Portrait of Debussy.

11: Debussy in Perspective

Edward Lockspeiser
The Musical Times, Vol. 109, No. 1508. (Oct., 1968), pp. 904-906.
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Debussy in Perspective

Portrait of Debussy-1 1

Edward Lockspeiser
This is the 1l t h and last article in our 'Portrait of
Debussy' series in which we have attempted to build
a composite portrait of Debussy the musician through
examination of the impressioiz he left on other composers. Previous articles were:
Debussy and Stravinsky (Jeremy Noble), Jan 1967, pp.22-5
Debussy and Bartok (Anthony Cross), Feb 1967, pp.125-31
Debussy and Schoenberg (Robert Henderson), March 1967,
pp.222-6
Debussy and Puccini (Mosco Carner), June 1967, pp.502-5
Debussy and English Music (Peter J. Pirie), July 1967,
pp.599-601
Debussy and French Music (Rollo Myers). Oct 1967,
pp.899-901
Debussy and Koechlin miall O'Loughlin), Nov 1967,
pp.993-6
Debussy and Messiaen (Roger Smalley), Feb 1968, pp.
179.21

~ e b ; u s & and Italian Music (John C . G. Waterhouse),

May 1968, pp.414-8
Debussy and Boulez (G. W. Hopkins), Aug 1968, pp.710-4

Debussy died 50 years ago, and his changing impact

on the musical mind during this period can very well
be assessed under three interrelated headings. So
much one gathers from earlier studies in this series
where, of course, these successive phases of
Debussy's influence appear quite naturally to merge
into each other. Nevertheless, it is easy to discern in
certain of these essays (particularly those showing
the connections with Schoenberg and with the
Italian musicians) the original profile that emerged
of Debussy in the European scene, that is to say a
nationalist figure, a Frenchman recovering the
native qualities in music of order, distinction,
elegance, and accuracy of perception.
Immediately, in this national conception, one is
thrown back to the cross currents of a 'Musical
United States', as Romain Rolland saw the European musical world of his time, to that characteristic
approach of the 1920s when Edward Dent took upon
himself the delicate role of offsetting the Latin and
the Teutonic elements in the new spirit that was
breaking through.
'Across everyone's musical
territory there flows a River Rhine', declared
Busoni. How remote are these national distinctions
in our age of the mechanical diffusion of music! It
is almost as if one were supporting a rival claim for
the supremacy of the French or the Italian styles in
the 18th century, or taking sides in the conflicts of
the Guerre des Boufons. Yet it was as a composer reacting against the Wagnerian domination
that Debussy was presented in England by his early
critics, Edwin Evans and Jean-Aubry.
Today this view has long been transcended. When
the history of the nationalist movements in music up
to the close of World War I comes to be written, we
shall be able to assess quite dispassionately Debussy's
stature in the freedom-loving Europe of his time. In
the meantime, referring to Debussy's reputation in
Italy, Mr Waterhouse draws attention to the fierce
xenophobic prejudices of Italian musicians, persisting until the 1930s. Mr Henderson, similarly,
quotes an extraordinary statement of Schoenberg:

'Much of the harmony used by [Debussy] was discovered independently in Germany'. Perhaps it was,
but the limitations of a restricted nationalist outlook
made it impossible to perceive the significance of
Debussy's innovations. Hence also the amazing
view of Schnabel that Debussy was merely a sophisticated Chaminade. One cannot of course expect
critics to concur on value judgments; they would
not be critics if they did. In all assessments of this
kind, however, the publications of the Cahiers
Romain Rolland, consisting chiefly of Rolland's
correspondence, will be invaluable. Covering the
whole field of European music from Saint-Saens to
Strauss, Debussy, Mahler, and Stravinsky, these
publications also branch out into adjacent social and
psychological spheres. Material is thus offered for
a study of the vast hinterland of Debussy's w0rk.l
Equally important is the manner in which a n
artist's unconscious mind determines the elements of
his style and his technique. This brings us to our
second consideration, the functions and methods of
musical analysis. Quotations in earlier studies in this
series from Debussy's work reveal his technical connections with Puccini, Bartok and others. On the
other hand, attempts, in other publications, t o disclose the secrets of Debussy's art by means of
analysis based on conventional notions of harmony
are not always successful; they are likely to be confined to problems of nomenclature. Are the fundamentals of a chord in French music of the period of
Debussy transferred to one of the middle voices in
order to allow greater harmonic freedom, as Jacques
Chailley suggests,' or are they simple chord inversions? The first view is poetically more appealing;
the second is nearer the truth. Is the dissonant
major 2nd in certain chords from Pellias 'a bee in the
flower', as Messiaen suggest^,^ or is the dissonance
caused merely by an upper pedal point?
Ambiguities and speculations of this kind abound
in analyses of Debussy's musical language, and they
are likely to persist until we come to terms, possibly
by the use of a scientific method, with Debussy's
essentially physical notions of harmony. Cezanne
said of Monet, whose art had been reduced to a n
accurate rendering of optical sensations, that 'he is
nothing but an eye'. Of Debussy it may be said, in
the same superior sense, that he is nothing but an
ear. This comes near to a purely realistic approach.
Indeed we have evidence of Debussy's awareness of
'Debussy is frequently mentioned in Rolland's correspondence,
particularly in the volume, translated into English in 1968,
devoted to Richard Strauss. Another important source 1s the
Journal de. AnnPes rle guerre (Paris 1952) giving details of the
activities of Debussy and ~travlnsk;. Rolland's correspondence
with Debussy still awaits publication. The latest issue of the
Cahiers, vol 17, includes Rolland's correspondence with SaintSaEns and also with Freud.
2'Berlioz'. special number of La Revue musicale (1956), ccxxxiii,
1956

8Technique de mon langcrge n?usical(1944), i, 40-1 ; the passage in

question is ex 4 in 'Debussy and Messlaen' (Smalley), Feb p.128

this approach in his statement: 'Music has hitherto

been established on a false principle. There has been
too much concern with writing; music has been
written for the paper when in fact it is conceived for
the ears.'
Ultimately it was the new approach to the art of
hearing that is likely to give us the key t o Debussy's
musical sensibility.Wusicians and scientists were in
some strange way conscious of the fact, in the 1890s,
that we cannot trust our ears. As Sir James Jeans
says in Science and Music, 'All the art, all the mannerisms [in the performance of a symphony] are
embodied in one single curve'. And he adds: 'The
curve is the symphony', that is to say the symphony
is not the score, nor even the performance, but the
sound curve as it is received by the ear. This is
entirely pertinent to the Impressionist musical
aesthetic. Recent research, based on the theories of
the physicists Helmholtz and Charles Henry,j who
investigated the sensations of tone and light and who
exerted a wide influence on theorists of music and
painting, show that the ear. like the eye, is an incomplete receptive instrument. The artists, like the
scientists, were however explorers in sound and
light: they wanted to discover afresh the distinctions
between consonance and dissonance, or the relative
values of colour. This brings the whole Impressionist
movement into a sharper focus. Earlier ideas of
Impressionism as a veiled or an obscure art, dreamlike in character, are now, in view of our concern
with the phenomenon of sound in contemporary
music, replaced by a more scientific conception.
'Impressionism', says the art historian Rent. Huyghe
of Monet's Sunrise, 'perceiving light instead of
forms, sees reality as a flow of energy, thus anticipating modern ~ c i e n c e .In
~ the musical sphere Impressionism similarly perceives sound instead of forms.
Ultimately, therefore, we have illustrations of this
principle by means of electronic music and other
purely sound-producing devices.
Pleas are frequently made in Debussy's writings
for an understanding of his music according to a
scheme of sensations. His notices for La Revue
blanche, later reproduced in M Croche, are themselves 'impressions', as he emphasizes, and his use of
this term in his weekly articles demonstrates his
affinities with the aesthetic and the scientific writers
of his time, includingthechallengingfigureof Charles
Henry.' Debussy, moreover, is merciless in his condemnation of any kind of functional approach to
musical analysis. 'People forget that as children they

given here of the theories of Helmholtz and Riemann, and of a

pioneer in musical psychology, Carl Stumpf.

Tharles Henry (1859-1926) was an Alsatian scientist who was a

researcher in mathematics and physics and also in the theory

and aesthetics of music and painting. In 1894-5 he wrote a

~e

series of articles. 'L'Esthetique des forrnes' for La R e ~ i blanche

to which Debussy later contributed as a critic. Henry's musical
studies. including commentaries on the technique of Debussy
together with papers on musical aesthetics and on the new
sonorities of the orchestra, are ciiscussed in L'Oeu1,re p s ~ c h o biophjsiqire de Charley Henry by F . Warrain (Paris. 1931). The
connecuons between the theoretical works of Henry and the
Ideas of Debussy may be traced in Srurar and thr Science o f
Painting by H. I. Homer (Cambridge. Mass, 1964).
eArt and thr Spirit of Man (London. 1962).

'see A. B. Jackson. La Revue blnn(.hr: Origine, Itifiilen<e,

Bibliograpilie (Paris. 1960), p.34

were forbidden t o wrench out the bellies of their

dolls. Now they take them to pieces, explain, and in
cold blood kill all sense of m y ~ t e r y . ' In
~ 1913 there
appeared an analysis of modem harmony by thecornposer and critic Rene Lenormand entitled Etude sur
I'harmonie moderne. Debussy wrote to Lenormand
before its publication on July 25, 1912:
All this is precise and is based on a n unrelenting
sense of logic. You have certainly created the
rather ironic impression that all these researches,
all these effects of colour plunge us ultimately
into a state of anxiety from which we emerge, but
with an obsessive question-mark driven into the
brain like a nail. Whether you wished this to be
so or not, your study turns out to be a most
powerful attack on modem harmony. Your
quotations, torn from their context, leave the
impression of something fierce, since there
remains nothing to justify their particular
sonority.
A preoccupation with harmony based on 4ths
instead of on 3rds (notably in the study Pour les
quartes), and revealing a n affinity with the methods
of Schoenberg and Bartbk, and also a motivic
process of development, as in Feux d'artifice, foreshadowing Boulez's first Sonata, show that Debussy
was concerned with technical problems similar t o
those of other composers of his time. O n the other
hand, composers are notoriously critical of musical
anatomists, and what Debussy was obviously concerned with in his censure of Lenormand was analysis on the lines of Riemann (who influenced Vincent
d'Indy) and Schenker. Functional analysis does not
apply to Debussy's evocative music. I t is true that
much of his music is tonal but it is always, apart
from the chamber works, suffused with pictorial or
literary associations.
An inspiring method of
pictorial analysis, applied to the finale of the
Pastoral Symphony, was introduced by Maurice
G r i ~ e a u it
: ~promotes associations by reference to
graphical symbols in the music. In Debussy's later
works, as we know, there are frequently passages of
no tonal associations at all, in which chords are
juxtaposed for the sole pleasure of contrasted
sonorities, such as those in the central section of the
study Pour les accord^.'^ The aesthetic purpose of
these chords responds precisely to what Bernard
Shaw called a 'Helmholtzian' appeal."
There remains the exploratory nature of Debussy's
work. As at the Paris Conference of 1962, most
writers have been anxious to trace connections with
later composers. T o these forward-looking ideas I
should like to add a comment on what might be
called the 'aleatory' nature of Debussy's mentality.
It is well known that Debussy wished his music to
assume the character of an improvisation, as if it had
been drawn from the circumambient air, but on one
occasion he takes a much wider view, foreshadowing
the hazardous aesthetic of the composers of the
1960s. In 1909 he wrote to Andre Caplet: 'Non ce
'.M Croche anridilrtrante.
9Anal.,se dr I'Oragr de la Syntphonie Pasforale (Paris, 1896); see

also 'Musique Pittoresque', L a R e w e de Musirologie (1923).

1p.28 stave 2 (Lenro, molro rubato) to p.29 stave 2.

"In fact Shaw used the term 'Helmholtzian' in regard to the

harmonies not of Debussr but of Scriabin, where it js similarly

balid. Helmholtz's work, significantly, is entitled On fhe Sensa-

tions of Tone as a Ph~siologiralBasisfbr the Theory of M u . ~ i r .

n'est pas la NeurasthCnie, ce n'est pas non plus

1'Hypocondrie. C'est le dklicieux ma1 de I'idke i
choisir entre toutes'.12 Translating this into presentday terms we should say: 'This is not a neurosis nor
a depression; it is the delightful sense of unease
which possesses one in facing an infinitude of possibilities'. This notion did not remain peculiar to
Debussy.
Stravinsky in his Poetics of' MusicT3
similarly defined this attitude.
As for myself, I experience a sort of terror when,
at the moment of setting to work and finding
myself before the infinitude of possibilities that
present themselves I have the feeling that everything is permissible to me, the best and the
worst; if nothing offers me any resistance, then
any effort is inconceivable, and I cannot use
anything as a basis, and consequently every
undertaking becomes futile.
The nearest Debussy came to this chancy, aleatory
view of music is surely in a passage in Ibtria in
which a random violin solo, unexpectedly extinguished by the woodwinds, suddenly finds itself
jumbled up with a tambourine; this then leads, as if
the conductor had thought it up on the spur of the
moment, to some violent strumming on the strings
relieved by an oboe tune which seems to be brought
in from nowhere.14
These two symposia, the Paris conference of 1962
and the present series of studies, will n o doubt be
seen to close a stage in the investigation of Debussy's
influence. For the next stage more basic material is
required. We need above all a large-scale catalogue
raisonnk of Debussy's works showing the whereabouts of MSS, the relevance of sketches, notational
differences in editions, and the state of the unfinished
works, together with an historic account of the
inception and production of each work. The methods
of Kochel need to be applied; but more than this we
wish to study the changing phases of Debussy's
work. The original draft of L'aprds-midi d'un jaune,
now suppressed, needs to be re-edited with a n
adequate commentary demonstrating the manner in
which Debussy worked. Early unpublished works
illustrating the development of Debussy's style
include the comtdie hkroique, Diane au bois and the
opera Rodrigue et Chimdne. We should also like to
see a reconstruction of extracts of La Saulaie, the
companion piece to La damoiselle tlue (that is to say
the available sketches and the libretto). Preparatory
'2Lettresin4dites a Andre Caplet (Monaco, 1957)

I3French version, 1942; Engl~shtranslation, 1947

l4fig 61 of the score

or unfinished works such as these are likely to offer

penetrating glimpses into the workings of a composer's mind. The early study on Pellias et Mklisande by Maurice Emmanuel was valuable in its
time, but it needs to be replaced by a different kind
of study showing the evolution of Debussy's musical
ideas in the various drafts and scores of the opera.
Leon Vallas has drawn attention15 to Debussy's
setting of a section of Villiers de I'Isle Adam's Axel
which, though it remains unknown, nevertheless
indicates his attraction at an early date to the world
of Pellkas.
We need also a critical edition of Debussy's published articles, not merely the arbitrary selection
assembled for the posthumously published M
Croche. Other unpublished literary works, including
the play Frdres en art, should throw light on
Debussy's ideas on the relationship of the arts. In
all this we are interested in what the French call des
pidces (authentic unpublished material for research
material). Various letters of Stravinsky to Debussy,
and of Bartok, giving his opinions of Debussy, have
appeared in auction catalogue^.^^ They are of great
value in assessing the relationships with Debussy of
these composers but, as research-workers so often
discover, they are likely to be kept hidden away by
their jealous possessors. Finally, to satisfy scholars
who still believe in the dictum of Buffon, le style est
I'homme mCme-and indeed how else can style be
defined?-we need an annotated critical edition of
Debussy's letters. These should include not only
those already published, many of which appear in
truncated form, but the vast number of unpublished
letters. Obviously, this is an undertaking that cannot
be attempted before a considerable lapse of time.
But a complete correspondence of this kind is
bound eventually, like the correspondence of
Wagner and Mozart, to throw up so many psychological problems relating to the artist and his work
that we must be prepared, in contemplation of this
task at a remote date, to tackle the whole subject of
Debussy's evaluation afresh.
'SClaude Debussy et son tenrps (2nd edn, 1958, p.140)
"Stravinsky's recollections of statements made to him by
Debussy are not always reliable. On the controversial question
of the influence of Mussorgsky Stravinsky writes:' (Debussy)
said he had discovered M~sSorgskywhen he found some of the
music lying untouched on Mme von Meck's piano (ie 1880-2)'
(Expositions and Developments, 1959, p.138). This is hardly
substantiated by Debussy's letter of June 23, 1908: '. . . Moussorgsky, don't j'ai pu constater dans un voyage que je fis en
Russie, il y a une vingtaine d'annkes, que personne ne prononce
le nom. Ce n'est qu'en France que j'ai commence a le connaitre'
(M. Dietschy, La Passion dr Claud? Drbussy, 1962, p.197).

APPOINTMENTS, AWARDS

Francis Cameron has been appointed Assistant Director of the

New South Wales Conservatorium of Music, Sydney, Australia
Sergiu Comissiona has been appointed conductor and artistic
director of the Baltimore SO for the next three years.
George
won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize in music for his
Echoes of'rime and the river.
Desmond .Hunter has won the first prize for organ at the
Antwerp Conservatoire: he was also awarded the Firmin
Swinnen and the Callaerts prizes.

906

Martin Jones has won the first Myra Hess Award.

Christopher Seaman for the last four years timpanist of the
LPO, has heen apbointed assistant conductor of the BBC
Scottish.
Ruth Hamilton Smith has won the Maggie Teyte biennial prize.
Associated Board Medallists, JuneIJuly 1968: Grade 8, Andrew
Leavett (gold), Stephen Hamill (silver); Grade 7, Jennifer
Moody (gold), Sarah Wayman, Trevor Hughes, Sheila Wilson
(silver); Grade 6, Alison Bury, Robert Steed, Lorraine Wood
(gold), Paul Barritt, Richard S~mpson(sliver).