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8/18/2019 Portrait of Debussy 6, Debussy and French Music
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Portrait of Debussy. 6: Debussy and French Music
Rollo Myers
The Musical Times, Vol. 108, No. 1496. (Oct., 1967), pp. 899-901.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0027-4666%28196710%29108%3A1496%3C899%3APOD6DA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V
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and many passing details will tend to be submerged.
For Howells, as for Elgar and Delius, the ecstatic
and the elegiac-the visionary glory and the sense of
loss-are closely bound up together, and the
measure of this is to be found precisely in the har-
monic texture. Bearing in mind Howells's roots in
the West Midlands, in the country of the Three
Choirs, one might expect to discover some clear
affinity with Elgar, but in fact the 't rue light' in
Hymnus Paradisi
has a distinctly Delian radiance
(ex 3-vocal score, pp.88-9). The harmonic in-
flexions in this passage for chorus,l especially at
'true light' and 'endured in the heat', are unmis-
takable. Not that this music could ever be attributed
to Delius-quite apar t from the words Compare
it with the choral writing in, say,
Sea Drift
and some
striking differences in style at once emerge.
Even
here, at his most homophonic, Howells thinks
naturally in terms of line, and in general his chroma-
ticism has a firmer diatonic background-diatonic
and modal. But the Delian affinity remains. The
final pages of
Hym nus Paradisi
are the sort of thing
that Delius might have written had he worked within
the framework of the English Church and its choral
tradition. Howells's vision is 'evermore', Delius's
'nevermore', but the music speaks of a similar yearn-
ing. There is no mistaking a sunset, whichever way
you happen to be facing.
It says much for Howells's creative stature that
this comparison with Delius can be made unflinch-
ingly. How far there is any real debt to Delius is
difficult to tell, for Howells has so thoroughly
absorbed his influences. He is not an original, as
Delius was; he is both more limited and more com-
plex. Behind the fastidiousness and the precise
workmanship there is a retiring, self-effacing musical
personality, but at the same time an acute self-
awareness. His style is a synthesis of most of the
2the orchestra ente rs at the end of the fourt h bar but does no t
modify the harmony.
Portrait of Debussv-6
things characteristic of the English revival in its
Georgian phase.3 As used here, the term Georgian
denotes an attitude of mind rather than a definite
period of time-a desire to take refuge in an idealized
countryside and 'the pursuit of Beauty in her more
chaste and subtle guises'-but the years of World
War I and its aftermath are, of course, the critical
ones. In embracing this attitude, Howells has given
it his own distinctive emphasis. Significantly, the
poet he has set most extensively is not Housman but
de la Mare : the two cycles from
Peacock Pie
contain
several of his best songs, and their dream-like feeling
is really quite different from the typically Georgian
'lost content'. Perhaps the main weakness of the
Georgians generally is not their escapism but their
complacency: they are content with their 'lost
content', and that is fatal. Howells, no doubt, has
written his share of this minor pastoral and elegiac
music, but in the main his sense of anguish and of
aspiration have raised him well above it. And im-
plicit in his vision of the beautiful is a keen aware-
ness of its transience and vulnerability. There is
nothing complacent in that.
By summing up, refining and intensifying-and
even transcending?-the Georgian phase, Howells
has acquired a unique place in the English revival;
and it is a far more distinguished place than the
present lack of performances would lead one to
suppose. A chance to hear the Concerto for Strings
and the second piano concerto, both composed in
1939, would be particularly welcome, and it is time
the controversial
Missa Sabritzensis
(1954) was
thoroughly reconsidered:
I
was one of the doubters
at the first performance, but those who say it is
Howells's greatest achievement could well be
right.
most, not all: the hea rty and the rollicking have passed him
by. and he is too good an artist to mistake mere whimsy for
significant feeling.
< Y
reprod~irrccri v
penriisrio ~
o l
Bo o se )
riwXr
Rol lo Mye r s
DEBUSSY AND FRENCH MUSIC
In this series of articles we attempt to build a com-
posite portrait of' Debussy the musician through
examination of the very diferetzt impressions he left
on the mlrsic of other composers: itz general, and also
in particular by documentatiotz of wha t wor ks they
heard, and when, their statements, and the rejections
found in their own compositions.
As early as
1895,
when the only major works he had
published as yet were the String Quartet and the
Prelude
a
I'aprPs-midi d'lm faune,
Debussy, in a
letter to his friend Pierre Louys, made a highly
significant and revealing statement showing that he
was already fully aware that what he had set himself
to do in music would have far-reaching results:
I
am
working', he wrote, 'on things that will only be
understood by our grandchildren in the 20th cen-
tury.' (I take this to be the meaning of 'les petits-
enfants du XXe.siecle'.) And he goes on:' They alone
will see that fine feathers do not make a musician.
They will strip the idols of their veils, reveal~ng nly
a miserable skeleton beneath'.
What is interesting about this statement is ( a ) that
it can now be seen to be true; and
( b )
that it seems
to rule out the possibility that Debussy thought
himself likely to be an 'influence' on his immediate
successors. He was, of course , only too well and
scornfully aware that some of his methods were
being copied by the smaller fry among his contem-
poraries-did he not exclaim in disgust: 'Les
debussystes me tuent'?-but the last thing he wanted
to be was, in any sense, a
che fd 'ecole .
The truth is that great artists d o not so much have
a direct influence on other individual artists, as an
indirect influence on the whole future development
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of their art. Thus , for example, music has never
been quite the same since Beethoven, although
there are few composers one can think of whose
music bears any direct resemblance to that of the
creator of the
Missa Solemnis
or the late string
quartets . The same could be said of Rembrandt,
Cezanne, or Picasso; and among the moderns I
think Debussy is an outstanding example of the
pioneer who stands alone, without any immediate
followers, yet destined to exert a tremendous influ-
ence on future developments. This, of course, implies
recognition of the fact that while technical idio-
syncrasies and mannerisms can always be copied,
what is fundamental in the approach of any great
artist to his art will always be inimitab le. And th e
greatness of Debussy lay precisely in the fact that
his conception of what music ought to be and the
methods he envisaged to make his ideals come true
were so radically new that the composer of today is
confronted with an almost unlimited choice of
exploratory avenues to pursue. In a paper read at
the international seminar held in Paris in the
Debussy centenary year M Andre Souris made the
point that just as Mallarme was not merely con-
cerned to write a sonnet but to re-invent poetry,
while Cezanne similarly aimed a t re-inventing paint-
ing, so did Debussy also set out to change the very
nature of music and the rules and principles by
which it had hitherto been governed. His aim was,
in fact, to remould and reorganize musical thinking
from top to bottom -and it is undeniably from this
angle that any modern critical assessment of
Debussy s influence on the music of his and our own
time must be undertaken.
Perhaps one of the most curious things in con-
nexion with this particular aspect of the cas
Debussy is the apparent failure of his contem por-
aries to realize, as musicians everywhere toda y have
done, the full extent of his importance as an inno-
vator and founding father of 20th-century music.
An d this is true, not only of the generation that , so to
speak, grew up with him, o r followed him imme-
diately (a reaction to be expected), but also of F rench
musicians generally throughout the 30s and 40s
until the Back to Debussy movement set in, largely
due to the perspicacity of Pierre Boulez and other
members of the avant-garde, not only in France but
all over the world. Now that we are accustomed to
seeing Debussy in this new perspective and hearing
h i n ~ xtolled above all as a m aster of form and in-
ventor of all kinds of structural subtleties, it seems
strange that Cocte au, writing in 1918 in
Cock and
Harlequin, should h ave been obsessed with one aspect
only of Deb ussy s music-its so-called impres-
sionism and atmos pheric vagueness. Thus, for
exa mp le: Debu ssy missed his way because he fell
from the German frying-pan into the Russian fire .
Once again the pedal blurs rhythm and creates a
kind of fluid atmosphere congenial to
shortsighted
ears'.
O r again: The impressionist school substi-
tutes sunshine for light and sonority for rhythm.
Debussy played in French but used the Russian
pe da l .
.
one cannot get lost in a Debussy mist as
one can in a Wagner fog, but it is not good for one.
Enough of hammocks, garlands, and gond olas;
want some one to build me music I can live in, like
a house. Admittedly all this was part of Cocteau s
propaganda campaign in favour of Satie and to
prepare the way for Les Six and a down-to-earth
new music where th ere will be no caressing strings,
only a rich ch oir of w ood, brass and percussion ,
but it did represent, all the same, an attitude to-
wards Debussy and pre-1914-war French music
which was pretty comm on at the time. It is only fair
to say here that Cocteau in later life revised his
opinion of Debussy whose greatness he fully ac-
knowledged.
And yet, even the staunchest ad mirers of Debussy
among practising musicians were not necessarily
influenced by him. Charles
Koechlin, for example,
wro te: Certainly benefited from the innov ations
embodied in PeNtas et M lisande.
.
but in spite
of my admiration for Debussy, it cannot be said
that I was a Debussyist. My style of writing and
thou ght were di ffe ren t.. they showed a feeling-a
need for rhythm
in contrast
[my italics] to the ad-
mirable
Prihide d I'apr s-midi d'un . fame
and a
contrapuntal style of writing in which the spirit of
the fugue is never far away . By this time I had
heard
The Rite of Spring,
and Darius Milhaud had
introduced me to his first works, which reflected the
need felt for polytonal writing. It was from these
directions, then, that the wind of change was
blowing at tha t tim e; yet despite Milhaud s own
strong disapprova l of the impressionist school with
which Debussy, rightly or wrongly, had been asso-
ciated, he made it clear, in a broadcast some ten
years ago, that ever since his first meeting with
Debussy around 1905: my admiration for him
always grew and grew and never stopped , and th at
although the Six at that time were strongly against
Impressionism and all the complications of the
followers of Debussy met with rather complete
disapproval, we had only love for Debussy.
.
First of all, he had found a new langu age; in his
followers, of course, that is a conventionality of
language which we don t lik e. very often the
Impressionist music seems to be scattered in pieces
and go away like smoke or fireworks.
.
In the end, then, the reaction against Debussy
soon after his death an d during the 1930s and 40s
always turns out to be in reality a reaction against
his imitato rs, the so-called Debussystes . But who,
in fact, were they? Ap art from th e small fry, whose
very names today are forgotten, one might perh aps
include in this category composers like Pierne and
Andre C aplet, though this perhaps would be hardly
fair to two excellent musicians in their own right.
And among the very few who could be said to have
felt the influence of the real Debussy in a real sense
-that is to say those who learned som ething from
the tou gh conciseness and inventive subtleties of the
late works which have left any suggestion of im-
pressionism far behind-one might perhap s cite the
names of A lbert Rou ssel an d even Olivier Messiaen.
Then there is Paul Dukas, whose
Ariane et Barbe-
Bleue
inevitably reveals a certain indebtedness,
however involuntary, to
Pelleas,
though on a rather
different aesthetic plane; and last, but not least
amo ng those up on w hose should ers, if only for a
mo ment a nd however lightly, the M aster s man tle
may have descended-Maurice Ra vel himself.
9
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Here we are on controversial ground . It was no
doubt inevitable that the co-existence and contem-
poraneity of two such outstanding musicians should
have led to misund erstandings and rivalries, al-
though these were fomented not so much (if at all)
by the protagonists themselves as by their respective
partisans in the musical maquis of those days, when
rival schools of musical thought were always sniping
at one another and carrying on guerrilla warfare in
the Press. In this particular controversy Pierre Lalo,
the music critic of Le Temps, played a leading part,
and brought matters to a head by publishing in his
paper on March 19, 1907, an article entitled 'Ravel
et le Debussysme' in which he attacked Ravel's
Histoires t~atu relles nd Une barque sur I'octan (in its
orchestral version) and added salt to the wound by
asserting: 'In both these works o ne hears continually
a very distinct echo of the music of M D ebussy. You
are. of course, aware that
M
Ravel is not the only
one of his kind: it is an indisputable fact that a very
large number of young French composers are
writing Debussyist music.' He then proceeded to
demolish the theory by which those accused of
'Debussyism' sought to defend themselves by argu-
ing that Debussy was merely one among many of a
whole generation of composers who all shared the
sam e ideals-a line of defence which Lalo qu ite
rightly dismissed as an 'impudent joke' which can-
not be supported on either aesthetic or historical
groun ds. Ravel for his part objected to being, by
in~ plic atio n, lassed amo ng the 'young composers'
in question, and said so in no uncertain terms in a
dignified letter to Le Temps in which he paid tribute
to 'an artist of genius, Claude Debussy', and chal-
lenged Lalo 'to produce a single witness who has
heard me utter any such absurdities. It is a matter of
indifference t o m e if I
am looked upo n, by those who
only know my works through the critics, as an
impudent plagiarist; but I object to being made to
appear, even in their eyes, as an imbecile'.
So far as the charge of plagiarism is concerned,
the boot may even have been on the other foot; for
was not Debussy accused of having 'borrowed'
rathe r freely in his So iri es duns Grenade (published
in 1903) from Ravel's early Haba nera (com posed in
1895)?-and did not Ravel on another occasion,
when a critic had given Debussy credit for having
inaugurated an entirely new pianistic style in his
L'ile joyeuse and Reflets duns I'eau (dated re-
spectively 1904 and 1905) feel bound to point out
that w hereas his own Jeux d'eau had ap peared in
1902. Debussy had by then written nothing for the
instrument more important than Pour le piano-'a
work which'. said Ravel, 'I need hardly say I
passionately admire, but which, from a purely
pianistic viewpoint, conveyed nothing really new.'
In any attempt to assess the extent to which either
comp oser can be said to have 'influenced' the other,
it is important to remember that Ravel, though 13
years Debussy's junior, had matured far more
rapidly, which explains, for example, why some of
his earlier piano music may seem to be more 'ad-
vanced' than Debussy's; but by the time Debussy
had got into his stride he had begun to forge ahead,
while Ravel's style was already crystallized and set
firmly in its mo uld . The refo re if the question of
influence arises at all, it could only in the long ru n
have been one way. Yet that Ravel, despite his
enormous admiration for Debussy (an admiration
which he never sought to hide) was ever influenced
by him would be very difficult to prove. Superficial
similarities there may have been: and that Ravel
was conscious of this is shown in a remark he once
made to a critic to the effect that any likeness be-
tween his music and Debussy's was due, not to any
influence, but to what he called an 'innate resem-
blance' (similitude innie).
But the fact remains that in methods, technique
and above all temperament they had very little in
common, Debussy being a pantheist and a devotee
of Nature, while Ravel delighted in artifice and pre-
ferred his emotions second-hand. T o quote Milhaud
again: 'The quality of Debussy is different.
everything came from his heart really, and also his
human qualities are always in his music. Ravel
was far away from me, because his music has this
sort of preciosity which I don't personally like very
m u c h .
.
A
subjective reaction, admittedly, but
one which underlines the essential difference be-
tween the two composers. Th e 'innate resemblance'
of which Ravel spoke was, I suggest, far more dis-
cernible in their general aesthetic outlook and liter-
ary tastes-both for example admired Mallarme,
Baudelaire, and
E
A . Poe, and both had a taste for
rare and precious sensations-than in their me thod s
and style of com pos ition . Th e classicism of Ravel's
form and his clearly defined and precise outlines
are in marked contrast with Debussy's far more
fluid structures and atmospheric harmonies; and
while Ravel did not mind if his scaffolding was
visible, Debussy was always anxious that his music
should sound like an improvisation. Debussy, in
fact, inhabited a different world, a world into which
Ravel did not seek to penetrate, and the label that
best fits his music, if label there must be, is that of
'symbolism' rather than 'impressionism', in so far
as the term expresses the symbolists' ideal of a n art
which, in the words of Paul Valery, 'unites the world
in which we live to the world by which we are
haunted. '
We seem, then, forced to the seemingly para-
doxical conclusion that Debussy has not been a
major influence on French music specifically, how-
ever great his influence on music in general ha s been.
He would have hated to be called a 'revolutionary'.
yet the revolution for which he was responsible-
what Henri Sauguet has called 'a permanent
revolution' because music since Debussy has en-
joyed a freedom it never knew before-is still
having a profoun d effect on the evolution of the art .
The Educational Group o l the Musical Instrument Association
oPiers £100 for an original organ co mpo sition lasting to
minutes. N o age limlt. Entries b y D e c 31 to EGMTA 5 Oxford
S t L o n d o n I
The New Philharmonia Orchestra announces the setting up of
the Martin Musical Scholarship Fund t o aid the post-graduate
studies o f young musicians .
Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowships are available in
1968
for those actively engaged in the creative arts. Only UK
cit izens may apply. N o age l imit . Enquiries by Nov 15 to 37
C harles St London W I