“I love music too much
to speak of it otherwise than
passionately.”
DEBUSSY
“Art is always progressive;
it cannot return to the past,
which is definitely dead. Only imbéciles
and cowards look
backward. Then-Let us work!”
DEBUSSY
It is difficult to learn anything
of the boyhood and youth of this rare French composer.
Even his young manhood and later life were so guarded
and secluded that few outside his intimate circle knew
much of the man, except as mirrored in his music.
After all that is just as the composer wished, to
be known through his compositions, for in them he
revealed himself. They are transparent reflections
of his character, his aims and ideals.
Only the barest facts of his early
life can be told. We know that he was born at
Saint Germain-en-Laye, France, August 22, 1862.
From the very beginning he seemed precociously gifted
in music, and began at a very early age to study the
piano. His first lessons on the instrument were
received from Mme. de Sivry, a former pupil of
Chopin. At ten he entered the Paris Conservatoire,
obtaining his Solfège medals in 1874, ’75,
and ’76, under Lavignac; a second prize for piano
playing from Marmontel in 1877, a first prize for
accompanying in 1880; an accessory prize for counterpoint
and fugue in 1882, and finally the Grande Prix de
Rome, with his cantata, “L’Enfant Prodigue,”
in 1884, as a pupil of Guirand.
Thus in twelve years, or at the age
of twenty-two, the young musician was thoroughly furnished
for a career. He had worked through carefully,
from the beginning to the top, with thoroughness and
completeness, gaining his honors, slowly, step by step.
All this painstaking care, this overcoming of the
technical difficulties of his art, is what gave him
such complete command and freedom in using the medium
of tone and harmony, in his unique manner.
While at work in Paris, young Debussy
made an occasional side trip to another country.
In 1879 he visited Russia, where he learned to know
the music of that land, yet undreamed of by the western
artists. When his turn came to go to Rome, for
which honor he secured the prize, he sent home the
required compositions, a Symphonic Suite “Spring,”
and a lyric poem for a woman’s voice, with chorus
and orchestra, entitled “La Demoiselle
Élue.”
From the first Claude Debussy showed
himself a rare spirit, who looked at the subject of
musical art from a different angle than others had
done. For one thing he must have loved nature
with whole souled devotion, for he sought to reflect
her moods and inspirations in his compositions.
Once he said: “I prefer to hear a few notes
from an Egyptian shepherd’s flute, for he is
in accord with his scenery and hears harmonies unknown
to your treatises. Musicians too seldom turn
to the music inscribed in nature. It would benefit
them more to watch a sunrise than to listen to a performance
of the Pastorale Symphony. Go not to others for
advice but take counsel of the passing breezes, which
relate the history of the world to those who can listen.”
Again he says, in a way that shows
what delight he feels in beauty that is spontaneous
and natural:
“I lingered late one autumn
evening in the country, irresistibly fascinated by
the magic of old world forests. From yellowing
leaves, fluttering earthward, celebrating the glorious
agony of the trees, from the clangorous angélus
bidding the fields to slumber, rose a sweet persuasive
voice, counseling perfect oblivion. The sun was
setting solitary. Beasts and men turned peacefully
homeward, having accomplished their impersonal tasks.”
When as a youth Debussy was serving
with his regiment in France, he relates of the delight
he experienced in listening to the tones of the bugles
and bells. The former sounded over the camp for
the various military duties; the latter belonged to
a neighboring convent and rang out daily for services.
The resonance of the bugles and the far-reaching vibrations
of the bells, with their overtones and harmonics,
were specially noted by the young musician, and used
by him later in his music. It is a well-known
fact that every tone or sound is accompanied by a
whole series of other sounds; they are the vibrations
resulting from the fundamental tone. If the tone
C is played in the lower octave of the piano, no less
than sixteen overtones vibrate with it. A few
of these are audible to the ordinary listener, but
very keen ears will hear more of them. In Claude
Debussy’s compositions, his system of harmony
and tonality is intimately connected with these laws
of natural harmonics. His chords, for instance,
are remarkable for their shifting, vapory quality;
they seem to be on the border land between major and
minor-consonance and dissonance; again
they often appear to float in the air, without any
resolution whatever. It was a new aspect of music,
a new style of chord progression. At the same
time the young composer was well versed in old and
ancient music; he knew all the old scales, eight in
number, and used them in his compositions with compelling
charm. The influence of the old Gregorian chant
has given his music a certain fluidity, free rhythm,
a refinement, richness and variety peculiarly its own.
We can trace impressions of early
life in Debussy’s music, through his employment
of the old modes, the bell sounds which were familiar
to his boyhood, and also circumstances connected with
his later life. As a student in Rome, he threw
himself into the study of the music of Russian composers,
especially that of Moussorgsky; marks of the Oriental
coloring derived from these masters appear in his own
later music. When he returned to Paris for good,
he reflected in music the atmosphere of his environment.
By interest and temperament he was in sympathy with
the impressionistic school in art, whether it be in
painting, literature or in music. In Debussy’s
music the qualities of impressionism and symbolism
are very prominent. He employs sounds as though
they were colors, and blends them in such a way as
literally to paint a picture in tones, through a series
of shaded, many-hued chord progressions. Fluid,
flexible, vivid, these beautiful harmonies, seemingly
woven of refracted rays of light, merge into shadowy
melody, and free, flowing rhythm.
What we first hear in Debussy’s
music, is the strangeness of the harmony, the use
of certain scales, not so much new as unfamiliar.
Also the employment of sequences of fifths or seconds.
He often takes his subjects from nature, but in this
case seems to prefer a sky less blue and a landscape
more atmospheric than those of Italy, more like his
native France. His music, when known sufficiently,
will reveal a sense of proportion, balance and the
most exquisite taste. It may lack strength at
times, it may lack outbursts of passion and intensity,
but it is the perfection of refinement.
Mr. Ernest Newman, in writing of Debussy,
warmly praises the delightful naturalness of his early
compositions. “One would feel justified
in building the highest hopes on the young genius who
can manipulate so easily the beautiful shapes his
imagination conjures up.”
The work of the early period shows
Debussy developing freely and naturally. The
independence of his thinking is unmistakable, but it
does not run into wilfulness. There is no violent
break with the past, but simply the quickening of
certain French qualities by the infusion of a new
personality. It seemed as if a new and charming
miniaturist had appeared, who was doing both for piano
and song what had never been done before. The
style of the two Arabesques and the more successful
of the Ariettes oubliees is perfect. A liberator
seemed 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 objectivity
of German thought, of giving it not only a new soul
but a new body, swift, lithe and graceful. And
that this exquisitely clear, pellucid style could
be made to carry out not only gaiety and whimsicality
but emotion of a deeper sort, is proved by the lovely
“Clair de Lune.”
Among Debussy’s best known compositions
are “The Afternoon of a Faun,” composed
in 1894 and called his most perfect piece for orchestra,
which he never afterward surpassed. There are
also Three Nocturnes for orchestra. In piano
music, as we have briefly shown, he created a new
school for the player. All the way from the two
Arabesques just mentioned, through “Gardens
in the Rain,” “The Shadowy Cathedral,”
“A Night in Granada,” “The Girl
with Blond Hair,” up to the two books of remarkable
Preludes, it is a new world of exotic melody and harmony
to which he leads the way. “Art must be
hidden by art,” said Rameau, long ago, and this
is eminently true in Debussy’s music.
Debussy composed several works for
the stage, one of which was “Martyrdom of Saint
Sebastien,” but his “Pelleas and Melisande”
is the one supreme achievement in the lyric drama.
As one of his critics writes: “The reading
of the score of ‘Pelleas and Melisande’
remains for me one of the most marvelous lessons in
French art: it would be impossible for him to
express more with greater restraint of means.”
The music, which seems so complicated, is in reality
very simple. It sounds so shadowy and impalpable,
but it is really built up with as sure control as
the most classic work. It is indeed music which
appeals to refined and sensitive temperaments.
This mystical opera was produced in
Paris, at the Opera Comique, in April, 1902, and at
once made a sensation. It had any number of performances
and still continues as one of the high lights of the
French stage. Its fame soon reached America, and
the first performance was given in New York in 1907,
with a notable cast of singing actors, among whom
Mary Garden, as the heroine gave an unforgettable,
poetic interpretation.
Many songs have been left us by this
unique composer. He was especially fond of poetry
and steeped himself in the verse of Verlaine, Villon,
Baudelaire and Mallarme. He chose the most unexpected,
the most subtle, and wedded it to sounds which invariably
expressed the full meaning. He breathed the breath
of life into these vague, shadowy poems, just as he
made Maeterlinck’s “Pelleas” live
again.
As the years passed, Claude Debussy
won more and more distinction as a unique composer,
but also gained the reputation of being a very unsociable
man. Physically it has been said that in his youth
he seemed like an Assyrian Prince; through life he
retained his somewhat Asiatic appearance. His
eyes were slightly narrowed, his black hair curled
lightly over an extremely broad forehead. He spoke
little and often in brusque phrase. For this
reason he was frequently misunderstood, as the irony
and sarcasm with which he sometimes spoke did not
tend to make friends. But this attitude was only
turned toward those who did not comprehend him and
his ideals, or who endeavored to falsify what he believed
in and esteemed.
A friend of the artist writes:
“I met Claude Debussy for the
first time in 1906. Living myself in a provincial
town, I had for several years known and greatly admired
some of the songs and the opera, ‘Pelleas and
Melisande,’ and I made each of my short visits
to Paris an opportunity of improving my acquaintance
with these works. A young composer, Andre Caplet,
with whom I had long been intimate, proposed to introduce
me to Debussy; but the rumors I had heard about the
composer’s preferred seclusion always made me
refuse in spite of my great desire to know him.
I now had 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 and his work. The result was that
one day, in 1906, Debussy let me know through a friend,
that he would like to see me. From that day began
our friendship.”
Later the same friend wrote:
“Debussy was invited to appear
at Queen’s Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra,
on February 1, 1908, to conduct his ’Afternoon
of a Faun,’ and ‘The Sea.’ The
ovation he received from the English public was exceptional.
I can still see him in the lobby, shaking hands with
friends after the concert, trying to hide his emotion,
and saying repeatedly: ‘How nice they are-how
nice they are!’”
He went again the next year to London,
but the state of his health prevented his going anywhere
else. For a malady, which finally proved fatal,
seemed to attack the composer when in his prime, and
eventually put an end to his work. We cannot
guess what other art works he might have created.
But there must be some that have not yet seen the light.
It is known that he was wont to keep a composition
for some time in his desk, correcting and letting
it ripen, until he felt it was ready to be brought
out.
One of his cherished dreams had been
to compose a “Tristan.”
The characters of Tristan and Iseult
are primarily taken from a French legend. Debussy
felt the story was a French heritage and should be
restored to its original atmosphere and idea.
This it was his ardent desire to accomplish.
Debussy passed away March 26, 1918.
Since his desire to create a Tristan
has been made impossible, let us cherish the rich
heritage of piano, song and orchestral works, which
this original French artist and thinker has left behind,
to benefit art and his fellow man.