Music: An Art and a Language - Walter Raymond Spalding

and he has gone far beyond anything known before in a subtle use of the extreme dissonant elements, his sensitive imagination evidently hearing sounds hitherto unrealized. This surmise is corroborated by Debussy's own statement that, while serving as a young man on garrison duty, he took great delight in listening to the overtones of bugles and of the bells from a nearby convent. This chromatic style had been anticipated by Chopin whose use of the harmonic series in those prismatic, spray-like groups of superadded tones is such a striking feature in his pianoforte works. There is, therefore, nothing outré or bizarre in Debussy's idiom; it is but a logical continuation of former tendencies. His works show great variety and comprise pianoforte pieces, many songs, a remarkable string quartet, some daringly original tone-poems for full orchestra, several cantatas, and—most unique of all—his opera of Pelléas et Mélisande, based on the well-known play by Maeterlinck. A few comments may profitably be made on each of these types. With few exceptions all his pianoforte pieces have suggestive titles, e.g., Reflets dans l'eau, Jardins sous la pluie, La soirée dans Grenade, Poissons d'or, Voiles, Le vent dans la plaine, Bruyères. They are mood-pictures in which the composer has tried to imprison certain elusive states of mind—or the impressions made on his susceptible imagination by the phenomena of Nature: the subtly blended hues of a sunset, the changing rhythm of drifting clouds, the indefinite murmur of the sea, the dripping of rain. For Debussy, like Beethoven before him, is a passionate lover of Nature. To quote his own words, he finds his great object lessons of artistic liberty in "the unfolding of the leaves in Spring, in the wavering winds and changing clouds." Again, "It benefits me more to watch a sunrise than to listen to a symphony. Go not to others for advice, but take counsel from the passing breezes, which relate the history of the world to those who listen." Thus we see that Debussy submits himself to the spells of Nature and tries to transmute them into sound. The only analogies to use in a verbal description of his music must be drawn from nature, for in each are the same shadowy pictures, the same melting outlines.[295] Debussy has a close affinity with that school of painters known as impressionists or symbolists—Manet, Monet, Dégas, Whistler—and is doing with novel combinations of sound, with delicate effects of light and shade, what they have done for modern freedom in color. His music has been called a "sonorous impressionism." It might equally well be phrased "rhythmic sound." To those conservatives who find it difficult to think in terms of musical color, and wish their imagination rather than that of genius to be the standard, the retort of the artist Whistler is applicable: To a lady who viewing one of his sunsets remarked, "But, Mr. Whistler, I have never seen a sunset like that" came the reply "Yes, Madam, but don't you wish you had?" In his songs Debussy has been most fastidious as to choice of texts, his favorite poets being Verlaine, Baudelaire and Mallarmé, called "symbolists," since the aim of their art is to resemble music and to leave for the reader a wide margin for symbolic interpretation. His songs throughout are imaginative and fanciful in the highest degree, and the instrumental part a beautiful background of color. Of Debussy's compositions for orchestra the one to win—and possibly to deserve—the most lasting popularity is L'après-midi d'un Faune, which is an extraordinary translation into music of the veiled visions and the shadowy beings of an eclogue of Mallarmé in which, as Edmund Gosse says, "Words are used in harmonious combinations merely to suggest moods or conditions, never to state them definitely."[296] By perfect rhythmic freedom, and by delicately-colored waves of sound Debussy has expressed in a manner most felicitous just the atmosphere of remoteness, and of primeval simplicity. By many this work is considered the most hypnotic composition in existence, and the writer trusts that his readers have heard a poetic interpretation of it by a fine orchestra. The salient features of Debussy's style are found in Pelléas et Mélisande—by far the most important operatic work since Wagner. Maeterlinck's play deals with legendary, mysterious, symbolic beings, and the entire subject-matter was admirably suited to Debussy's genius. As Maeterlinck says, "The theatre should be the reflex of life, not this external life of outward show, but the true inner life which is entirely one of contemplation." This opera is quite different from any previously written, in that the characters sing throughout in recitative now calm, now impassioned, but never in set, periodic arias. In fact, here we have at last a true musical speech, which is indeed another thing from music set to words. Debussy has defended this peculiar style in the following words: "Melody is, if I may say so, almost anti-lyric, and powerless to express the constant change of emotion or life. Melody is suitable only for the song (chanson), which confirms a fixed sentiment. I have never been willing that my music should hinder, through technical exigencies, the changes of sentiment and passion felt by my characters. It is effaced as soon as it is necessary that these should have perfect liberty in their gestures as in their cries, in their joy as in their sorrow."

Now that we may look forward to no more compositions from Debussy [297]—he died in March, 1918—it is certainly fitting to attempt a forecast as to the permanent worth of his achievements and his influence upon future development. Like all music his compositions may be judged from several points of view: the worth of the content, the perfection or inadequacy of style and the manner in which the media of presentation are used. To begin with the last characteristic—there is no doubt that Debussy has enlarged the resources of our two chief modern instruments, the pianoforte and the orchestra. By him the pianoforte is always treated according to its true nature, i.e., as an intimate, coloristic instrument and, in amplifying all its resources of tone-color, flexible rhythm and descriptive power he is the worthy successor of Chopin. In his orchestral compositions such as the Nocturnes (Clouds, Festivals and Sirens), the Sea Pieces and Images, of which the Rondes de Printemps and Ibéria are the most significant, there is a union of warmth and delicacy as individual as it is rare. Ibéria, in fact, for vitality of imagination and flawless workmanship may be considered the acme of Debussy's orchestral style. The great resources of the modern orchestra are often abused. Compositions are rich and gorgeous but at the same time inflated, turgid and bombastic. Certain works of Richard Strauss and Mahler are examples in point. Debussy's treatment, however, of the varied modern orchestra is remarkable for its economy. The melodic lines stand out clearly, there is always a rich supporting background and we are convinced that everything sounds just as the composer meant. As to the structure and style of his music, these are more subtle matters to estimate. We may acknowledge at once that Debussy's style is free and individual, for he has written his music his own way, with slight regard for academic models. But a thorough examination of his works shows no evidence of carelessness or uncertainty of aim. There is, to be sure, nothing of that routine development of musical material which we associate with classic practice—instead a free, imaginative growth. But there is always a definite structural foundation to support the freedom of expression. This coherence is sometimes gained by a single dominating note about which everything is grouped, as, in the Soirée dans Grenade, the C-sharp and in the Reflets dans l'eau, an F. Most of Debussy's compositions imply the principles, albeit freely used, of Two- and Three-part form and the fundamental laws of key-relationship and of artistic contrast.

In considering the value of Debussy's message, i.e., the content of his music, the animus and predilection of the hearer have to be taken into account. For his music is so intensely subjective and intimate that you like it or not, as the case may be. Many persons, however, become very fond of it, when they have accustomed themselves to its peculiar idiom. The charge that there is in Debussy no melody of a purely musical nature, as some critics have asserted,[298] seems to the writer too sweeping and not supported by the inner evidence. It may be granted that Debussy's melodic line is very fluid and elastic, like Wagner's "continuous melody," not definitely sectionalized by balanced phrases or set cadences. But it surely has its own right to existence—music being pre-eminently the art of freedom—and let us remember that Nature herself has melting outlines, shadowy vistas and subtle rhythms. Debussy, in fact, is the poet of the "indefinite" and the "suggestive" and his music has had a great influence in freeing expression from scholastic bonds. Even from the standpoint of the popular conception of "tune" it is difficult to see what objection can be made to the following melodies: