None of the French composers has written more for the pianoforte than Gabriel Fauré. In his music, too, there is a strong element of tradition, though as a harmonist he is perhaps more spontaneously original than d’Indy. He prefers to work in short forms, and he avoids titles of detailed significance. He has written eleven Barcarolles, ten or more Nocturnes, nearly as many Impromptus, a set of eight Preludes, published as opus 103, and a few pieces of nondescript character including dances and romances. The impression made by a glance over the pages of this considerable amount of music is one of great sameness. Fauré’s style is delicate and well adjusted to the keyboard but there is little to observe in it that is strikingly original. Nor do the pieces give proof of much development in technique or in means of expression. There is little trace of the exquisite impressionism of the songs. The pianoforte music is hardly more than pleasing, and is only rarely brilliant.
The well-known second impromptu, in F minor, is perhaps the most interesting and the most original of all his pianoforte pieces. Here is genuine vivacity, piquancy of style, originality of harmony. But the other impromptus and the nocturnes have, in spite of certain modern touches of harmony, a style that is now Mendelssohn, now Schumann. The eleven Barcarolles rock gently over the keyboard, the Valses caprices dance lightly along. All is facile and pleasing salon music, one piece much like the others. The Theme and Variations, opus 73, is interesting and is well known at the Conservatoire, and the second of the preludes, opus 103, is decidedly effective. The fourth Nocturne is full of poetry. In fact there is poetry in much of his music, but it is on the whole too much in the same vein.
Finally, after mentioning Pierné, for the sake of a set of short pieces in delicate style, Pour mes petits amis, and Emanuel Chabrier for the sake of the Bourrée fantastique, we come to the two men whose work for the piano has enchanted the world: Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. So far as the pianoforte is concerned, theirs is the music which has created a new epoch since the time of Liszt and Chopin, which has signalized the leadership of France in the art of music.
V
For a discussion of the general musical art of Debussy the reader is referred to the third volume of this series. His system of harmony and scales has there been explained. Here we will regard him as a composer for the pianoforte and attempt only a brief analysis of his pianoforte style and an appreciation of a few of his compositions. His pianoforte style has been no little influenced by his conception of harmony which admits chords of the seventh and ninth among the consonances. The pianoforte being essentially a harmonic instrument, composers have spent a great part of their skill in devising rapidly moving figures which would keep its harmonies in vibration. Such harmonies have either constituted a music in themselves, or have furnished a vibrant background behind a melody or an interweaving of several melodies. The shape of the figures has been determined by harmony and the figures have been blended into a general effect by the use of the pedal. One of the most prominent characteristics of Chopin’s style was the intrinsically melodious conformation of many of such figures. Hence there is a suggestion of polyphony in his music; and hence, too, the pedalling of his music must be most delicately and skillfully done.
With Liszt, on the other hand, such figures rarely had this melodious significance. They were founded rather flatly on the notes of chords or on the scale. Hence a mass of notes with little or no individuality. Such we shall find many of Debussy’s figures to be, and it is indeed easy to say that there would have been no Debussy had there been no Liszt. Not only this density, which in the case of Debussy may be more properly called opaqueness, of figures; but also the free use of the arms over the keyboard point to a relation of the style of the one to that of the other. But Debussy’s style is in two features at least sharply differentiated from that of Liszt.
The first of these is owing to his different conception of harmony. Liszt’s harmonies are clearly defined, Debussy’s, by contrast, vague. There are few instances of harmonies in Liszt’s music which are not related to a tonic scale; Debussy’s whole-tone scale has destroyed the relation of major and minor keys, even their definitions. With Liszt the various degrees of the scale suggest their proper harmonies; and as his melody or his bass moves from one to the other of them, the harmonies must change to follow it. The harmonic figures must be constantly moved here and there. Sometimes, as in the first phrase of the Waldesrauschen, they do not change to follow the melody, it is true; but in such a case the melody is so conceived as really to accentuate the notes of the chord on which the accompaniment figure plays. But with Debussy the progress of the melody entails no such change of harmony, or at least no such frequent change. Even if he chooses to conceive a passage as in a clearly defined key, his fondness for the chord of the ninth plays him in good stead. He can keep a ninth chord running up and down the keyboard and still enjoy the proper use of five notes of the scale in melody. And in the case where he is using the whole-tone scale and has consequently thrown his music out of all relation to the traditional system of keys, he is even more free. Therefore, the fingers, not having to find a new position every measure or so, or even twice in a measure, are let free, without hindrance, over a wide range of the keyboard. Furthermore, since having once struck the desired notes within this range the use of the pedal will sustain the vibration a long time, they have not to repeat them over and over again with the distinctness necessary to establish a new harmony, but touch them lightly, or graze them unevenly. With the result that the sparkle which even in the dense runs of Liszt was created by the more or less distinct sound of indispensable notes, is veiled, and the general effect is one of fluid color.
A second feature which distinguishes the style of Debussy from that of Liszt is the relative absence in it of the sensationalism of speed. The sort of run we have been discussing, which may be studied in the Reflets dans l’eau, or in Pagodes, is as rapid as Liszt’s runs. But the monotony of it, the lack of change and therefore of emphasized points, reduces the effect of speed. For speed is chiefly appreciable between definite points. In fact the background of Debussy’s music may be compared to mist, while that of Liszt’s is, we might say, more like a curtain of chain mail.
The effect of this prolongation of harmonies by means of the pedal, lightly aided by the fingers, and of this lack of sharp contours is to take from a great part of his music a certain hard substantiality. In other words, recalling what we said of the qualities of sound in the pianoforte in the chapter on Chopin, the sonority of his music is one of after-sounds. Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, more than any composers before them, have consciously made use of this peculiar quality of the pianoforte.
It is not only their treatment of runs which makes it audible, nor do they depend only upon the after-sounds of notes which have been struck. Holding the dampers off the strings for relatively long spaces allows an almost distinct vibration of overtones or of sympathetic tones to enter into the mass of sound. Both Debussy and Ravel count upon this. The notes they write upon the page are but the starting point of their effects. It is what floats up and away from them that constitutes the background of their music. One finds in the later pieces of Debussy not the old-fashioned indication of the pedal, but such directions as quittez, en laissant vibrer, or laissez vibrer (let the vibrations continue), which must be intended to attract the ear to after-sounds. He has even invented a notation of such un-substantial sound. Here is an example, from Les collines d’Anacapri: