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DEBUSSY'S"SOUPIR":
AN EXPERIMENT IN
PERMUTATIONALANALYSIS

LL7fl
MARIANNEWHEELDON

I
What attracted me in Mallarme, at the stage I had reached at that
time, was the extraordinary formal density of his poems. Not only
was the content truly extraordinary . . . but never has the French
language been taken so far in the matter of syntax....
What interested me was the idea of finding a musical equivalent,
both poetic and formal, to Mallarme's poetry ... this enabled me to
transcribe into musical terms forms that I had never thought of and
which are derived from the literary forms he himself used.1

O Finfluential
THE LITERARY
was
FORMS that inspired Boulez, perhaps the most
the one used by Mallarme in his last published work,
Debussy's "Soupir" 135

Un coup de des (A throw of the dice). The most innovative aspect of Un


coup de des-and the one that provided a point of reference for Boulez's
creation of variable forms and the composition of his Piano Sonata Num-
ber 3 in particular-was its experiments with permutation and chance.
While the title and content of the poem overtly address notions of
chance, reading and interpreting the poem also involve chance as a result
of typographical eccentricities, which vary the placement, type-face, size,
and amount of text on each of the twenty-one pages of the poem. Some
pages present several configurations of text, while others present only a
single word. Certain words and phrases attract the reader's attention with
capital letters, bold face, larger fonts, or any of these in combination
(Example 1). Because of its unorthodox presentation, Un coup de desper-
mits several reading possibilities: as there is no single linear route through
the poem, each reading varies depending on the path the eye traces
across the page.
It is this availability of multiple readings in Mallarme's poem that
inspired Boulez to find a musical equivalent. Yet Mallarme was not
Boulez's sole point of departure; he also cited Debussy's influence in the
development of new musical forms:

Varese and Webern were the first to learn the lesson of Debussy's last
works and to "think forms," not-in Debussy's words-as "sonata
boxes" but as arising from a process that is primarily spatial and
rhythmic, linking "a succession of alternative, contrasting or corre-
lated states"-that is to say, intrinsic to the object but at the same
time in complete control of it.2

This article examines Debussy's late work "Soupir" (the first song of
Debussy's Trois Poemes de Stephane Mallarme, 1913) from a Boulezian
perspective, drawing specifically on Boulez's preoccupation with the per-
mutational possibilities of Un coup de des.
In fact, Mallarme's Un coup de des presents visually what was already
inherent in much of his earlier poetry, including "Soupir" (1864).
Despite their traditional appearance, Mallarme's earlier poems often
introduce such fragmented syntax that an understanding of the text is
predicated upon a comparable nonlinear reading. In moments of syntac-
tic ambiguity the reader must cast forward and back for possible associa-
tions in meaning and syntax, which often requires rereading previous
material in light of these newly acquired associations. Whereas the non-
linear presentation of the text in Un coup de des makes explicit the
nonlinear reading, in the more traditional forms of Mallarme's earlier
poems the same result is achieved by studiously fragmented syntax. In
136 Perspectivesof New Music

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Debussy's "Soupir" 137

"Soupir," for example, the poem's syntax disrupts its metrical organiza-
tion.

Soupir

Mon ame vers ton front ou reve, 6 calme soeur,


Un automne jonche de taches de rousseur,
Et vers le ciel errant de ton oeil angelique
Monte, comme dans un jardin melancolique,
Fidele, un blanc jet d' eau soupire vers 1' Azur!
-Vers 1' Azur attendri d' Octobre pale et pur
Qui mire aux grand bassins sa langueur infinie
Et laisse, sur l'eau morte ou la fauve agonie
Des feuilles erre au vent et creuse un froid sillon,
Se trainer le soleil jaune d' un long rayon.

Sigh

My soul toward your brow where dreams, o calm sister,


An autumn strewn with freckles,
And toward the wandering sky of your angelic eye
Rises, as in a melancholy garden,
Faithful, a white jet of water sighs toward the Azure!
-Toward the tender Azure of pale and pure October
Which mirrors in great pools its infinite languor
And lets, on the dead water where the tawny agony
Of leaves wanders in the wind and hollows a cold furrow,
The yellow sun drag itself out in a long ray.3

The metrical pattern of "Soupir" is very regular: ten Alexandrines (a


line of twelve syllables) are grouped in five rhyming couplets that alter-
nate accented and unaccented rhyme. Yet the syllabic regularity of the
Alexandrine and the aural unity of the rhyme are obscured by the fact
that "Soupir" is a single sentence, which proceeds with minimal punctua-
tion and run-on lines. That is, the enjambment of lines 3, 6, 7, and 8
directs the reader's focus away from the end of the line and into the
beginning of the next, thereby concealing the regular pacing of the Alex-
andrines and the aural stability usually provided by end-rhyme.
Instances of verb displacement in "Soupir" produce the nonlinear
reading strategies outlined above. By placing verbs in positions contrary
138 Perspectivesof New Music

to the ones dictated by normal syntax, the reader is forced to consider


"Soupir" in sequences other than the one given. One example occurs
with the interpolation of lines 8 and 9, which separates the verb "laisse"
from its reflexive infinitive complement "se trainer."Without these lines,
the conclusion of "Soupir" would read:

-Toward the tender Azure of pale and pure October


Which mirrors in great pools its infinite languor
And lets the yellow sun drag itself out in a long ray.

The interpolation-"on the dead water where the tawny agony of leaves
wanders in the wind and hollows a cold furrow"-twice interrupts the
flow of "Soupir"'s conclusion: the first interruption occurs after "laisse"
with the beginning of the interpolated clause, and the second with the
resumption of the original sentence after its two line delay. The displace-
ment of "se trainer" from "laisse" frames the interpolation, which
embeds a smaller complete sentence within the larger sentence.
Another-and more dramatic-example of verb displacement creates
the incomplete syntactic patterns of the opening lines. "Soupir" begins
with a subject "My soul," accumulates prepositional phrases beginning
with "toward" (toward your brow, toward the wandering sky of your
angelic eye, toward the Azure), yet does not immediately present a verb
of motion to join the two together. By delaying a verb, which should fol-
low the poem's opening subject, Mallarme immediately creates syntactic
confusion. As John Porter Houston writes, with reference to Mallarme's
Herodiade:

. . the reader's grasp of the syntax is momentarily enfeebled owing


to the complexity of the language, and one almost has the feeling of
reading sentence fragments....4

The experience of reading the first five lines of "Soupir" is similar.The


displacement of the verb "monte" ("rises") creates a succession of sen-
tence fragments that could be arranged as follows:

My soul
toward your brow where dreams
o calm sister
an autumn strewn with freckles
And toward the wandering sky of your angelic eye
Rises
as in a melancholy garden
Debussy's "Soupir" 139

faithful
a white jet of water sighs toward the Azure.

Considered individually, the sentence fragments of "Soupir" make sense,


but these fragments run one after the other with little to connect them
syntactically. Even when the verb "rises" appears, it does not connect
immediately with the surrounding syntax but is isolated in its context: as
shown above, "rises" is itself a fragment unconnected to the preceding
prepositional phrase or the following adverbialphrase. The displacement
and isolation of the word "rises" necessitates moving among the frag-
ments and images of the first five lines to find possible syntactic and
semantic connections. Yet jumping back and forth among these images
presents a network of possible connections: the first sentence could read
as "My soul rises toward your brow," but other constructions beginning
with the preposition "toward" offer other connections, such as "My soul
rises toward the wandering sky of your angelic eye" and "My soul rises
toward the Azure."
Despite these ambiguities, Hugh Kenner, in his reading of "Soupir,"
argues that there is a central image-or what he terms "kernel sen-
tence"-to which everything is related and subordinate.5 Kenner views
the statement "My soul rises toward the Azure" ("Mon ame monte vers
1' Azur") to be the kernel sentence. This reading, Kenner states, is sub-
stantiated by the fact that each word of the kernel sentence "occupies a
rhetorical strong point where a line commences, while the previous con-
structions in 'toward' have expended themselves in less prominent
niches" (386). But even if one finds Kenner's thesis tenable, the frag-
mented syntax of "Soupir" allows different interpretations of what con-
stitutes its kernel sentence. For example, Arthur Wenk-who similarly
advocates a central image in "Soupir"-interprets the ambiguous syntax
to mean "My soul rises toward your brow like a white jet of water sighing
toward the Azure" ("Mon ame monte vers ton front comme un blanc jet
d' eau soupire vers 1' Azur").6 Both Kenner and Wenk produce their ker-
nel sentences by casting about the first five lines of "Soupir" to gather
together the necessary syntactic units. As Wenk states, "to understand
this poem more than superficially requires considerable movement back
and forth among the images to sort out their relationship" (246).
Wenk's statement implies that one overall relationship exists between
the images of "Soupir." Perhaps, however, these images are not meant to
be "sorted out," as Wenk hypothesizes; rather, the fragmented syntax
and their potential interpretations are intended to remain in a state of
flux. As Malcolm Bowie states, both the surfeit of possible readings and
140 Perspectivesof New Music

the moving back and forth among images that these readings entail cre-
ate an important part of Mallarme's poetic substance:

Syntactic ambiguity gives each member of improbable word-


chains ... an unusual independence and immediacy: each word is a
gravitational centre around which possible meanings of the entire
section gather. These virtualities will of course become fewer as we
move towards a relatively stable syntactic armature for the poem.
But the meanings we relinquish do not simply disappear:the atmo-
sphere of multiple potentiality which they create is part of
Mallarme's poetic substance.7

This "atmosphere of multiple potentiality" provides the focus for the


following musical analysis. It is not the purpose here to align the discon-
tinuities of "Soupir" with those of Debussy's setting, but rather to show
that similar principles of formal flexibility and potential multiple readings
motivate both the poem and its musical setting. Unlike Wenk, who
believes that Debussy's musical setting is "an attempt to sort out the var-
ious phrases and clauses that complicates ["Soupir"'s] grammaticalstruc-
ture" (249), I believe that Debussy's setting tries to imitate the
permutability of Mallarme's syntax.

II
In his setting of "Soupir," Debussy presents a succession of musical ideas
that bears little resemblance to traditional tonal forms. As shown by the
annotated score (Example 2), changes of tempo and texture and, in the
vocal writing, changes of tessitura and contour clearly articulate each idea
on the musical surface. These musical ideas do not repeat, develop, or
aim toward a climax or resolution, but they proceed with no one idea
hierarchicallymore significant than another. Each section of "Soupir" is
equally intensive, musically autonomous, and nonteleological, so that the
sections do not contribute to an overall contour or dynamic shape, but
are more modular in their arrangement. This is especially noticeable in
the vocal line where each new melodic idea is initiated, completed, and
then relinquished, resulting in a succession of minute arabesques rather
than one over-arching motion. Consequently, the vocal line rarely runs
smoothly between consecutive sections, since each section produces a
breakwith its predecessor with a shift of tessitura and a new melodic con-
tour. Since these sections do not connect smoothly or contribute to a
larger dynamic shape, it would appear that melodic continuity or
Debussy's "Soupir" 141

Section1
C&lme et expresUi J?50
CHANr

PIANO

Section2
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- It k J tJ j! ) J l IGf r[
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Debussy, Trois Poemes de Stephane Mallarme, "Soupir." Copyright ? 1913 Durand S.A. Editions
Musicales. Used by permission. Sole Agent U.S.A., Theodore Presser Company

EXAMPLE 2: ANNOTATED SCORE OF "SOUPIR"


142 Perspectivesof New Music

u Mouvt
A ' I' .I I
J I 1 1I J
skbq J J JP
cur l'e&umorte oiu I&fuve &.Co. nl DOe feuil.l e errs au vent ct

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EXAMPLE 2 (CONT.)
Debussy's "Soupir" 143

Section 3
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EXAMPLE 2 (CONT.)
144 Perspectivesof New Music

teleology is not of paramount importance in the construction of the


vocal line. If the five sections of the vocal line were separated, scrambled,
and the text removed, there would be few clues in their internal organi-
zation to reassemble them in the original order. This hypothesis reveals a
potential for permutation in the vocal line. For, if it proves difficult to
ascertain the original ordering of sections, then these sections may have
alternate orderings. Like Mallarme's poetic fragments and their possible
permutations in the first five lines of "Soupir," the vocal line's individual
arabesques-although presented in a specific order-inherently possess
little to recommend that order over any other.
The harmonic stasis of the piano accompaniment compounds this
potential for permutation in the vocal line. By transposing the piano
accompaniment to a single register and omitting all repetitions, the
reduction of Example 3 highlights the harmonic stasis and close counter-
point of "Soupir" that the wide spacing and changing registers of the
piano accompaniment otherwise disguise. The harmonic motion never
strays far from the bass Al pedal and the descant F of the opening mea-
sures. Only in section 5 do the outer voices move from their focus on Ab
and F and, instead, circle an inner voice C. In the final section, however,
the outer voices return in contrary motion to the Al bass and soprano F
of the opening.
Example 3 also demonstrates that, with the exception of section 4,
each section can be reduced to two or three pivotal harmonies. These
harmonies are prolonged either by simple reiteration, as with the single
sonority of section 1 and the final sonority of section 5, or by repetition
with a neighboring harmony, shown in Example 3 by square brackets.
Each bracketed harmonic motion repeats, so that the progressions of
"Soupir" move gradually in two-sonority units that oscillate before pro-
ceeding to the next harmonic unit. In general, the harmonic motion
undulates in a nondramatic, nondirected fashion, thereby weakening the
already tenuous sense of causality between "Soupir"'s sections.
Moreover, many of these alternating harmonies are nonfunctional, that
is, they are not oriented toward a tonic. In "Soupir," the predominant
harmonic collections are a pentatonic collection on Al, octatonic collec-
tions I and III, and the even whole-tone collection (Example 4).8 All
these collections include Ab, with the exception of octatonic collection
III, which is always presented in conjunction with another collection (as
in section 2) or superimposed over an Ab pedal (as in section 3).9 As
shown below Example 3, the Al pentatonic collection governs section 1;
section 2 alternates octatonic harmonies from collections I and III; octa-
tonic collection III superimposed over the Al bass-pedal governs section
3; section 5 alternates harmonies from the even whole-tone collection
Debussy's "Soupir" 145

K -

77 z

~c- 0

] L

,W

] Iv
'I ,s
1"
J W

.2
o

0u
146 Perspectivesof New Music

F,
fj IVW I Iff- 1 Pentatonicon A ;

m v_ OctatoniccollectionI
L- - k I .
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mY v-
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h. h
L-.L 6h'0 OctatoniccollectionIII

y ;e b- W.
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EXAMPLE 4: HARMONIC COLLECTIONS

and octatonic collection I; and the final section moves from a harmony
drawn from octatonic collection III, through two sonorities foreign to
the octatonic harmony, which introduce AL and F respectively, to return
to the opening pentatonic configuration with its prominent Al and F
outer voices.
With harmonies that are slow-moving, repetitious, and nonteleologi-
cal, the piano accompaniment of "Soupir" also presents opportunities for
permutation, though for entirely different reasons. The lack of an overall
linear coherence between sections permits a potential reordering of the
vocal line, whereas potential permutability between the sections of the
piano accompaniment is due, in large part, to the fact that none of the
harmonies are goal-oriented and each nonfunctional harmony merely
alternates with its neighbor before moving to the next harmonic unit.
Paradoxically,it is the harmonic stasis of the accompaniment that lends
itself to the mobility of permutation.
The song's repetitive and nonteleological harmonies perhaps imitate
the freely associating, nonlinear strategies of Mallarme's "Soupir." In
fact, this suggests that one might treat the form of "Soupir" in a manner
analogous to Boulez's Piano Sonata Number 3, which exploits the more
overt permutational practices of Un coup de des. To this end, Example 5
presents an experiment in permutational analysis, with the sections of
"Soupir" arranged in constellation to imitate Boulez's Piano Sonata
Number 3 (Example 5a). The six sections of "Soupir," when presented
Debussy's "Soupir" 147

without specifying ordering, as in Example 5b, can be performed in a


number of different sequences. The confined ambitus of harmonic move-
ment in "Soupir," the close relation between prominent pitch-centers,
and the lack of harmonic progression between sections allow Example 5b
to be performed in many permutations.

EXAMPLE 5A: PERMUTATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN BOULEZ'S


PIANO SONATA NUMBER 3

Unlike Boulez's constellation arrangement, which presents only eight


possible permutations, the static, nonteleological, and nonfunctional har-
monies of "Soupir" permit a large number of virtual reorderings. In this
respect, the permutability of Example 5 perhaps aligns more closely with
Mallarme's final experiments with chance in Le Livre (The Book), unfin-
ished at the time of his death in 1898. In this work, Mallarme extends
the elements of chance found within pages of Un coup de des to encom-
pass the ordering of pages. The projected Livre comprised a collection of
loose pages that could be read in any order, and Mallarme calculated the
overall structure so that any permutation would be viable. As a result,
there would be a free association of ideas and ever-new possibilities of
interpreting the work. As Jacques Scherer states in his essay on
Mallarme's Livre:

Here we find, in opposition to the concept of history as enslaved to


succession in irreversibletime, an intelligence capable of mastering a
148 Perspectivesof New Music

A II I L A Li . I I
t4 67
bb~t4bL~ t?C
6 5

L t

3 4
,~
7: i6 oL j-
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IT
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EXAMPLE 5B: PERMUTATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF DEBUSSY'S
"SOUPIR"

subject by reconstructing it in all directions, including the reverse of


temporal succession.10

The use of permutation and chance in Un coup de des and Le Livre is


perhaps prefigured in the permutable syntax of Mallarme's "Soupir,"
where interpretation similarlyinvolves-albeit on a much smaller scale-
"reconstructing [the poem] in all directions." Thus, Boulez's musical
response to Mallarme's Un coup de des-with the permutational possibili-
ties of the Piano Sonata Number 3-suggests an analogous analytic
approach to Debussy's setting of Mallarme's "Soupir." The juxtaposition
of autonomous musical fragments, their lack of causal connection, and
the consequent attenuation of musical sequence leads to the permuta-
tional approach of Example 5, which eliminates musical sequence alto-
gether and allows "Soupir"'s musical fragments to be placed in orders
other than their temporal order.
Debussy's "Soupir" 149

III

Both the elimination of sequence and the juxtaposition of poetic frag-


ments underpin the thesis presented in Joseph Frank'scollection of essays
The Idea of Spatial Form, which identifies a common trait of modern lit-
erature: modern literary works are often designed so as to encourage a
spatial approach to their reading rather than a consecutive one.1l Signifi-
cantly, Mallarme enters the discussion of spatial form in modern poetry as
an example of one who radically"dislocated the temporality of language"
(p. 15). He, along with T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, attempted to:

undermine the inherent consecutiveness of language, frustrating the


reader's normal expectation of a sequence and forcing him [or her]
to perceive the elements of the poem as juxtaposed in space rather
than unfolding in time. (p. 12)

Indeed, the idea of juxtaposition in space is especially pertinent to the


series of poetic fragments that open Mallarme's "Soupir." As discussed
above, the opening lines disintegrate into sentence fragments as a result
of displacing the verb "monte." Without the hierarchization of a larger
syntactic pattern, the poetic fragments of "Soupir" are thrown into con-
fusion since each fragment assumes-at least temporarily-equal weight
and significance. Thus, any distinction between a single main preposition
and subordinate material disappears and instead these fragments appear
"juxtaposed in space" rather than part of an unfolding structured narra-
tive. Though "Soupir" proceeds line by line, it cannot be understood in
this sequence, and it is only when these fragments are considered spatially
that possible interpretations begin to emerge. Frank's discussion ofT. S.
Eliot's "The Wasteland" is equally applicable to Mallarme's "Soupir":

Syntactical sequence is given up for a structure depending on the


perception of relationships between disconnected word-groups. To
be properly understood, these word-groups must be juxtaposed with
one another and perceived simultaneously. Only when this is done
can they be adequately grasped; for while they follow one another in
time, their meaning does not depend on this temporal relationship.
(p. 14)

To perceive "Soupir"'s "disconnected word-groups" spatially relies


upon an internalized performance of the poem and the mental collabora-
tion of the reader: during a silent reading, the reader can move continu-
ously within the poem to reconsider each poetic fragment from different
150 Perspectivesof New Music

vantage points. A nonlinear reading allows "Soupir"'s fragments to coa-


lesce into comprehensible formations, despite their disrupted sequence
on the page. Indeed, a nonlinear or spatial approach is vital to compre-
hension, as it unveils syntactic and semantic connections otherwise
obscured within the poem. The internalized performance of Debussy's
"Soupir" necessary for musical analysis is perhaps analogous to the inter-
nalized reading of "Soupir," in that both allow and encourage atemporal
and anachronistic perspectives. Like the silent reader, the music analyst
has similar opportunities to observe the composition in its entirety and in
sequences other than its temporal sequence. Thus, the permutational
analysis of Example 5 and its atemporal perspectives closely approach the
nonlinear reading strategies and spatial considerations invoked in com-
prehending Mallarme's "Soupir."
A corresponding spatial approach to a performance of Debussy's musi-
cal setting of "Soupir" is not possible due to its sequence of events,
which reinforces the temporal sequence of the poem. Unlike the silent
reading of a poem, where the eye and mind are free to reconsider and
reconstruct, a musical performance does not accommodate such intellec-
tual wanderings and the performer or listener must submit to the compo-
sition in its given sequence. Nevertheless, the fact that the sequence of
events is fixed in performance (a fact which applies to works that are
expressly mobile, such as Boulez's Piano Sonata) means that permutabil-
ity remains a latent potential within the music. Though this potential is
unrealizable in actuality,it does have a tangible effect: it makes the order-
ing that is given sound somewhat arbitraryor ambiguous.
Yet Debussy's "Soupir" differs from Mallarme's "Soupir" in that the
temporal sequence of the song is not entirely incomprehensible or dis-
continuous-as is the sequence of fragments in Mallarme's poem-but
presents continuities of its own. Example 6 shows linear continuities that
exist between consecutive sections of "Soupir"'s piano accompaniment.
Recognizing the presence of linear connections between adjacent sec-
tions of "Soupir," however, neither diminishes the significance of nonlin-
ear connections, nor does it inevitably lead to notions of musical
progression or consequentiality. As Leonard B. Meyer observes in
Debussy's compositional style:

... in the absence of emphatically goal-directed processes and con-


ventional formal schemata, the ordering of successive events often
seems problematic. Events come after one another, but they cannot
be readily understood as following from one another.12
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------------

1i,dn S , \n

51 , J!dnoS,, s,Xssnqan
152 Perspectivesof New Music

Similarly,Debussy's setting of "Soupir" possesses linear connections that


cannot be viewed as teleological. For example, in the linear analysis of
Example 6, which traces registral strands in the song, E5 of section 3 is
connected to F5 of section 4 by means of a slur. This does not mean that
E5 strives toward F5 as it would, say, in the key ofF, as a leading tone that
a listener would expect to resolve. The connection is merely one of
salience: E5 and F5 connect because of their similar registral placement
and musical reiteration. If the position of these sections were reversed or
further separated in time as in the permutations of Example 5, E5 would
still connect to F5-or vice versa-for the same reasons of salience.
As suggested above, Example 6's linear analysis may tend toward
Example 5's permutations implied by harmonic stasis. In the case of
Example 6, however, it is nonconsecutive linear-registralconnections that
promote a permutational approach. The voice-leading is saturated with
linear connections to such a degree that salient pitches and pedal-points
recall and look forward to many sections, not just those that immediately
precede or follow. In the piano introduction (measures 1-8) all five
registers are activated, because the opening motive repeats in five differ-
ent registers. With the exception of the omnipresent tenor voice, these
registral strands recur and are relinquished throughout the song. Voice-
leading in each register, therefore, is continuous, though often not suc-
cessively continuous: voices drop in and out, and their linear continuity
often involves jumping forward or back to find the next or last reference
to that particular register. For example, the voice-leading of the upper-
most register drops out after section 3 and does not return until the final
section of the song. Similarly, section 2 omits the bass register, which
returns again in section 3, while the beginning of section 5 omits the
three upper registers, which are reestablished at the end of section 5 and
in section 6.
The activation of the full registral range in the introduction and the
recurrences of each registral strand throughout "Soupir" allow the voice-
leading to be multi-directional: the use of all registers simultaneously
means that, between random sections, there is usually a stepwise or
common-tone connection between at least one of the registral strands.
For example, section 1 could align smoothly with any subsequent section
because each registral strand is in close proximity with-and therefore
could potentially connect to-all other registral strands;the reiterated Et
at the end of section 5 (measure 26) could dovetail to the El descant
pedal of section 3 (measure 13); the sonority that closes section 6 (mea-
sure 30) contains many common tones that could link to the sonority
that opens section 4 (measure 18); while the Al pedal and triplet ostinato
Debussy's "Soupir" 153

that pervade the figurations of the piano accompaniment facilitate these,


and many other, alternative orderings of "Soupir"'ssections.
Two nonsequential connections exist within Debussy's "Soupir" that
may have special significance with regard to Mallarme's "Soupir." In
Mallarme's text, the prominence of the enjambed words "Monte" and
"Et laisse" as well as the verb displacements and interruptions they effect,
create springboards within the poem: "Et laisse," for example, could
jump ahead to its infinitive complement "se trainer," while "Monte"
could spring to any of the prepositional phrases beginning with "vers,"
and perhaps ultimately to the final statement of "vers l'Azur." In
Debussy's setting, the metrical expansions of the vocal line give particular
prominence to both "Monte" and "Et laisse," while the position of these
words at the end of sections 2 and 4 respectively offer similar opportuni-
ties to jump to other sections of the song. Of the many connections
implicit in "Soupir," two especially pertinent connections would allow
"Monte" and "Et laisse" to jump past the interruptions they induce, and
move directly to their syntactic conclusions. "Monte" of section 2 could
spring forward to "Vers l'Azur," which opens section 4 and bypass the
clause that describes the "melancholy garden" contained within section
3. In Debussy's setting, the unaccompanied vocal line that closes section
2 places particular emphasis on F# and G#, which could smoothly align
with the G6 and Ab that open section 4 (See Example 7).

JP J)p ,Wj)i
^ii ?> Mon -te
Mon-te vers L'A-zur
veir L A- ur

m.l2 ' .l8 1

EXAMPLE 7: HYPOTHETICAL CONNECTION BETWEEN SECTION 2


(MEASURE 12) AND SECTION 4 (MEASURE 18)

"Laisse" at the end of section 4 could spring forward to the infinitive


complement "se trainer" that opens section 6 and bypass the clause con-
tained within section 5. In this reordering of Debussy's setting, the trip-
let rhythm of section 6 enters in the final beats of section 4, with the
quarter-note triplet in an animato tempo matching the eighth-note
154 Perspectivesof New Music

if; ^ 13- j
Se
r
trai-
1J ner,
EtEt li-s
iis- se,
.3C3 3 3 3

m.22 L ) m.27

? r rM-

EXAMPLE 8: HYPOTHETICAL CONNECTION BETWEEN SECTION 4


(MEASURE22) AND SECTION6 (MEASURE27)

triplet in the Plus lent of the final section (see Example 8). In addition,
stepwise voice-leading would occur in the tenor voice, while a common-
tone connection would link the contours of the vocal line.
Thus the modular construction of "Soupir," coupled with the place-
ment of syntacticallyisolated words at the ends of sections, seems to sug-
gest these connections while, in terms of harmony and voice-leading,
they form only one of a number of possible nonconsecutive connections.
Just as in Mallarme's poem-where the reader may cast about for all pos-
sible associations in meaning or syntax-so in the harmonic and linear
fabric of the song connections are multiple, tenuous, and not necessarily
successive.

IV

Both Mallarme's and Debussy's "Soupir" illustrate how poet and com-
poser undermine expectations of consecutiveness in their respective lan-
guages. In Mallarme's single-sentence poem "the effect," as Kenner
states, "is to move our attention as far as may be from the thrust of
subject-verb-object,"13 and Debussy's setting denies the thrust of an
analogous musical syntax, embodied in motion toward a goal, climax,
and resolution.
Yet many musical analyses interpret "Soupir" in terms of a traditional
dynamic shape. Two examples are Roy's assertion that:
Debussy's "Soupir" 155

Debussy chooses to see "Fidele" [m. 15] as the climax and sets it off
with two simple major triads. . . . The greater melodic activity at
"vers l'Azur attendri" . .. then extinguishes itself at "et laisse,"
returning to sighing, hesitating, motion until the end.14

and Avo Somer's claim that:

Especially conspicuous is the tonally highly ambiguous passage that


leads to the climax of the song in measure 20-22-a climax sud-
denly and diffidently deflected (ce'dez. ..).15

The moments that are isolated as "Soupir"'s musical climax may be local-
ized high points in the individual arabesques of the vocal line, but they
do not represent a culmination of the preceding music nor do they pro-
vide an irrefutable sense of climax. The fact that the two interpretations
cited above differ on the location of "Soupir"'s high point-measure 15
and measures 20-22 respectively-is perhaps an indication that the con-
cept of climax is inappropriateto "Soupir," since a musical climax should
hardly be an ambiguous event. Indeed, Debussy's "Soupir" is devoid of
dramatic elements in general: the piano accompaniment offers only slight
gradations in dynamic between pianissimo and piano; the vocal line
begins piano and from measure 13 onwards, is pianissimo throughout;
and the slight fluctuations of tempo between sections do not indicate any
increased momentum toward a particulargoal.
Concomitant with the absence of climax in "Soupir," is a correspond-
ing absence of resolution. For if "Soupir" proceeds with a series of
equally significant musical ideas, then closure becomes an arbitrary,or at
least an ambiguous event. BarbaraHerrnstein Smith's discussion of clo-
sure and anticlosure in modern poetry and music is especially relevant:

The relation between structure and closure is of considerable impor-


tance here, for "anticlosure" in all the arts is a matter not only of
how the works terminate but how and whether they are organized
throughout. The "openness" and "unfinished" look and sound of
avante-garde poetry and music is not a quality of their endings only,
but affect the audience's entire experience of such works.16

In Mallarme's poem, anticlosure does not occur solely because of the


content of the final lines-which drift into the abstractions of the "mel-
ancholy garden"-but because of a general lack of drive toward resolu-
tion that characterizesthe whole of "Soupir"'s ten lines. Mallarme's only
concession toward closure is the return of the rhyming couplet,
156 Perspectivesof New Music

presented intact in the opening lines but then denied throughout


"Soupir" by enjambment and syntactic disruptions. By using a complete
Alexandrine for "Soupir"'s last line and end-rhyme for "Soupir"'s final
couplet, Mallarme creates auralunity to close the poem.
In the musical setting of "Soupir," Debussy creates a sense of closure
by slowing the tempo, returning to the focal pitches and harmony of the
introduction, and repeating the opening motive to close the song. The
return of pentatonic harmony in the final three beats of the song mirrors
the introduction in that it is presented alone and not in alternation with
its neighboring harmony, contrary to the regular alternation of harmo-
nies throughout "Soupir." This isolation is compounded by the fact that
pentatonic harmony on Ab occurs only in the introduction and the final
sonority, further separating them from the more octatonic focus of the
intervening sections. As a result, the final motive of "Soupir" sounds
somewhat "tacked on," merely a brief, perfunctory restatement of the
opening sonority and motive as a means to close the song. Thus, the
methods of closure employed by both poem and song are limited in their
effectiveness, though these limitations are features of a change of style, as
Smith explains:

any major stylistic development will on occasion create the same


problem: that is, there will be something comparable to what we
speak of as a "cultural lag," where elements of the older style will
continue to appear, but now inappropriately, or where poets will
attempt to solve the closural problems created by the new style with
conventions that are no longer effective. (229)

Debussy's repetition of the opening motive to close "Soupir" may rep-


resent a "culturallag," an anachronistic use of a recapitulatory gesture to
conclude a composition that otherwise seems wholly unconcerned with
notions of reprise or return. The motive has not grown or evolved since
its statement in the introduction, nor does it grow or evolve to an
inevitable conclusion. In fact, one could go so far as to state that the
opening motive plays no part in "Soupir"'s subsequent musical ideas.
Nevertheless, several commentators seize upon this closing motive as
an indication of a motivic unity that has been expressed throughout
"Soupir." Wenk believes that each rising contour of "Soupir" represents
the opening motive and that "each section . . . contains some reference
to the "Soupir" motive"17 and Roy states that "the sighing motive
appears in various guises in the keyboard part."18 Furthermore, Roy
believes that "the shape of the musical material to come is foreshadowed
Debussy's "Soupir" 157

in the motive,"19 a statement that underlines her adherence to an organi-


cist ideology.
Analyses like Roy's that interpret the reappearance of the opening
motive as an indication of an underlying organicism in the song draw
upon a musical-analytic tradition that is not wholly applicable to
"Soupir" or many of Debussy's late works. "Soupir"-composed in
1913, between the second book of Preludes (1912-13) and the Etudes
(1915)-belongs to a period of composition that was highly experimen-
tal with respect to musical form. Many of these compositions present an
arrayof contrasting musical ideas in a nondevelopmental fashion. Often,
these ideas bear little relation to each other and so create a discontinuous
and highly-fragmented form that is fundamentally different from prevail-
ing organic compositional procedures.20Though a less dramatic example
of this compositional style, "Soupir" still exhibits the fragmentation and
nondevelopmental presentation of ideas that characterize many of
Debussy's late works.
Indeed, Boulez goes further and isolates Debussy's late works (com-
posed between 1913 and 1917) not only for their formal ingenuities but
for embodying a new meaning of musical time:

... Debussy rejects any hierarchywhich is not implied in the musical


instant. With him, often, musical time changes its meaning, espe-
cially in the late works. So the act of creating his own technique, cre-
ating his own vocabulary, creating his own form, leads him to
overturn ideas which had hitherto remained eminently static: the
fluid and instantaneous irrupted into music; and not merely the
impression of the instantaneous, the fugitive, to which some have
reduced it; but a genuinely irreversible, relative conception of musi-
cal time, and of the musical universe more generally.For in the orga-
nization of sounds this conception translates into a rejection of
existing harmonic hierarchies as the sole property of musical reality;
relations between objects are established by context, according to
variable functions.21

Boulez's description of Debussy's rejection of hierarchy, and specifically


his "rejection of harmonic hierarchies," aptly describes "Soupir"'svocab-
ulary of static, repetitive, and nonfunctional harmonies. These harmonies
do not enter into an overarching hierarchy but are significant only for the
brief span of the musical idea-or what Boulez describes as "the musical
instant"-in which they participate. Significantly, this leads to musical
relations that are established by contexts and according to variable func-
tions. While Boulez's comments here on "variable functions" are
158 Perspectivesof New Music

tantalizingly vague-perhaps due to the large number of compositions to


which he is referring-he elaborates further and more specifically in his
descriptions of Debussy's ballet Jeux (1913):

One must experience the whole work to have a grasp of its form,
which is no longer architected, but braided; in other words, there is
no distributive hierarchy in the organization of "sections" (static
sections; themes; dynamic sections, developments) but successive
distributions in the course of which the various constituent elements
take on a greater or lesser functional importance. One can well
understand that this sense of form is bound to run up against the lis-
tening habits formed by three centuries of "architectural"music.22

Again, Boulez emphasizes the lack of a "distributivehierarchy,"this time


in connection with the organization of musical sections. But especially
prescient are his comments on comprehending Jeux's form. Like Joseph
Frankin his descriptions of spatial form in modern literaryworks, Boulez
suggests a simultaneous musical approach to Jeux, stating that "[o]ne
must experience the whole work to have a grasp of its form." Moreover,
to use another of Boulez's perspicacious descriptions, the components of
Debussy's form are "braided," which invokes the intertwining, multi-
directional and simultaneous superimposition of ideas implicit in the per-
mutational possibilities of both Mallarme's poem and Debussy's musical
setting.
Although Boulez's conception of musical forms that proceed in a non-
linear manner arises out of his own compositional technique, as manifest
in the explicitly permutable form of works such as his Piano Sonata Num-
ber 3, his descriptions may have a broader impact if they are not under-
stood as just a mode of construction peculiar to a few isolated pieces of
new music, but as a way of listening to much modern music. Debussy's
late compositions are obvious candidates for this way of listening since
Boulez, himself, isolates them as important precursors for his formal
experiments. Thus, the permutational analysisof"Soupir" jumps forward
five decades toward Boulez's codification of permutational forms, which
provide a new vocabulary-one that is far removed from nineteenth-
century dynamism and organicism-for discussing musical form, and
moreover, one that embraces the multiple potentialities of Mallarme's
poetry. In this way, the latent permutability of Debussy's harmonic and
contrapuntal setting can correspond to the explicit permutability of
Mallarme's poem.
Debussy's "Soupir" 159

NOTES

This is an expanded version of a paper called "Permutation in Mallarme,


Debussy, and Boulez" given at the Music Theory Society of New York
State in April 1997, at the Eastman School of Music.
1. Pierre Boulez, Conversations with Celestin Deliege, trans. Robert
Wangermee (London: Eulenberg Books, 1976), 93-94.
2. Orientations: Collected Writings, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, trans.
Martin Cooper (London and Boston: Faber, 1986), 371.
3. This translation is taken, with some modifications, from Mary
Suzanne Roy, "Solo Vocal Settings of Texts by Stephane Mallarme
1842-1898" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison: 1979),
91-92.
4. French Symbolismand the Modernist Movement: A Study of Poetic
Structures (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980),
107.
5. "Some Post-Symbolist Structures," in Literary Theoryand Structure:
Essays in Honor of William K. Wimsatt, eds. Frank Brady, John
Palmer, and Martin Price (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973),
384.
6. Arthur B. Wenk, Claude Debussyand the Poets (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1976), 246.
7. Malcolm Bowie, Mallarme' and the Art of Being Difficult (Cam-
bridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 8.
8. For octatonic classifications see Pieter C. van den Toorn, The Music
of Igor Stravinsky(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 50-51.
With reference to Debussy, see Allen Forte, "Debussy and the Octa-
tonic," Music Analysis 10, nos.1-2 (1991): 126.
9. David Michael Hertz also observes this permeation of A;:
".. "Soupir" is characterized not by harmonic movement, but by
harmonic stasis. A-flat (or its enharmonic equivalent G-sharp) is
either present or implied in some way in every bar of the piece. A-flat
is absorbed by the changing contexts of the other pitches, but it
always hovers, a continuous droning pedal tone. .. ." See The Tun-
ing of the Word:TheMusico-LiteraryPoeticsof the SymbolistMovement
(Southern Illinois University Press: 1987), 117-18.
160 Perspectivesof New Music

10. Jacques Scherer, quoted in Pierre Boulez, Orientations, 147.


11. Joseph Frank, The Idea of Spatial Form (New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1991), 12. First published as "Spatial Form in
Modern Literature," Sewanee Review 53 (Spring/Summer/Autumn
1945).
12. Leonard B. Meyer, Style and Music: Theory,History, and Ideology
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 270.
13. "Post-Symbolist Structures," 390.
14. "Solo Vocal Settings," 108-9.
15. Avo Somer, "Chromatic Third-Relations and Tonal Structure in the
Songs of Debussy," Music TheorySpectrum17, no. 2 (1995): 233.
16. BarbaraHerrnstein Smith, Poetic Closure:A Study of How PoemsEnd
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 242-43.
17. Wenk, Debussyand the Poets,251.
18. Roy, "Solo Vocal Settings," 108.
19. Roy, "Solo Vocal Settings," 108.
20. For more on this topic, see my dissertation "Interpreting Disconti-
nuity in the Late Works of Claude Debussy" (Ph.D. diss., Yale Uni-
versity: 1997).
21. Stocktakingsfrom an Apprenticeship, ed. Paule Thevenin, trans.
Stephen Walsh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 23.
22. Stocktakings,155.

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