<Archive Obituaries> Claude Debussy (March 25th 1918)
Bill Schenley
Portrait: http://debussy.diletante.net/imagenes/debussy.JPG
The death of this distinguished composer has occasioned widespread and
profound regret. He made his own world and language, and whatever
niche
posterity may assign to him at least it must be a tribute to his
independence and originality. In our issue for February, 1908, we gave
a
sketch of his career from the pen of M.-D. Calvocoressi, accompanied
with a
portrait of the composer, reproduced from the oil-painting by Jacques
Blanche. We now recapitulate briefly the leading incidents of his
career.
Claude Achille Debussy was born at St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, on
August 22, 1862. At the Paris Conservatoire he studied the pianoforte
under
Marmontel, harmony with Lavignac, counterpoint and composition with
Massenet
and Guiraud.
In 1884 he was awarded the 'Prix de Rome' for his cantata 'L'Enfant
Prodigue.' Amongst the works he sent from Rome to the Paris Institut
was the
setting for soprano solo and female chorus of the French translation
of
Rossetti's 'Blessed Damozel,' but he refused to consent to the
customary
performance, which would have been given, because the Institut had
previously declined to allow his symphonic suite 'Printemps' to be
performed
on the ground that the music was 'erratic and infected with
modernism.' In
1893 the first performance of his now well-known Quartet in G minor
(Op. 10)
was given in Paris by the Ysaye Quartet. The celebrated orchestral
Prelude
'L'Après-midi d'un Faune' was first performed at a concert given in
Paris by
the Société Nationale on December 23, 1894. The opera 'Pelléas et
Mélisande'
was produced at the Paris Opéra-Comique on April 30, 1902. It was
first
performed in this country on May 21, 1909, at Covent Garden. Debussy
visited
London in 1908, and conducted the 'Prelude' and 'La Mer' on February
1, the
Queen's Hall Symphony Orchestra being the performers. He came again to
London on February 27, 1909, when the orchestral 'Nocturnes' and the
'Prelude' were performed by the same orchestra under his direction.
We are glad to give an instalment of a critical estimate of Debussy's
music
contributed by Ernest Newman, and a more personal tribute to the
composer's
memory by his friend Jean-Aubry. As very few copies of the portrait
given in
1908 are available, we provide with our present issue another portrait
reproduced from a photograph taken by Otto, of Paris.
---
The Development Of Debussy
By Ernest Newman.
Few people, I imagine, who are not blinded by partisanship will deny
that
the Debussy of the last years has been a great disappointment. From
one of
the most original composers in Europe he degenerated into one of the
least
original. One charm of his earlier work was its incalculability; the
great
defect of his later work was that it rarely held a great surprise for
us.
The man who set out with the resolve to be beholden to nobody became
the
slave of his own mannerisms. The apostle of a new naturalness in music
settled down into the dandy and the poseur, and a rather faded dandy
at
that, trying to impress his older contemporaries with the costumes and
the
tricks of manner of a musical generation that we had almost forgotten.
The
circle of his intellectual and emotional interests, never a very wide
one,
became more and more restricted in his middle-age. With all sympathy
and
with all respect, we can only say that works of his last few years
showed
many signs of something like collapse: I can recall no case in musical
history in which a composer of unquestionable genius has so grievously
failed to grow with the years, to distil from them a new beauty, a new
wisdom, a new humanity. Even in the matter of style there was a
lamentable
restriction of resource, instead of the expansion we are familiar with
in
the later styles of the men of genius.
One touches with regret upon this aspect of his work in the hour of
his
death, for one does not yet know to what extent the comparative
failure of
the last few years may have been due to bodily suffering. I have
always held
that a probable explanation of the commonplace with which Strauss's
later
music is so plentifully strewn is the simple one that for years
Strauss has
been physically and mentally overworked: the remarkable brain can
still
function with something like its old energy, but the energy is largely
mechanical. The indefinable something that makes the difference
between
energetic talent and infallible genius, if it has not quite
disappeared, now
makes its appearance at relatively rare moments. Physical exhaustion
will
often give this lack-lustre quality to the work of an artist: the tree
produces what seems to be, so far as size and texture are concerned,
the
same fruit as of old; but the fruit has neither its old bloom nor its
old
sweetness or subtlety of savour. Mr. George Moore hit off all
differences of
this kind in an immortal phrase when he described Siegfried Wagner's
head as
'a deserted shrine.' One seems to be looking at the real Wagner, and
yet the
thing that made the real Wagner is not there. The altar stands, but
the god
no longer visits it. It is possible that something of the same sort
may have
happened in Debussy's case; his gradual settling into a small rut may
been
in part due to a mere failure of physical energy as a result of his
long
illness. But no one can survey his work as a whole without suspecting
that
the withdrawal of his mind upon itself, the obstinate exploitation of
ideas
and effects that had long since served their turn and outstayed their
welcome, were in part deliberate. He was not only, like every man of
genius,
something apart and distinct from the crowd. He consciously
specialised in
aloofness. In two or three little ways, apart from his music, we
detect the
fastidious aristocrat - I will not say Pharisee - anxious to show that
he is
not as other men are. The rule has always been to put the title of a
work at
the head of it. He, Debussy, not being as other men are, will put the
title
at the end, as in the two books of Preludes. The rule has always been
to
show a change of time in the course of a piece by placing the new
time-signature at the front of the bar; so he, Debussy, will show his
originality by placing it over the bar. He has been told, and believes
it,
that he is especially French; so he has to emphasise publicly not only
his
Debussyism but his Gallicism. Thus we get the charming little
affectation of
the title-pages of what he intended to be a series of six sonatas, -
the
make-believe engraving in place of printing, the imitation of the type
of
the old French title-pages, and the pseudo-archaic wording.
Isolated little affectations of this sort would mean next to nothing
in the
case of another composer. But in Debussy they are obviously part of
the same
self-centred mentality that we find in his music; they throw a small
but at
the same time significant light on certain obstinate affectations in
the
music, - affectations of Debussyism, affectations of Gallicism. They
are a
very tiny key to his mind, but they certainly help us to unlock one or
two
of the smaller doors of it. We who had not the honour of being of his
personal circle cannot as yet see all the interactions of the man and
the
musician; and candour compels us to say that in this point French
criticism,
for all its acuteness, has two striking defects. It runs too much
either to
the personal sentimentality of friendship, or to national
sentimentality. It
is too propagandist to be thoroughly critical. Some day no doubt we
shall
know Debussy, through his correspondence and the reminiscences of his
friends, as intimately as we know Beethoven or Wagner. It will then be
possible to discover precisely how much of conscious self-centredness,
of
personal and national vanity, went to the making of the singularly
restricted artistic personality he showed us all his life, indeed, but
especially in his later years.
It would be hardly too much to say that Debussy spent a third of his
life in
the discovery of himself, a third in the free and happy realisation of
himself, and the final third in the partial, painful loss of himself.
We are so accustomed to think of him in terms of some half-dozen great
works, and as a composer of the very latest day, that it is with a
little
shock that we realise that 'L'Après-midi d'un Faune' was written as
long ago
as 1894; that is to say, he had produced his most perfect orchestral
work -
or, if we admit the 'Fêtes' of the 'Trois Nocturnes' to share that
title
with 'L'Après-midi d'un Faune' - an orchestral work of a quality that
he
never afterwards surpassed, in the same year that Strauss began his
great
orchestral career with 'Till Eulenspiegel.' Juxtaposing the two
records in
this way, we see how limited was Debussy's growth after he had once
found
himself. Born in 1862, he begins his real work with the cantata
'L'Enfant
Prodigue' (1884). In 1886-87[1] came 'Le Printemps,' in 1887 'La
Damoiselle
Elue,' in 1888 the 'Deux Arabesques' and the 'Ariettes Oubliées,' in
1890
the 'Valse Romantique' and the 'Suite Bergamasque,' the five
Baudelaire
songs and some other small works, and in 1892 the first collection of
'Fêtes
Galantes.' In 1892 he began work upon 'Pelléas et Mélisande,' the
composition of which occupied him until 1902. Within that period and a
couple of added years came the other great works of his artistic
prime - the
Quartet (1893), 'L'Après-midi d'un Faune' (1894), the 'Trois
Nocturnes'
(1899), 'Pour le Piano' (1890), the 'Estampes' (1903), the 'Masques'
(1904),
'L'Isle Joyeuse,' the first book of the pianoforte 'Images' (1904-5),
and
'La Mer' (1903-5). The third period is one of mixed achievement; it
includes
the second set of 'Images' (1907), 'Children's Corner' (1908), the
'Images'
for orchestra that include the 'Iberia' (1909), the first book of
'Preludes'
(1910), 'Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien' (1911), the second book of
'Preludes
' (1913), the 'Jeux' (1913), 'La Boîte à Joujoux' (1913), the
'Berçeuse
héroïque' (1914), the 'Douze Etudes' (1915), the Violoncello Sonata
(1915),
the Sonata for flute, viola, and harp (1916), and the Violin Sonata
(1917).
It is not too fanciful, perhaps, to see in his very earliest work a
foreshadowing of that dubiety of style that was to hamper him all his
life.
In 'L'Enfant Prodigue' there are suggestions of three styles. The bulk
of
the cantata is in the current French idiom of its day. Lia's aria
represents
the youthful genius's improvement upon this; and the attempts at
Orientalism
in the prelude and elsewhere are probably reminiscences of the gipsy
and
other music that Debussy had heard in Russia a few years earlier; they
are
an exotic that he has not been able to assimilate with his style in
general.
In 'La Damoiselle Elue' of three years later we see him submitting to
the
first of those external influences that were to play so large a part
in
shaping him. In England, Pre-Raphaelitism owing in part to the
feebleness of
our music at that time, had come and gone without leaving any trace on
it.
In France, where the relationship between literary culture and musical
culture has for some time been much closer than it has ever been in
England,
the Pre-Raphaelite ideals filtered through from the men of letters to
Debussy. Rossetti's poem evokes new moods in the musician, and to some
extent a new style, but still without taking such complete possession
of him
as to endow him with a consistent style. Parts of the score, such as
the
12-8 melody in the prelude immediately before the voices begin, throw
back
to 'L'Enfant Prodigue.' There is a good deal of Wagner, especially of
'Tristan,' in the idiom. But the work as a whole is distinctive, and
the
first in which we get a hint of the Debussy we were to know later -
the
lover of vague outlines, of half-lights, of mysterious consonances and
dissonances of colour, the apostle of languor, the exclusivist in
thought
and in style. Twice there occurs in the harmony a chordal sequence in
which
he seems to be on the verge of the discovery of his famous
'whole-tone'
system; but he is as yet unconscious of its possibilities.
The work of the next three or four years shows Debussy developing
freely and
naturally. The independence of his thinking is unmistakable; but as
yet it
does not run to wilfulness. The style of the 'Arabesques' and the more
successful of the 'Ariettes oubliées' is perfect. There is no violent
break
with the past, but simply the quickening of certain delightful French
qualities by the infusion of a new personality. It looks as if a new
and
charming miniaturist is appearing, who will do, both in the pianoforte
piece
and in the song, something that has never been done before. The music
is at
once imprévue and logical. Even in the songs there is at yet on the
whole no
sign of the theorist dragging the practician at his chariot wheels,
though
he is obviously not quite at home in such an idiom as that of
'Spleen,'
where the music is voulue rather than sentie. Out of the languors and
gentlenesses of his own soul and of a certain type of French poetry he
makes
some charming little pictures, in a style that grows naturally out of
the
poetic moods and is fully equal to expressing them. It is noticeable
that in
his gayer and quicker music - the song 'Chevaux de bois,' for
example - he
has to adopt a much simpler harmonic idiom than in the slower and more
reflective songs; to the end of his days he never quite succeeded in
bringing the more emotional side of him and the childlike, heart-free
side
into the same focus of style. All this time the harmony is original
without
singularity, unprecise without weakness. Here and there the whole-tone
chord
(not the scale) seems to poke its hand out at us, but not obtrusively,
only
for a moment, and apparently unperceived by the composer. The 'Valse
romantique' has to this day a touch of strangeness about it, but there
is
nothing wilful or angular in the strangeness. The harmony, melody, and
rhythm are perfectly mated, which is more than can be said of them in
some
of the later works. The peculiar colour of the harmony comes largely
from
the lavish use of chords of the seventh and ninth, but these are not
as yet
an obsession with the composer; and always the common-chord arpeggios
come
in to keep the tonality steady. There is a faint hint at one point of
that
mixing of tonalities in separate registers that Debussy was so often
to put
to remarkable use in later years; but, as with the whole-tone chord,
it
remains no more than a hint. The style of the 'Suite Bergamasque,'
again, is
perfect; the freshness of the ideas is not more welcome than the easy
mastery in the ordering of them. There is no sign of the whole-tone
system,
but the harmony derives a peculiar colour from its use of seconds and
the
sudden juxtaposition of remote keys. A liberator seems indeed to have
come
into music, to take up, half-a-century later, the work of Chopin, -
the work
of redeeming the art from the excessive subjectivity of German
thought, of
endowing it with not only a new soul but a new body, swift and lithe
and
graceful. And that this exquisite, pellucid style could be made to
carry not
only gaiety and whimsicality but emotion of a deeper sort is proved in
the
lovely 'Clair de Lune.'
A contemporary would have felt justified in building the highest hopes
upon
the young genius who could manipulate thus easily and certainly the
beautiful new shapes his imagination conjured up. The composer was
plainly a
stylist of the first water; he had the two sure marks of style,
infallibility of touch combined with simplicity of means. The question
might
have suggested itself, 'How far can this economy of material and soft
transparency of substance be made to go in the expression of
profounder
feelings?' That is the question that Debussy seems to have put to
himself in
the five Baudelaire songs which are the weightiest products of his
first
period. We cannot turn these pages over to-day without a new respect
for the
young composer. He seems to have had an instinct that both his thought
and
his style were in need of expansion; and he made a brave attempt to
achieve
that expansion by assimilating what could be of service to him in
German
music. Not only do the Baudelaire songs touch depths of expression
beyond
anything that Debussy had reached before; not only is their harmony of
a new
richness and variety; they have a melodic freedom and interest that is
too
often lacking in his later music, and above all they reveal a rather
remarkable faculty for continuous, spacious design. One would put
them, as
regards form, in the same category as the greater songs of Strauss -
the
'Hymnus' and the 'Pilgers Morgenlied' - were one not afraid of wrongly
suggesting a Straussian influence. As a matter of fact, these songs of
Debussy anticipated those of Strauss by about seven years. The
provenance,
however, is the same in each case; it is the Beethoven-Wagner system
of
continuous symphonic development applied to the song. One can only
vaguely
speculate as to what might have happened had Debussy continued to
develop
along this line. But the system as a whole soon proved to be alien to
him.
His revulsion against Wagner about this time was no doubt only the
outward
visible sign of an inward change in him that had a wider and deeper
significance than merely Wagnerism or anti-Wagnerism. M. Louis Laloy
tells
us that up to 1889 Debussy was still a perfect Wagnerite. He had been
to
Bayreuth in that year, and had been 'moved to tears' by 'Parsifal,'
'Tristan,' and the 'Meistersinger.' If he did not actually make the
acquaintance of 'Boris Godounov' just after this, it was apparently
then
that he became penetrated by Moussorgsky's new and drastically
economical
style. 'In comparison with Moussorgsky,' says M. Laloy, 'Wagner seemed
to
him sophisticated: he returned in the following year, however, to the
holy
city, came back disabused, and undertook to demonstrate to his old
friend[2]
that one could not like at the same time two forms of art so opposed
to each
other. The friend, a fervent Wagnerian, would not hear of this; and th
e two
men parted company.
It was about this time that Debussy became intimate with Mallarmé and
his
circle. He had already shown his affinities with the insubstantial
mental
world - so remote from the heroic world of Wagner and the German
myths - of
the vaguer Pre-Raphaelites and of Verlaine; and he may have already
known
something of Maeterlinck, whose 'La Princesse Maleine' had been
published in
1889, and 'L'Intruse' and 'Les Aveugles' in 1890. Mallarmé's theories
did
not make a wholly new Debussy; but they led him to attach more
importance to
the elements in himself that were unconsciously making for the same
ideals
in music as the Mallarmé circle were trying to realise in poetry, -
the
revolt against Romanticism, the avoidance of rhetoric, over-emphasis,
and
false eloquence, and the need for the evocation of emotion by
suggestion
rather than direct statement. The whole ideal could not be more
succinctly
phrased than in Mallarmé's remark that what the poet should give us is
'the
horror of the forest, or the silent thunder afloat in the leaves; not
the
intrinsic dense wood of the trees.'[3] That, of course, is an ideal of
another kind than Wagner's, whose genius always ran to
over-copiousness.
Debussy exhausted his interest in the German ideal in the Baudelaire
songs,
where, to fill the big canvas, he is obviously energising more
laboriously
than was his wont; and the theories of Mallarmé and the symbolists
harmonized so perfectly with the real bent of his own genius that it
is not
surprising that his mind now took a new orientation. The harmonic
texture of
the songs is unusually full and compact. Once more, though now with
increasing frequency, we see him reaching out semi-consciously to the
whole-tone system. Though it is still far from being anything like an
obsession with him, he is obviously becoming alive to the more
extended
possibilities of it. Again the harmonies of the seventh and ninth
tempt him
by their richness and melting sweetness. Whether it be really so, or
whether
it only seems so in comparison with the works that preceded and
followed
these songs, the style of them strikes us as rather overloaded.
Debussy is
trying to carry a heavier pack than he is really built for. That,
apparently, was the conclusion he himself came to; for in the next
collection of songs, the first set of 'Fêtes galantes,' the texture
again
becomes one of exquisite simplicity and transparency.
This brings us to the critical year (1892) of Debussy's career. It was
in
that year that he discovered and was fascinated with Maeterlinck's
'Pelléas
et Mélisande,' and set himself to make that drama the evoker of his
real
personality and the generator or what he felt to be his real style. He
worked in quiet seclusion at the opera for ten years. That fact is in
itself, I think, significant. He did not so much work at it, as M.
Laloy
says, as 'dream upon it during these ten years, interrupting his
meditations
to write when he felt that the moment had come for fixing his thought.
It
was a process of slow condensation of dreams, a capturing of mystery,
a
revelation of hidden feelings, a long and marvellous exploration of
the
darknesses of consciousness.' The style of the opera fully bears this
out;
it is a style that has been discovered by search rather than one that
came
unbidden. It is a mistake, it is true, to speak of its style as if
that were
one. 'Pelléas et Mélisande' shows not one but several styles. Much of
it is
of no higher order than recitative, supported by an occasional chord.
A good
deal of it consists of vocal recitative over an orchestral figure or
two
that is sometimes reiterated with extraordinary effect. And there are
pages
of admirably sustained flow, in a style at once lyrical and dramatic.
Now
that the novelty of the work has passed off, it is seen that long
stretches
of it consist only of tricks that any ordinary capable musician could
perform equally well. It is doubtful, too, whether the style can
profitably
be put to any further use. The opera owes some of its success to
various
coincidences that are hardly likely to occur again. In most operas,
the
genius of the musician has to make up for what the 'book' lacks in
force and
style. But Maeterlinck's drama is a striking piece of literary work
apart
from the music; and it can quite well bear the main burden of the
stage
action on its own shoulders in the episodes where Debussy's music
amounts to
next to nothing. For all its mysticism, again, it is a first-rate
melodrama,
full of the kind of 'thrills' that orchestral music can so easily
underline.
In the third place, there was the luckiest, rarest coincidence between
the
general mental world of the poet and that of the composer. The
delicate
tenuous, mournful musical style that Debussy had been developing in
his
vocal works was the predestined counterpart of Maeterlinck's style and
of no
other. The musical method was suited to none but shadowy characters,
all of
them - even Golaud - rather under life-size, and all carrying about
with
them a sort of aura of plaintive melancholy. It is significant that
Debussy
produced no other opera after this. He is said to have been engaged
for some
years on a 'Tristan.' If that should ever appear, we shall be
interested to
see whether he had found a new dramatic style for the new subject, or
whether, relying on the 'Pelléas' style, he had been able - which one
would
à priori be strongly inclined to doubt - to make it cover quite
another
field of psychology and to draw characters of quite another stature.
'Pelléas et Mélisande,' I need hardly say, is a wonder-work. It is
extraordinary that a composer should have aimed at something so
entirely
different from anything that anyone had thought of writing before: it
is
still more extraordinary that he should have succeeded as he has done
in the
more distinguished portions of the score, for the sake of which we
gladly
forgive him the less distinguished and more mechanical portions. The
purpose
of this article, however, is not a detailed exposition of the beauties
even
of Debussy's greater works, but a study of the broad development of
his
thought and style. As regards thought, 'Pelléas' obviously makes no
attempt
to cover much wider ground than that of the earlier vocal works. And
as
regards style, while the composer has now attained a remarkable
mastery of
one or two implements, on the whole he is beginning to show a failure
of
general resource. His harmony is by now decidedly manneristic. Devices
that
were once his servants have overgrown into formulae that are now his
masters. He repeats himself again and again. His music often becomes
unrhythmically stiff; it is like a garment of heavy brocade that makes
the
wearer of it seem ungraceful because as he walks it does not 'give'
with the
body, and cannot fall into the infinity of changeful little folds that
'rhythm' means in tissues as in music. And the style has become
disjointed:
the music lives from hand to mouth, from bar to bar: there is no
steady
organic flow of blood through the body of it. Everything in the way of
logic
that music had painfully conquered in two or three hundred years is
put
aside as of no account. The miracle is that with so many glaring
weaknesses
the opera should be the striking fascinating thing it is.
The twelve years or so that ran from the commencement of 'Pelléas et
Mélisande' saw the production of most of the other works that give
Debussy
his place as one of the masters of our time. 'L'Après-midi d'un Faune'
and
the 'Fêtes' of the 'Nocturnes' are the two outstanding masterpieces of
this
period, completely original in idea, absolutely personal in style, and
logical and coherent from first to last, without a superfluous bar or
even a
superfluous note. In the Quartet, free as is the general style, and
exquisite as it mostly is in idea, we cannot resist the impression
that
small as the form is it is too large for him. Mere repetition
sometimes
takes the place of development; which of us does not feel that the
Andantino
would have been all the better if the entrancing conception of the
opening
could have been maintained to the end, and that the Finale is little
more
than German academicism masquerading in a French professorial robe?
His harmony, too, shows some signs of that stiffening into solid
blocks that
was later to become a mannerism with him that often broke the wing of
his
rhythm. Elsewhere, too, we see the theorist over-riding the artist,
the
manufacturer and vendor of a new article placing it in front of his
window
under any pretext, or without any pretext at all. The 'Danse sacrée'
and
'Danse profane' are in large part merely cheap and clumsy
exploitations of a
few harmonic oddities. How well one knows some of the more wooden of
them -
this, for instance:
He is like a child playing with a new toy that he persists not only in
playing with in the nursery but in dragging into the drawing-room and
out on
the lawn and into the street.
The novel resonances fascinate him for their own sake: he does not
know how
to make music of them, how to build them up into living constituents
of a
continuous idea. To vary the simile, he is a child with a tube of
paint the
colour of which delights him and which he dabs upon the drawing-paper
with
painful, irrelevant iteration. But in the work of this period there
are also
the admirable 'Masques,' 'L'Isle Joyeuse,' 'Pour le Piano,' 'Estampes'
('Pagodes,' 'La Soirée dans Grenade,' 'Jardins sous la Pluie'), and
the
first set of 'Images' ('Reflets dans l'eau,' 'Hommage à Rameau,'
'Mouvement
'). In all of these, except the 'Hommage à Rameau,' where he lapses
into the
unrhythmic stiffness of the 'Danse Sacrée,' he is at his very best,
moving
with perfect ease and freedom along the most unaccustomed ways,
drawing new
resonances from the pianoforte, capturing all sorts of phases of light
and
water and aerial vibration that had never been recorded in music
before. The
'Chansons de Bilitis' are a new and curiously successful experiment in
song-writing. If the second set of 'Fêtes Galantes' is not quite so
successful, that is because the calculation is a little more obvious
at
times; Debussy is too plainly bent on showing that he is Debussy. The
songs
of this period, indeed, are on the whole more sophisticated than the
pianoforte pieces and the orchestral works, because here he is more
intent
on realising the Mallarmé ideal. An interesting sidelight on his mind
is
thrown by the 'Proses Lyriques,' the words of which are his own. We
see him
manipulating the stock formulae of the symbolists with a sad lack of
humour.
Some of the phrases are the usual facile French clichés, such as the
description of ladies, 'les Frêles, les Folles,' who have in times
gone by
wandered among the trees of the scene, 'semant leur rire au gazon
grêle, aux
brises frôleuses la caresse charmeuse des hanches fleurissantes.' That
may
pass: but we cannot repress a smile to-day as we read of a 'white
shiver,'
of the waves 'chattering like mad little girls coming out of school,
amid
the frou-frous of their dresses,' of the 'naughty shower of rain' that
has
the effect on the little waves of creating 'frou-frous of flying
skirts,' of
the 'white kiss' of the moon, of the Sunday in the country, when
everyone in
his best makes for the outskirts of the town, and the 'trains go fast,
devoured by insatiable tunnels,' and 'the good signals along the line
exchange mechanical expressions with their solitary eye'! It is hardly
to be
wondered at that these facile falsities of poetry should generate, at
times,
a musical style equally facile and equally false.
---
Some Recollections Of Debussy
by G. Jean-Aubry
Leaving Paris for London a few months ago, I visited Claude Debussy on
the
morning of my departure. His health at that time was much improved; so
much
so that he was projecting plans for the future. I was able, without
any
effort, to make him believe that I thought their realisation possible;
but
for almost a year I had known him to be doomed, and had never entered
his
door in the Bois de Boulogne without a feeling of deep sadness, which
had to
be concealed. One day I had found him after a long and painful attack
of his
illness, spent and scarcely recognisable, without his usually keen
perception, and smiling weakly and pitiably. I tried to resign myself
to the
thought of never seeing him again; but then there came one of those
deceptive improvements that mocked fears and revealed him again so
alive, so
restored in verve and quickness of intellect, that I cherished a hope
that
he would live, and that the doctors had been wrong.
The last time I was to see Debussy we spoke at great length of his
coming to
England. I undertook negotiations for his conducting and playing the
pianoforte parts in his two Sonatas. On his saying that he did not yet
feel
well enough to take up composition again, but that he would gladly
write an
article, I begged him to send me one for publication in England. I did
my
best that day to awaken in him the sense of renewed life - that life
which I
had already believed lost, but for which, as I have said, I began to
hope
again. As he accompanied me to his door, and shook hands, he said (and
these
were the last words I heard from his lips): 'How I should like to go
back to
England with you.' And that day, indeed, he had spoken of the time
when we
had come here together in 1908. He ardently desired to revisit London,
for
he had many charming recollections of his first visit. But now I shall
never
hear that voice again, except in the tender remembrances I hold of
him -
that voice, mordant and passive by turns - and I shall no longer see
those
piercing eyes gazing so ironically and, at the same time, seemingly
under
the spell of an indefinite dreaminess.
His death is an irretrievable loss to French music; and for me,
personally,
is the loss of a friend whom I deeply admired, one who during more
than ten
years had given me many proofs of affectionate interest. To-morrow no
doubt
many of those who never did anything for him of his work will assert
that
they had been his ardent friends; yet of friends he had but few, for
he was
scarcely sociable and seldom communicative. I myself had indeed for a
long
time avoided his acquaintance, having been warned against his
misanthropy.
Yet from the day I knew him I felt that I had found an admirable man
of
balanced outlook, able to weigh the great and the little, jealously
guarding
his solitude, despising gossip and impulsiveness, avoiding the
inquisitive
journalist who is one of the drawbacks to fame, but full of confidence
in -
and even intimacy with - a chosen few.
To have found and held his friendship I consider one of the most
memorable
incidents of my career. To me it had been given to know and appreciate
his
work long ere the public acclaimed it. Debussy seemed to feel how my
admiration for his individual art ignored circumstance, and was
independent
even of our common friendship. I remember his strange satisfaction
when once
I declared that there was one of his works I did not like, although it
was
one for which he had a certain attachment. He loved liberty as much
for
others as for himself. There is abundant proof of his extreme dislike
of, or
at least indifference to, a certain uncritical admiration without
judgement,
a kind of fashion dictated by the 'Debussy snobs' which was entirely
foreign
to his nature, and perhaps more repugnant to those who admired the
composer
than the indifference once shown to his work by the greater public.
In a letter dated March 25, 1910, referring to a certain remembrance
very
precious to me, he said, in a significant postscript: 'In any case, my
dear
friend, one of my best recollections of that time when I was not yet
pestered with "Debussyism." '
I met Claude Debussy for the first time in 1906. Living in a
provincial
town, I had for several years known and greatly admired the 'Cinq
Poèmes de
Baudelaire,' the 'Chansons de Bilitis,' and 'Pelléas et Mélisande,'
and I
made each of my short visits to Paris a welcome opportunity of
improving my
acquaintance with these works. I made friends with artists like
Ricardo
Viñes and Madame Jane Bathori-Engel, who, almost alone at that time,
interpreted his pianoforte music and his songs. The young composer
André
Caplet, with whom I had long been on terms of intimacy, proposed to
introduce me to Debussy; but the rumours I had heard concerning the
composer
's seclusion, and at the same time the feeling that I would have no
interest
for him, always made me refuse, not withstanding my great desire to
know
him. Permeated as I was by the marvellous qualities of his work and by
the
moving and fascinating originality of his inspiration, I began to feel
a
desire to express the feelings awakened in me and to communicate to
others,
by means of articles and lectures, my admiration for and my belief in
the
composer. The result was that one day, in 1906, Debussy let me know
through
a friend that he would like to see me. I relate this occurrence
because it
shows the artist in a different light from that in which he has
usually been
viewed. At that time I was simply a young man with but few intimate
friends,
a unit in the population of a large commercial town; my literary
beginnings
as yet contained hardly anything of note, and were rich only in
enthusiasm
and artistic zeal. Claude Debussy, on the other hand, had already
known the
adverse criticisms and the dawn of glory which 'Pelléas et Mélisande'
brought to him, and had already won the twofold distinction of a
remarkable
composer and an unsociable man. And yet he showed uncommon interest in
an
unknown young man who had a predilection for his work. Afterwards I
had
several opportunities - rare enough, for I did not wish to importune
him -
to introduce or commend friends to him, and he invariably showed them
great
kindness and cordiality. I can call to mind here, in London, my friend
Frank
Liebich.
In 1907, when Mr. T. J. Guéritte founded the Sociéte des Concerts
Français
and gave his first concerts in London, Newcastle, Sheffield, and
Leeds, I
told Debussy of our intentions, for I had some share in the making of
those
programmes. Guéritte and I share the honour of giving the first
performance
in England of the String Quartet, in December, 1907. But the following
translation of an extract from the letter Debussy wrote to me some
little
time before, on October 26, 1907, may be of more particular interest
to
English readers:
"Please forgive my not having replied sooner
to your kind letter and thanked you for your
activity. If my name can be of use to you, do
not hesitate to avail yourself of it, and may
England deal kindly with you. By the way, it
always seemed to me that English people have
a merely 'official' taste for music, the exigencies
of which have, so far, been quite sufficiently
met by Handel and Sullivan. I do not see Cardiff
on the list of towns you are going to visit.
Surely that town is an important musical centre
where French music would be cordially received?"
To tell the truth, this allusion to Cardiff is attributable to the
fact that
his brother lived there at that time. But already he had shown a
desire to
know how the British public would judge his music, and to come to
England
himself to ascertain how his works would be received.
I might perhaps quote here the following passages from another letter
written at the same period (December 11, 1907), to show the interest
he took
in the first efforts to make his works, and particularly his chamber
music,
known in this country:
"I received the programme of your concerts
in England; it is perfect, and I have no doubt
that English people will appreciate its elegant
concision. Very often, through absence of
care or taste in the making of programmes,
the result resembles a badly-framed picture. It
is a pity! And is it not preferable to cater for
the good taste of a few, even at the risk of not
pleasing the bad taste of the many?"
This is indeed admirable propaganda, above any kind of personality, a
thing
for which one must be grateful to you. I rely upon seeing you in
London.
Your presence will be encouraging among so many strangers, whether
hostile
or friendly.
It was, in fact, at that moment that Debussy was invited to appear at
one of
the Queen's Hall Symphony Concerts, on Saturday, February 1, 1908. The
works
to be conducted by him were the 'Prélude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune'
and 'La
Mer' (first performance in England).
I was most anxious to see Debussy conduct, and particularly before an
English audience. His cordial wish that I should accompany him to
London, or
that we should at least find each other there, would have conquered
any
possible resistance. However, I feared for a moment that the sate of
my
health might not permit the journey which I desired with all my heart
to
make. He wrote to me on January 22, 1908:
"MY DEAR FRIEND, - I assure you that
I heard with the greatest regret that you have
been ill. I thought of you on Sunday, and
hoped that I might see you. The London
concert is fixed for February 1, and I shall
stay at the Grosvenor Hotel (Victoria Station).
I trust that you have had time to recover
sufficiently to embark on a journey which I
fear will be strenuous, considering you will
have to cross the sea to hear 'The Sea' and
then to return by the sea.
Believe me, My dear friend,
Yours affectionately,
CLAUDE DEBUSSY"
I was present at that concert. We lunched together - the composer,
Madame
Debussy, T. J. Guéritte, and myself - and I must say that in spite of
the
fact that he was greatly pleased with the orchestra after that
morning's
rehearsal, yet he was extremely nervous and uncomfortable. We did our
best
to reassure him, and told him that he was no stranger to the London
public,
that he would be sure of the warmest reception, and that there was no
cause
for any apprehension. But, sensitive and nervous as he was, this first
encounter made him restless.
The ovation he received from the English public at that concert was
like
nothing else I can remember. I can still see him in the lobby of
Queen's
Hall (where I went to shake hands with him immediately after the
performance), trying to hide his emotion, and saying repeatedly, 'How
nice
they are, how nice they are!'
And the Daily Telegraph, on February 4, 1908, was quite right in
making the
following report, due I think to Mr. Robin H. Legge:
"Musical London has always a goodly
welcome to offer the distinguished
strangers within its gates, and probably
no one present at Queen's Hall on
Saturday afternoon was more surprised at
the warmth of the greeting extended
to M. Claude Debussy on his first
professional visit to this country than the
French composer himself."
The London papers - I kept the cuttings, and they lie before me as I
write -
were unanimous in emphasising two facts, neither of which displeased
Debussy: the enthusiasm of the public and the physical resemblance of
the
composer to Dante Gabriel Rosetti, which some of the papers went so
far as
to designate as 'striking.'
At the door of Queen's Hall, and even to the door of his carriage,
Debussy,
fatigued by all his emotions, was the victim of the avidity of
autograph-collectors, who thrust threatening fountain-pens at him from
every
point of vantage. Shrinking into the corner of the carriage to escape
a kind
of enthusiasm to which he was anything but partial, he yet repeated
again
with a tired patience, 'How nice they are!'
I saw him fairly frequently in those years, and he often spoke to me
with
great satisfaction of the reception accorded to him in London;
moreover, the
fame of his work began to spread at that period. Musical England
awoke, and
while in 1906 Debussy was scarcely known (only the 'Prélude à
l'Après-Midi d
'un Faune' had been played at a Ballad Concert in 1904), at the
beginning of
1909 lectures on Debussy and performances of his works began to
multiply in
the large provincial towns as well as in London. Before we had any
work of
that kind in France, a little book on 'Claude Debussy,' by Mrs.
Liebich,
appeared in the series of 'Living Masters of Music,' edited by Mrs.
Rosa
Newmarch. In the course of the same year I was invited to lecture on
Debussy
at Aeolian Hall, but it had then become almost unnecessary to rouse
the
enthusiasm of British musical circles for our composer, who had
already
sufficiently stimulated the interest of certain critics and the
imagination
of the public.
I kept Debussy informed of all these activities, and of the propaganda
work
of Edwin Evans in London, W. G. Whittaker and T. J. Clark at
Newcastle, and
T. J. Guéritte, whenever it was practicable. In a lengthy article I
published in 'S.I.M.' I endeavoured to appreciate duly the evidences
of an
awakened English interest in French music, particularly in Debussy,
and the
early enthusiasm of the British public for his work.
Debussy was himself interested in this subject, and he wrote to me on
March
30, 1909, what he felt concerning English criticism and English
musical
audiences:
"What you have called 'Le Bilan du
Debussysme en Angleterre' is all the more
interesting - even leaving Debussy out - on
account of the tendency of those young
people which is revealed. It is far superior
to what is manufactured over here, where
people who write bad press-notices imagine
themselves to be critics."
All that keen interest, and the memory of his visit in 1908, made it
an easy
matter to persuade him to come to London once more and to conduct the
Queen'
s Hall Orchestra on Saturday, February 27, 1909, when the 'Nocturnes'
and 'L
'Après-Midi d'un Faune' were presented. On this occasion he was asked
to go
not only to London, but also to Manchester and Edinburgh, and he wrote
to me
on February 24, 1909, in jocose vein:
"I hope to see you in London and to tell
you of the wiles of your friend Guéritte,
who is trying to coax me into stopping at
Manchester on my return from Edinburgh.
That man has no pity."
But the state of the composer's health prevented him from going
anywhere but
to London. The 'Nocturnes' were received with great warmth, and the
public
even insisted on a repetition of 'Fêtes,' this piece having been
slightly
compromised by an oversight on the composer's part. The Society of
British
Composers, the Playgoers', and the Concert-goers' Clubs joined in a
reception given to the composer at Aeolian Hall on the night of
February 27.
On his return to France he told me of the great kindness shown to him,
which, owing to the precarious state of his health, he was unable
fully to
enjoy.
I am able to give further proof of Debussy's interest not only in the
efforts made in England on behalf of French music, but in those made
in
France for English music. The French public is often accused abroad of
showing little interest in foreign art, while the French papers are
said to
contain every day articles (particularly in war-time) wherein people
set
themselves up - often in the wrong way - as defenders of French art.
Debussy, who was as thoroughly French as it is possible to be, held
views
infinitely more correct than those 'jingoists,' wherever they hail
from, and
however reluctant he was to lend his name to any enterprise whatever,
he
wrote the following letter to T. J. Guéritte on September 10, 1909:
[Translation]
"My dear Guéritte, - You may be assured
of my greatest sympathy with your plan to
establish a Society for British Music in Paris,
and you may certainly make use of my name
in whatever way you please.
In spite of my native indifference to all that
resembles an undertaking of any kind, my
slight means of assisting you are at your
disposal.
Madame Debussy and myself send you our
kindest remembrances.
CLAUDE DEBUSSY"
Had any distinguished British composers shown a similar interest in
the
foundation of the Sociêté des Concerts Français in 1909? This question
is
merely intended as a reply to certain groundless reproaches which we
have
occasionally to suffer.
On May 21, 1909, the first Covent Garden performance of 'Pelléas at
Mélisande' was given. Debussy was to have directed the rehearsals, but
I
think I remember that he did not do so, though I do not know the
reason. I
always regretted his inability to be present at that first
performance,
which the Daily Telegraph called, in the headline to the report
published on
May 22, 1909, 'an artistic triumph.'
Since that year, in spite of all my efforts, Debussy never visited
England
again. Last year I had hoped to realise the plan that was so dear to
him,
but illness intervened. Never did he fail, however, to hold strongly
to his
inclination, and by way of gratitude to his English friends, he gave
English
titles to the little Suite, the 'Children's Corner,' which he wrote
for his
little daughter. He also devoted a page of his 'Boîte à joujoux' to
the
'English Soldier,' and in his Preludes appear the 'Minstrels,' 'Puck,'
and
'Pickwick,' like remembrances of that regard for England of which he
often
spoke to me. This natural inclination was perhaps enhanced by earlier
recollections of the time when he, still unknown and striving after
artistic
influence, set a poem of Rossetti, 'The Blessed Damozel.'
I have repeatedly stated elsewhere my opinion of Debussy's work, and I
propose to do so more exhaustively still in a book which I have
planned for
a long time and for which my articles were merely sketches. Debussy
has
often teased me in his friendly way about this book, for which he
accused me
of collecting the smallest details with a patience that he always
designated
by the one epithet - 'redoubtable.'
To-day, in the sadness I feel when I remember the past and when I look
over
those letters, one by one, which a distressing presentiment made me
carry
with me when I last left France, I can only think of the master and of
the
friend I have lost, the one who wrote to me, in his touching
simplicity:
The fact that you were not present at the performance of 'Iberia' made
me
almost think, at first, that you might be a little vexed with its
author.
You must never be that. I not only forget nothing, but you know all
the
reasons you have given me to make it impossible for me to harbour any
such
ugly feelings for you.
To me he was not only the author of 'Pelléas et Mélisande,' the
inimitable
interpreter of the musical afterthoughts of Mallarmé, Baudelaire, or
Verlaine, and the innovator of contemporary French music; he has been
the
object of even deeper admiration. I owe him so many joys - those
contained
in the beauty, the spirit, and the emotion of his works; those I have
found
in France and elsewhere during the last ten years in the endeavour to
make
others understand more and more all the messages contained in his
music, and
the reasons why it is reminiscent of the purest and rarest qualities
of our
race.
To me he was not merely a great composer: he was a representative
figure, a
symbol of all that is dearest to me in France. He was a friend with
whom I
had often discussed, in that bright studio of his, amidst those simple
ornaments and the books he loved, questions of French music and
literature,
and during these last years we spoke about all that the War had
awakened in
him who had been so deeply national. He had always striven most
earnestly to
find again our real traditions, and to fight ever against those like
Wagner'
s, which he admired, but at the same time considered it dangerous to
our art
to follow.
I think of that singular face which I shall never see again except in
closing my eyes and gazing upon the wall, dark and yet shining, which
is the
past, and I still hear his voice, his last words: 'How I should like
to go
back to England with you!'
---
Photos: http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/debussy_17.jpg
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~san/debussy.jpg
---
FROM: The Guardian (March 27th 1918) ~
The famous French composer Claude Achille Debussy, who has for some
time
been known to be suffering from cancer, died in Paris yesterday at the
age
of 55.
He was born at St. Germain-en-Laye August 22, 1862. Debussy is not
only the most original, but the purest and most refined and, since
Berlioz,
the first truly modern composer of the French school. As he has lived
almost
to the age of Beethoven and Shakespeare he can hardly be said to have
died
prematurely, but so fresh is his originality and so freshly
promulgated
amongst us has his music been that his death gives that impression.
His first works gave merely the sense of an exquisite refinement and
freshness, and when on quitting the class of E. Guiraud at the Paris
Conservatoire in 1884 he won the Rome prize with his scenic cantata
"L'Enfant Prodigue" there was little to proclaim the most
revolutionary of
modern French harmonists. In the setting of Rossetti's poem "The
Blessed
Damozel," for female voices and orchestra, he found a subject and a
medium
of expression as exquisite as even his imagination could desire, and
gave us
a work unique in its refinement and delicacy. The fastidiousness of
his
imagination now turned itself to the invention of harmonic subtleties,
and
his keen musical sense and delicacy of ear being backed by a poetic
sense of
the picturesque the development took the twofold form of a daring and
exquisitely subtle exploitation of the natural harmonic sensibility in
the
possibilities of harmony, suggested by modern science, and in as
exquisitely
judicious concessions to poetic ideas and the sense of the picturesque
as
can be reflected in music. These developments made a gulf between
Debussy
and the classical tradition as understood by the Saint-Saens school.
Debussy's genius in this harmonic development has not only been
vindicated
by the acceptation and admiration of his own works but by the adhesion
of a
host of followers, whose work has made the modern French school the
most
significant of our day.
By the unexampled popularity of his orchestral prelude on Mallarme's
"Apres-midi d'une Faune" Debussy has convinced the general ear of a
sensuous
colour and atmosphere in orchestral music of which it had not been
merely
unconscious but sceptical and even derisive. In the field of dramatic
music
the fastidious sensibility of Debussy has brought about an economy of
means
and a modesty of musical expression which, while essential to any
sincere or
true dramatic effect, were thought to be impossible of achievement.
The
subdued tones of Maeterlinck's drama "Pelleas at Melisande" provided
him an
ideal medium for a triumph which, though single and removed from every
other
achievement of its kind, stands alone to point the true way in the
future
development of dramatic music. Though less alone in the field of song,
Debussy here also is one of the leaders in the true assimilation of
song and
speech, and in the relation of lyric melody to the instrumental,
harmonic,
and poetic fancy.
Incidentally, Debussy is one of the few who know the true refinement
and
poetic nature of the pianoforte. Impressionism has never in his
pianoforte
accompaniments or solos degenerated to an impurity of line, or
harmonic
subtlety to harmonic vagueness or insecurity. No composer can in our
age
escape contact with the mechanical, and in his whole tone scales and
the
mechanical passage-work derived from them Debussy has yielded to this
force
to a degree on which too much stress is laid. The coldness of the
mechanical
has its own uses and its own brilliance. In its application Debussy
has, as
in everything else, shown himself refined and judicious. Of all
composers in
our day Debussy has the finest aesthetic. He has left us a world of
beautiful music and his influence is the most fertile since that of
Wagner.
Hyfler/Rosner
"Bill Schenley" <stra...@ma.rr.com> wrote in message
news:bzP0e.11747
> . He has left us a world of
> beautiful music and his influence is the most fertile
> since that of
> Wagner.
>
Great obits. Thanks for finding and posting.
robertc...@yahoo.com
Bill Schenley wrote:
> FROM: The Musical Times (May 1918) ~
>
> Portrait: http://debussy.diletante.net/imagenes/debussy.JPG
>
> The death of this distinguished composer has occasioned widespread
and
> profound regret. He made his own world and language, and whatever
> niche
> posterity may assign to him at least it must be a tribute to his
> independence and originality. In our issue for February, 1908, we
gave
> a
> sketch of his career from the pen of M.-D. Calvocoressi, accompanied
> with a
> portrait of the composer, reproduced from the oil-painting by Jacques
> Blanche. We now recapitulate briefly the leading incidents of his
> career.
Mr.Newman seems to be quite hard on Debussy's later music. I would love
to read the more personal piece by Jean-Aubry. Is that available to
you, Bill?
Bob Champ
Bill Schenley
> later music. I would love to read the more personal
> piece by Jean-Aubry. Is that available to you, Bill?
Yeah ... It is in the middle of the post ... but the line-breaks were
so bad you might have missed where Newman's piece ended and
Jean'Aubry's began ... Sorry. Anyway, here it is again:
Yours affectionately,
CLAUDE DEBUSSY."
robertc...@yahoo.com
Bill Schenley wrote:
> > Mr.Newman seems to be quite hard on Debussy's
> > later music. I would love to read the more personal
> > piece by Jean-Aubry. Is that available to you, Bill?
>
> Yeah ... It is in the middle of the post ... but the line-breaks were
> so bad you might have missed where Newman's piece ended and
> Jean'Aubry's began ... Sorry. Anyway, here it is again:
>
Many thanks, Bill. Debussy is a composer I admire but about whose
person and character I have little knowledge. This little article was
quite revelatory.
Bob Champ