1902, was a very notable event in the history of French music; its
importance can only be compared with that of the first performance of
Lully's _Cadmus et Hermione_, Rameau's _Hippolyte et Aricie_, and
Quick's _Iphigénie en Aulide_; and it may be looked upon as one of the
three or four red-letter days in the calendar of our lyric stage.[199]
[Footnote 199: May I be allowed to say that I am trying to write this
study from a purely historical point of view, by eliminating all
personal feeling--which would be of no value here. As a matter of fact,
I am not a Debussyite; my sympathies are with quite another kind of art.
But I feel impelled to give homage to a great artist, whose work I am
able to judge with some impartiality.]
The success of _Pelléas et Mélisande_ is due to many things. Some of
them are trivial, such as fashion, which has certainly played its part
here as it has in all other successes, though it is a relatively weak
part; some of them are more important, and arise from something innate
in the spirit of French genius; and there are also moral and aesthetic
reasons for its success, and, in the widest sense, purely musical
reasons.
* * * * *
In speaking of the moral reasons of the success of _Pelléas et
Mélisande_, I would like to draw your attention to a form of thought
which is not confined to France, but which is common nowadays in a
section of the more distinguished members of European society, and which
has found expression in _Pelléas et Mélisande_. The atmosphere in which
Maeterlinck's drama moves makes one feel the melancholy resignation of
the will to Fate. We are shown that nothing can change the order of
events; that, despite our proud illusions, we are not master of
ourselves, but the servant of unknown and irresistible forces, which
direct the whole tragicomedy of our lives. We are told that no man is
responsible for what he likes and what he loves--that is if he knows
what he likes and loves--and that he lives and dies without knowing why.
These fatalistic ideas, reflecting the lassitude of the intellectual
aristocracy of Europe, have been wonderfully translated into music by
Debussy; and when you feel the poetic and sensual charm of the music,
the ideas become fascinating and intoxicating, and their spirit is very
infectious. For there is in all music an hypnotic power which is able to
reduce the mind to a state of voluptuous submission.
The cause of the artistic success of _Pelléas et Mélisande_ is of a more
specially French character, and marks a reaction that is at once
legitimate, natural, and inevitable; I would even say it is vital--a
reaction of French genius against foreign art, and especially against
Wagnerian art and its awkward representatives in France.
Is the Wagnerian drama perfectly adapted to German genius? I do not
think so; but that is a question which I will leave German musicians to
decide. For ourselves, we have the right to assert that the form of
Wagnerian drama is antipathetic to the spirit of French people--to their
artistic taste, to their ideas about the theatre, and to their musical
feeling. This form may have forced itself upon us, and, by the right of
victorious genius, may have strongly influenced the French mind, and may
do so again; but nothing will ever make it anything but a stranger in
our land.
It is not necessary to dwell upon the differences of taste. The
Wagnerian ideal is, before everything else, an ideal of power. Wagner's
passional and intellectual exaltation and his mystic sensualism are
poured out like a fiery torrent, which sweeps away and burns all before
it, taking no heed of barriers. Such an art cannot be bound by ordinary
rules; it has no need to fear bad taste--and I commend it. But it is
easy to understand that other ideals exist, and that another art might
be as expressive by its proprieties and niceties as by its richness and
force. And this former art--our own--is not so much a reaction against
Wagnerian art as a reaction against its caricatures in France and the
consequent abuse of an ill-regulated power.
Genius has a right to be what it will--to trample underfoot, if it
wishes, taste and morals and the whole of society. But when those who
are not geniuses wish to do the same thing they only make themselves
ridiculous and odious. There have been too many monkey Wagners in
France. During the last ten or twenty years scarcely one French musician
has escaped Wagner's influence. One understands only too well the revolt
of the French mind, in the name of naturalness and good taste, against
exaggerations and extremes of passion, whether sincere or not. _Pelléas
et Mélisande_ came as a manifestation of this revolt. It is an
uncompromising reaction against over-emphasis and excess, and against
anything that oversteps the limits of the imagination. This distaste of
exaggerated words and sentiments results in what is like a fear of
showing the feelings at all, even when they are most deeply stirred.
With Debussy the passions almost whisper; and it is by the imperceptible
vibrations of the melodic line that the love in the hearts of the
unhappy couple is shown, by the timid "Oh, why are you going?" at the
end of the first act, and the quiet "I love you, too," in the last scene
but one. Think of the wild lamentations of the dying Ysolde, and then of
the death of Mélisande, without cries and without words.
From a scenic point of view, _Pelléas et Mélisande_ is also quite
opposed to the Bayreuth ideal. The vast proportions--almost immoderate
proportions--of the Wagnerian drama, its compact structure and the
intense concentration of mind which from beginning to end holds these
enormous works and their ideology together, and which is often displayed
at the expense of the action and even the emotions, are as far removed
as they can be from the French love of clear, logical, and temperate
action. The little pictures of _Pelléas et Mélisande_, small and
sharply cut, each marking without stress a new stage in the evolution of
the drama, are built up in quite a different way from those of the
Wagnerian theatre.
And, as if he wished to accentuate this antagonism, the author of
_Pelléas et Mélisande_ is now writing a _Tristan_, whose plot is taken
from an old French poem, the text of which has been recently brought to
light by M. Bédier. In its calm and lofty strain it is a wonderful
contrast to Wagner's savage and pedantic, though sublime poem.
But it is especially by the manner in which they conceive the respective
relationships of poetry and music to opera that the two composers
differ. With Wagner, music is the kernel of the opera, the glowing
focus, the centre of attraction; it absorbs everything, and it stands
absolutely first. But that is not the French conception. The musical
stage, as we conceive it in France (if not what we actually possess),
should present such a combination of the arts as go to make an
harmonious whole. We demand that an equal balance shall be kept between
poetry and music; and if their equilibrium must be a little upset, we
should prefer that poetry was not the loser, as its utterance is more
conscious and rational. That was Gluck's aim; and because he realised it
so well he gained a reputation among the French public which nothing
will destroy. Debussy's strength lies in the methods by which he has
approached this ideal of musical temperateness and disinterestedness,
and in the way he has placed his genius as a composer at the service of
the drama. He has never sought to dominate Maeterlinck's poem, or to
swallow it up in a torrent of music; he has made it so much a part of
himself that at the present time no Frenchman is able to think of a
passage in the play without Debussy's music singing at the same time
within him.
But apart from all these reasons that make the work important in the
history of opera, there are purely musical reasons for its success,
which are of deeper significance still.[200] _Pelléas et Mélisande_ has
brought about a reform in the dramatic music of France. This reform is
concerned with several things, and, first of all, with recitative.
[Footnote 200: That is for musicians. But I am convinced that with the
mass of the public the other reasons have more weight--as is always the
case.]
In France we have never had--apart from a few attempts in
_opéra-comique_--a recitative that exactly expressed our natural speech.
Lully and Rameau took for their model the high-flown declamation of the
tragedy stage of their time. And French opera for the past twenty years
has chosen a more dangerous model still--the declamation of Wagner, with
its vocal leaps and its resounding and heavy accentuation. Nothing could
be more displeasing in French. All people of taste suffered from it,
though they did not admit it. At this time, Antoine, Gémier, and Guitry
were making theatrical declamation more natural, and this made the
exaggerated declamation of the French opera appear more ridiculous and
more archaic still. And so a reform in recitative was inevitable.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau had foreseen it in the very direction in which
Debussy[201] has accomplished it. He showed in his _Lettre sur la
musique française_ that there was no connection between the inflections
of French speech, "whose accents are so harmonious and simple," and "the
shrill and noisy intonations" of the recitative of French opera. And he
concluded by saying that the kind of recitative that would best suit us
should "wander between little intervals, and neither raise nor lower the
voice very much; and should have little sustained sound, no noise, and
no cries of any description--nothing, indeed, that resembled singing,
and little inequality in the duration or value of the notes, or in their
intervals." This is the very definition of Debussy's recitative.
[Footnote 201: We must also note that during the first half of the
seventeenth century people of taste objected to the very theatrical
declamation of French opera. "Our singers believe," wrote Mersenne, in
1636, "that the exclamations and emphasis used by the Italians in
singing savour too much of tragedies and comedies, and so they do not
wish to employ them."]
The symphonic fabric of _Pelléas et Mélisande_ differs just as widely
from Wagner's dramas. With Wagner it is a living thing that springs from
one great root, a system of interlaced phrases whose powerful growth
puts out branches in every direction, like an oak. Or, to take another
simile, it is like a painting, which though it has not been executed at
a single sitting, yet gives us that impression; and, in spite of the
retouching and altering to which it has been subjected, still has the
effect of a compact whole, of an indestructible amalgam, from which
nothing can be detached. Debussy's system, on the contrary, is, so to
speak, a sort of classic impressionism--an impressionism that is
refined, harmonious, and calm; that moves along in musical pictures,
each of which corresponds to a subtle and fleeting moment of the soul's
life; and the painting is done by clever little strokes put in with a
soft and delicate touch. This art is more allied to that of Moussorgski
(though without any of his roughness) than that of Wagner, in spite of
one or two reminiscences of _Parsifal_, which are only extraneous traits
in the work. In _Pelléas et Mélisande_ one finds no persistent
_leitmotifs_ running through the work, or themes which pretend to
translate into music the life of characters and types; but, instead, we
have phrases that express changing feelings, that change with the
feelings. More than that, Debussy's harmony is not, as it was with
Wagner and all the German school, a fettered harmony, tightly bound to
the despotic laws of counterpoint; it is, as Laloy[202] has said, a
harmony that is first of all harmonious, and has its origin and end in
itself.
[Footnote 202: No other critic has, I think, discerned so shrewdly
Debussy's art and genius. Some of his analyses are models of clever
intuition. The thought of the critic seems to be one with that of the
musician.]
As Debussy's art only attempts to give the impression of the moment,
without troubling itself with what may come after, it is free from care,
and takes its fill in the enjoyment of the moment. In the garden of
harmonies it selects the most beautiful flowers; for sincerity of
expression takes a second place with it, and its first idea is to
please. In this again it interprets the aesthetic sensualism of the
French race, which seeks pleasure in art, and does not willingly admit
ugliness, even when it seems to be justified by the needs of the drama
and of truth. Mozart shared the same thought: "Music," he said, "even in
the most terrible situations, ought never to offend the ear; it should
charm it even there; and, in short, always remain music."
As for Debussy's harmonic language, his originality does not consist, as
some of his foolish admirers have said, in the invention of new chords,
but in the new use he makes of them. A man is not a great artist because
he makes use of unresolved sevenths and ninths, consecutive major thirds
and ninths, and harmonic progressions based on a scale of whole tones;
one is only an artist when one makes them say something. And it is not
on account of the peculiarities of Debussy's style--of which one may
find isolated examples in great composers before him, in Chopin, Liszt,
Chabrier, and Richard Strauss--but because with Debussy these
peculiarities are an expression of his personality, and because _Pelléas
et Mélisande_, "the land of ninths," has a poetic atmosphere which is
like no other musical drama ever written.
Lastly, the orchestration is purposely restrained, light, and divided,
for Debussy has a fine disdain for those orgies of sound to which
Wagner's art has accustomed us; it is as sober and polished as a fine
classic phrase of the latter part of the seventeenth century. _Ne quid
nimis_ ("Nothing superfluous") is the artist's motto. Instead of
amalgamating the _timbres_ to get a massive effect, he disengages their
separate personalities, as it were, and delicately blends them without
changing their individual nature. Like the impressionist painters of
to-day, he paints with primary colours, but with a delicate moderation
that rejects anything harsh as if it were something unseemly.
* * * * *
I have given more than enough reasons to account for the success of
_Pelléas et Mélisande_ and the place that its admirers give it in the
history of opera. There is every reason to believe that the composer has
not been as acutely conscious of his musico-dramatic reform as his
disciples have been. The reform with him has a more instinctive
character; and that is what gives it its strength. It responds to an
unconscious yet profound need of the French spirit. I would even venture
to say that the historical importance of Debussy's work is greater than
its artistic value. His personality is not without faults, and the
gravest are perhaps negative faults--the absence of certain qualities,
and even of the strong and extravagant faults which made the heroes of
the art world, like Beethoven and Wagner. His voluptuous nature is at
once changeable and precise; and his dreams are as clear and delicate as
the art of a poet of the Pleiades in the sixteenth century, or of a
Japanese painter. But among all his gifts he has a quality which I have
not found so evident in any other musician--except perhaps Mozart; and
this quality is a genius for good taste. Debussy has it in excess, so
that he almost sacrifices the other elements of art to it, until the
passionate force of his music, even its very life, seems to be
impoverished. But one must not deceive oneself; that impoverishment is
only apparent, and in all his work there are evidences that his passion
is only veiled. It is only the trembling of the melodic line, or the
orchestration which, like a shadow passing before the eyes, tells us of
the drama that is being played in the hearts of his characters. This
lofty shame of emotion is something as rare in opera as a Racine tragedy
is in poetry--they are works of the same order, and both of them perfect
flowers of the French spirit. Anyone who lives in foreign parts and is
curious to know what France is like and understand her genius should
study _Pelléas et Mélisande_ as they would study Racine's _Bérénice_.
Not that Debussy's art entirely represents French genius any more than
Racine's does; for there is quite another side to it which is not
represented there; and that side is heroic action, the intoxication of
reason and laughter, the passion for light, the France of Rabelais,
Molière, Diderot, and in music, we will say--for want of better
names--the France of Berlioz and Bizet. To tell the truth, that is the
France I prefer. But Heaven preserve me from ignoring the other! It is
the balance between these two Frances that makes French genius. In our
contemporary music, _Pelléas et Mélisande_ is at one end of the pole of
our art and _Carmen_ is at the other. The one is all on the surface, all
life, with no shadows, and no underneath. The other is below the
surface, bathed in twilight, and enveloped in silence. And this double
ideal is the alternation between the gentle sunlight and the faint mist
that veils the soft, luminous sky of the Isle of France.
[Illustration]
THE AWAKENING
A SKETCH OF THE MUSICAL MOVEMENT IN PARIS SINCE 1870
It is not possible in a few pages to give an account of forty years of
active and fruitful life without many omissions, and also without a
certain dryness entailed by lists of names. But I have purposely
abstained from trying to arouse interest by any artifices of writing and
treatment, as I wish to let deeds speak for themselves.
I want to show, by this simple account, the splendid efforts made by
musicians in France since 1870, and the growth of the faith and energy
that has recreated French music. Such an awakening seems to me a fine
thing to look upon, and very comforting. But few people in France
realise it, outside a handful of musicians. It is to the public at large
I dedicate these pages, so that they may know what a generation of
artists with large hearts and strong determination have done for the
honour of our race. The nation must not be allowed to forget what she
owes to some of her sons.
But you must not accuse me of contradicting myself if in another work,
which will appear at the same time as this one,[203] I indulge in some
sarcasm over the failings and absurdities of French music to-day. I
think that for the last ten years French musicians have rather
imprudently and prematurely proclaimed their victory, and that, in a
general way, their works--apart from three or four--are not worth as
much as their endeavours. But their endeavours are heroic; and I know
nothing finer in the whole history of France. May they continue! But
that is only possible by practising a virtue--modesty. The completion of
a part is not the completion of the whole.
[Footnote 203: _Jean-Christophe à Paris_, 1904.]
PARIS AND MUSIC
The nature of Paris is so complex and unstable that one feels it is
presumptuous to try to define it. It is a city so highly-strung, so
ingrained with fickleness, and so changeable in its tastes, that a book
that truly describes it at the moment it is written is no longer
accurate by the time it is published. And then, there is not only one
Paris; there are two or three Parises--fashionable Paris, middle-class
Paris, intellectual Paris, vulgar Paris--all living side by side, but
intermingling very little. If you do not know the little towns within
the great Town, you cannot know the strong and often inconsistent life
of this great organism as a whole.
If one wishes to get an idea of the musical life of Paris, one must take
into account the variety of its centres and the perpetual flow of its
thought--a thought which never stops, but is always over-shooting the
goal for which it seemed bound. This incessant change of opinion is
scornfully called "fashion" by the foreigner. And there is, without
doubt, in the artistic aristocracy of Paris, as in all great towns, a
herd of idle people on the watch for new fashions--in art, as well as in
dress--who wish to single out certain of them for no serious reason at
all. But, in spite of their pretensions, they have only an infinitesimal
share in the changes of artistic taste. The origin of these changes is
in the Parisian brain itself--a brain that is quick and feverish, always
working, greedy of knowledge, easily tired, grasping to-day the
splendours of a work, seeing to-morrow its defects, building up
reputations as rapidly as it pulls them down, and yet, in spite of all
its apparent caprices, always logical and sincere. It has its momentary
infatuations and dislikes, but no lasting prejudices; and, by its
curiosity, its absolute liberty, and its very French habit of
criticising everything, it is a marvellous barometer, sensitive to all
the hidden currents of thought in the soul of the West, and often
indicating, months in advance, the variations and disturbances of the
artistic and political world.
And this barometer is registering what is happening just now in the
world of music, where a movement has been making itself felt in France
for several years, whose effect other nations--perhaps more musical
nations--will not feel till later. For the nations that have the
strongest artistic traditions are not necessarily those that are likely
to develop a new art. To do that one must have a virgin soil and spirits
untrammelled by a heritage from the past. In 1870 no one had a lighter
heritage to bear than French musicians; for the past had been forgotten,
and such a thing as real musical education did not exist.
The musical weakness of that time was a very curious thing, and has
given many people the impression that France has never been a musical
nation. Historically speaking, nothing could be more wrong. Certainly
there are races more gifted in music than others; but often the seeming
differences of race are really the differences of time; and a nation
appears great or little in its art according to what period of its
history we consider. England was a musical nation until the Revolution
of 1688; France was the greatest musical nation in the sixteenth
century; and the recent publications of M. Henry Expert have given us a
glimpse of the originality and perfection of the Franco-Belgian art
during the Renaissance. But without going back as far as that, we find
that Paris was a very musical town at the time of the Restoration, at
the time of the first performance of Beethoven's symphonies at the
Conservatoire, and the first great works of Berlioz, and the Italian
Opera. In Berlioz's _Mémoires_ you can read about the enthusiasm, the
tears, and the feeling, that the performances of Gluck's and Spontini's
operas aroused; and in the same book one sees clearly that this musical
warmth lasted until 1840, after which it died down little by little, and
was succeeded by complete musical apathy in the second Empire--an apathy
from which Berlioz suffered cruelly, so that one may even say he died
crushed by the indifference of the public. At this time Meyerbeer was
reigning at the Opera. This incredible weakening of musical feeling in
France, from 1840 to 1870, is nowhere better shown than in its romantic
and realistic writers, for whom music was an hermetically sealed door.
All these artists were "_visuels_," for whom music was only a noise.
Hugo is supposed to have said that Germany's inferiority was measured by
its superiority in music.[204] "The elder Dumas detested," Berlioz says,
"even bad music."[205] The journal of the Goncourts calmly reflects the
almost universal scorn of literary men for music. In a conversation
which took place in 1862 between Goncourt and Théophile Gautier,
Goncourt said:
"We confessed to him our complete infirmity, our musical deafness--we
who, at the most, only liked military music."