravel has accomplished fine things. The new French school, which with Debussy seemed in danger of degenerating into meticulous preciosity, will surely not see its energy exhausted at Ravel’s hands.
Perhaps most typical of Ravel’s songs, and admirably representative of his earlier technique, are the five descriptive songs grouped under the title Histoires naturelles. The animals here described with inimitable humor are respectively the peacock, the cricket, the swan, the king-fisher, and the guinea fowl. It is evident that these offer a wide variety of effect. In each case Ravel has seized the opportunity in masterly fashion. The accompaniment to ‘The Peacock’ fairly shimmers with gorgeous coloring. ‘The Cricket’ is strident and mechanical, ‘The Swan’ slow and sensuous, and so on. Perhaps the student may not find such subjects proper for song treatment. But if descriptive music is admitted at all in song writing, one must admit the fine and supple technique displayed in these extraordinarily successful songs. The group entitled ‘Scheherezade’ is no less masterful in its description of scenery and moods. The first, called ‘Asia,’ is unbelievably rich in this respect. Finally we may mention the three poems from Mallarmé, published in 1914. These are the most elaborate and difficult, the most remote from conventional expression of anything Ravel has done. They are more solid and stimulating in their musicianship than anything he had done before. The irregular melodic line of Placet futile is luxuriant in the extreme. All three show a gain toward freedom in the management of the voice, a gain which means a great increase in absolute musical value for the voice part. He seems here even to be creating a new sort of melody, one which has few elements of formal regularity but is rich in sensuous loveliness. The accompaniments for these songs are elaborate in the extreme. What the ultimate artistic value of them will be can not be told until they have been generously tried out by experienced singers. But they certainly give the musician pause. They, along with certain recent orchestral works, prove that Ravel is a man of immense energy, of an artistic genius that cannot be curbed, altogether one of the important men in modern music.