shares with everything else we know we may observe two different
methods of tone-combination which, working together, have given us
the elaborate texture of the modern art. That especially suited to
melodic instruments, like those used in the orchestra or the chorus,
puts melodies together as an engraver puts together lines, each
remaining distinct, standing off clearly from the others, representing
a different musical thought, and yet all agreeing, or, as we say,
harmonizing. This method, called polyphony, requiring great skill in
the composer and close attention from the audience, is illustrated by
such masterpieces as a fugue of Bach, a string quartet of Beethoven, or
the famous passage at the end of Wagner's Meistersinger Overture, where
four themes are driven abreast as in some proud chariot. It results in
a texture essentially composite, involving relations between elements
held in mind together --that is to say, it is thoughtful, and requires
answering thought for its appreciation.
But as soon as the piano, ill suited to melody because of its
unsustained tone, began to reach any degree of development--that is to
say, about the time of Schumann (1810-1856) and Chopin (1809-1849)--it
became evident that this instrument compensated for its shortcomings
in rendering polyphony by a special aptitude for another kind of
tone-combination, which we may call the homophonic or chordal. A great
many tones could be played at once, held either by the fingers or by
the damper-pedal, and made to shimmer with those thousand hues of the
tonal rainbow we call "overtones." There was apparently no limit to
the complexity of the agglomerations of tone that the ear could thus
be trained not only to accept but to delight in--the rule being, as
Chopin in his "fluid and vaporous sonorities" showed, that the greater
in number and the more dissonant or clashing in character were these
color tones, the more agreeably rich would be the resulting impression
on the ear. But however complex these tone associations or chords, it
is important to note that this resultant psychological impression was
simple and unified--that is, the ear perceived but one thing, and not
several as in the polyphonic style. There was therefore no comparison
of different elements, no thought or emotion; there was simply
sensation, physically delightful, mentally and emotionally meaningless.
Debussy has probably brought more talent and originality to the
elaboration of this method of writing for the piano than any other
composer since Chopin and Schumann. Open his pages anywhere and you
will find these wide-spaced chords, these gossamer arpeggios and
scales embroidering them, these nicely calculated grace-notes adding
just the dissonance needed to season the dish. Take, for instance,
the opening measures of "La Cathédrale engloutie" (Figure XVIII),
characteristically marked "Profoundly calm (in a softly sonorous mist)."
The intention to produce a misty, not to say foggy, homogeneity of
tone here is so obvious that it seems strange that just such passages
have aroused the ire of pedants who have tried to apply to them the
rules of the other way of writing--the polyphonic. When we wish diverse
melodies to stand out clearly one from another, we must avoid "parallel
fifths and octaves," which make them coalesce. Accordingly Debussy has
been blamed, by those who prefer rules to reason, for using precisely
the device which will give him the physical richness with mental
vacuity which he is seeking.
[Illustration: =FIGURE XVIII.
From "La Cathédrale engloutie" (Preludes, Book I).
(The incompleted ties indicate that the chord is to be kept
sounding by the pedal.)=]
When this admirable colorist wishes a brighter or more incisive
sonority than one of this kind, he resorts to dissonances, and
especially to the interval of the "second"--notes adjacent in the
scale. The opening measures of "Et la lune descend sur le temple qui
fut" (Figure XIX) afford an example of this in a quiet tone; more
clangorous qualities of it will be found in "Masques," "L'île joyeuse,"
and "Jardins sous la pluie." The first example illustrates what was
said of the simplicity for the mind, whatever the complexity for the
ear, of this kind of tone-combination. The chords contain a good many
notes each; but there emerges only one melody, and that rather obvious.
[Illustration: =FIGURE XIX.
"Et la lune descend sur la temple qui fut."=]
The same search for rich or brilliant color that led to this use of
"seconds," carried a little further, brought the composer to that
whole-tone scale (or scale entirely made up of "seconds," as C, D, E,
F-sharp, G-sharp, A-sharp, C) which he has used with such irresistible
appeal. He has, to be sure, no patent right in it. Moussorgsky,
Borodine, and others had used it before him; his French contemporaries
have used it with skill; and now that it is common property some have
even elicited from it strains of plangent force and manly energy
foreign to Debussy's temperament. The fact remains that he has made
it peculiarly his own by the subtlety, variety, and charm of his
employment of it, as may be seen, for example, throughout "Voiles," in
the first book of Préludes, and in scattered measures in almost any of
his pieces. The whole-tone scale is indeed pre-ordained by nature as a
goal to which such an art as Debussy's inevitably tends; its clashing
tones feed the greedy ear with the richest diet the gamut can provide;
at the same time the equivocal character of the chords, or rather the
single chord (the so-called "augmented triad") that can harmonize it,
and the self-contradictoriness of its tones from the point of view of
the older scale, do away with the sense of key and even of momentary
repose, and leave us groping in a tonal night in which, since there
is nothing to be observed, we can give ourselves up undisturbed to
dreaming.
Debussy is thus a true child of his time in his quest of the sensuous,
and a true child of his country in the subtlety with which he pursues
it. His Gallic taste saves him from the coarseness of so much of the
contemporary Teutonic art; and while his aim is no more spiritual
than that of the Germans, he prefers innuendo, implication, and
understatement to the gross exaggeration of Strauss, the vehemence
in platitude of Mahler, and the plodding literalness of Reger. Thus
opposing, as he has so effectively done, the ideal of mere force,
reducing in "Pelléas" the mammoth modern orchestra to a handful of men
skilfully exploited, substituting the most elusive sonorities of the
piano for the crashing magnificence of the Liszt school, everywhere
insisting on subtle quality rather than overwhelming quantity, he has
exercised one of the most beneficial of influences against vulgarity of
the bumptious type. But sybaritism, too, has its own vulgarity; the
question of aim is fundamental in art; and in judging the distinction
of Debussy's aims we cannot evade the question whether physical
pleasure, however refined, is the highest good an artist can seek. His
charm, beyond doubt, is great enough to justify his popularity. Yet it
would be regrettable if the student of modern French music, satisfied
with this charm, were to neglect the less popular but more virile, more
profound, and more spiritual music of César Franck, Ernest Chausson,
and Vincent d'Indy.
NOTE: Claude Debussy died in Paris, March 26, 1918.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] "Claude Debussy et son œuvre," by Daniel Chennevière, Paris, 1913.
V
VINCENT d'INDY
[Illustration: =VINCENT d'INDY AS A YOUNG MAN=]
V
VINCENT d'INDY
I
Our age, because of the natural failure of our inner powers, at first,
to keep pace with the recent unprecedented increase of our external
resources, will probably be known to the future as one of unparalleled
confusion. With the mental and moral habits and the nervous systems
inherited from a more placid generation, we find ourselves plunged in
this maelstrom produced by cheap printing, quick communication, and
facile transportation. Prepared to digest only a limited environment,
we are fed the whole world. No wonder we are distracted.... The
situation, of course, is full of interest to the more adventurous
temperaments; but however stimulating to the man of action it is
scarcely favorable to the artist, since art is born only of tranquil
emotion, firmly grasped and clearly arranged. Most contemporary
musicians are thus bewildered and to some extent defeated by the very
richness of the materials at hand; their art is not equal to the strain
put upon it by their greatly enlarged resources; and their music is in
consequence unindividual in expression, flabbily eclectic in style, and
vague or wandering in structure.
It may seem at first thought paradoxical that these melancholy results
of a momentary insufficiency of the mind to its materials should have
proved most fatal precisely in the country that in simpler times has
done most to create music. Strange it is, indeed, that Germany, which
in Beethoven voiced the spiritual aspiration, in Schumann the romantic
joy, and in Brahms the philosophic meditation of the whole world,
should find itself at length reduced to the half-impotent strivings of
a Mahler, to the learned lucubrations of a Reger, while mixed with even
the gold of its one genius, Strauss, there should be so much dross of
cheap sensationalism and irrelevant melodrama. Yet to consideration
these signs of a widespread decadence in German music will not by any
means remain incomprehensible. For it will be seen that the Teutonic
introspectiveness, the supreme gift of that temperament, incomparable
and sufficient endowment as it seemed in the musicians of the great
period, hardly suffices those who have to steer their way in a much
more complicated environment, surrounded by pitfalls, calling at every
step for qualities with which the typical German is by no means so
well supplied--intelligence, discrimination, moderation, and taste.
It is the lack of these intellectual or spiritual qualities, rather
than any falling off in purely emotional power, that has brought the
great stream of music that flowed through Bach, Beethoven, Schumann,
and Brahms to its end in the stagnant morasses of contemporary
Kapellmeistermusik, or scattered it in the showy but unsatisfying
jets of sensationalism. And as Russia still remains a bit barbaric,
England a little provincial, America immature, and Italy tainted with
operaticism (an ugly word for an ugly thing), it is chiefly in France,
with its racial genius of lucid intelligence, that we find a truly
vital contemporary music. There we owe it chiefly to the high creative
genius of César Franck, Belgian by birth and temperament, French
in education and intellectual clarity, and to the loyal co-labors,
creative, critical, and educational, of his pupils and disciples. If
there is to-day, despite the confusions of the time, a clear tradition
and a hopeful future for instrumental music, it is chiefly these modern
Frenchmen that we have to thank.
Especially has Vincent d'Indy, to-day dominant in the group,
contributed to its work for many years the indefatigable efforts of his
powerful and many-sided personality, more variously gifted than any
of the others, since he is not only a composer of genius, but a lucid
writer, an able organizer, and a teacher and conductor of singular
magnetism. He came under the influence of Franck at his most plastic
period; he was a youth of twenty-two when, in 1873, he entered Franck's
organ class at the Paris Conservatoire; and of the circumstances,
characteristic of both teacher and pupil, under which this most
fruitful relationship began, he has himself written in his "Life of
Franck."
"Having with great trouble," he says, "got upon paper a formless
quartet for piano and strings, I asked Franck for an appointment. When
I had played him the first movement, he remained a moment silent, and
then, turning toward me with a sad air, he said to me words I have
never forgotten, since they had a decisive action on my life: 'There
are good things here, energy, a certain instinct for dialogue of the
parts, ... the ideas are not bad, ... but that is not enough, it is not
made, and, in short, _you know nothing at all_.' Returning home in the
night (the interview had taken place very late in the evening) I said
to myself, in my wounded vanity, that Franck must be a reactionary,
understanding nothing of youthful, modern art. Nevertheless, calmer the
next morning, I took up my unhappy quartet and recalled one by one his
observations, ... and I was obliged to admit that he was right: I knew
absolutely nothing. I went then, almost trembling, to ask him to accept
me as a pupil."
At this time Franck, already fifty-one years old, was little
appreciated as a composer, appeared to the world as a hard-worked
organist who taught ten hours a day and wrote for two hours before
breakfast works seldom heard, and had indeed not yet discovered the
vein from which he so enriched music during the last ten years of his
life. Nevertheless d'Indy at once recognized the fruitfulness of his
ideas, devoted himself to a severe technical discipline in accordance
with them, and assumed that rôle of filial defender and expositor of
them in which he has never wearied from that day to this. There is
something not only rarely beautiful in itself, but most characteristic
of the purity of d'Indy's self-forgetful devotion to music, in the
loyalty which he has always given to his "Pater seraphicus," as
Franck's artistic sons called him, from the period when as a student
he left the conservatory which misprized his master, to the day
when, himself a master, he published his "Life of Franck." M. Romain
Rolland gives us a picture of it in his description of the first
performance, in March, 1888, of Franck's "Theme, fugue, and variation"
for harmonium and piano, at a concert of the _Société nationale de
musique_, when Franck played the harmonium, and d'Indy the piano.
"I always remember," says M. Rolland,[32] "his respectful attitude
toward the old musician, his studious care to follow his indications:
one would have thought he was a pupil, attentive and docile; and this
was touching from a young master, established by so many works--the
_Chant de la Cloche_, _Wallenstein_, the _Symphonie sur un thème
montagnard_--and perhaps better known and more popular than César
Franck himself. Since then twenty years have passed; I continue to see
him as I saw him that evening; and whatever happens now his image will
remain always for me closely associated with that of the great master
dominating, with a paternal smile, this small assembly of faithful
ones."
This "small assembly of faithful ones," the pupils of Franck, such as
Duparc, Chausson, Coquard, Bordes, Ropartz, Benoit, d'Indy, as well
as others, like Saint-Saëns and Fauré, who, though not his pupils,
have felt his influence, have virtually created since 1870, largely
under his inspiration, a new music in France. The story of it may be
read in M. Rolland's book, in the essay "Le renouveau." At the time
of the Franco-Prussian War (in which d'Indy served as a corporal of
the 105th regiment), symphonic and chamber music suffered almost
complete neglect in Paris. "Before 1870," writes M. Saint-Saëns,[33]
"a French composer who had the folly to venture into the domain of
instrumental music, had no other way to get his works played than to
organize a concert himself, inviting his friends and the critics.
The rare chamber music societies were as much closed to all new
comers as the orchestral concerts; their programs contained only the
celebrated names, above discussion, of the great classic symphonists.
At that time one had truly to be bereft of all common sense to write
music. It was in order to correct this state of things that a group
of musicians organized in February, 1871, the _Société nationale de
musique_, with the device 'Ars gallica,' and the avowed end of 'aiding
the production and familiarization of all serious musical works, of
French composers, and of encouraging, so far as may be in its power,
all musical tentatives, of whatever kind, which show on the part of
their author elevated and artistic aspirations.'" M. Rolland does not
hesitate to call the _Société nationale_ "the cradle and the sanctuary
of French art." "All that has been great in French music from 1870 to
1900," he says, "has come by way of it. Without it the greater part of
the works which are the honor of our music not only would not have been
performed, but perhaps would not even have been written." And he draws
from the programs records of the performance of important compositions
by Franck, Saint-Saëns, d'Indy, Chabrier, Lalo, Bruneau, Chausson,
Debussy, Dukas, Lekeu, Magnard, and Ravel.
Vincent d'Indy's personal contribution to the work of the society began
to be considerable from 1881 on, when the influence of the Franck
school became dominant. In 1886 his proposal to include in the programs
the works of classic and foreign composers led to the resignation of
Saint-Saëns and Bussine. In 1890, at the death of Franck, he became
president of the society. Under his influence the representation of
classical works has particularly increased--Palestrina, Vittoria,
Josquin, Bach, Handel, Rameau, Gluck, as well as Beethoven, Schumann,
Liszt, Brahms. Foreign contemporary music has been represented chiefly
by Strauss, Grieg, and the Russians. In recent years the _Société
nationale_ has been charged with taking on too exclusive a character,
especially with guarding the traditional at the expense of the new; and
the _Société musicale indépendante_ has been founded by some of the
younger men as a protest.
In 1900 d'Indy became president of the Schola Cantorum, founded six
years earlier by Charles Bordes, Alexandre Guilmant, and himself,
primarily for the cultivation of the church music based on the
Gregorian chant. In his discourse of inauguration he explained his
purpose of enlarging the function of the school to cover all musical
instruction; and while characteristically insisting that the means to
renovate modern music were to be found in the study of "the decorative
art of the plain chant, the architectural art of the Palestrina period,
and the expressive art of the great Italians of the seventeenth
century," yet promised to take his students "through the same path
that art has followed, so that, undergoing in their period of study
the transformations music has undergone through the centuries, they
will emerge from it so much the better armed for the modern combat,
in that they will have lived, so to speak, the life of art, and will
have assimilated in their natural order the forms which have logically
succeeded each other in the different epochs of artistic development."
Both in the special leaning toward the music of the church which his
devout and somewhat mystical temperament here suggested, and in the
broad eclecticism with which his intelligence insisted on combining it,
he showed clearly the influence of his master César Franck, whom indeed
he asserted to be in a sense "the grandfather of this Schola Cantorum,
since it is his system of teaching that we endeavor to continue and
apply here." Like his master he wished to cultivate in his students
both a solid learning, without which nothing vital can be contributed
to art, and the enthusiasm without which it degenerates into pedantry.
To understand the great influence for good exerted on French music by
the Schola, we need only recall d'Indy's description of "the noble
teaching of César Franck, founded on Bach and Beethoven, but admitting
besides all enthusiasms, all new and generous aspirations."[34]
In the sixteen years that d'Indy has been at the head of the Schola
Cantorum he has accomplished an amount of unselfish labor for the
advancement of music that would have been extraordinary under any
circumstances, and becomes almost incredible when we remember that
in the same period he has produced over half a dozen original works
of the first importance. He is indeed a man of unusual physical,
nervous, and mental strength, accustomed to indefatigable labor. Thus
in addition to all his teaching he organizes operatic performances
and choral, orchestral, and chamber-music concerts; he conducts, and
teaches others to conduct; he edits the classics--Rameau, Destouches,
Solomon de Rossi--and the folk-songs of his native mountains of the
Vivarais; he gives lectures and makes studies of the predecessors of
Beethoven, of Franck; he writes criticisms for the monthly press; and,
most serviceable of all perhaps to distant students, he describes the
principles of his art in a masterly and exhaustive treatise, the "Cours
de composition musicale," unfortunately not yet translated into English.
And all this is only his winter work. In the summer he retires to his
château of Faugs, near the little mountain village of Boffres, in
Ardèche, and there, in a room in the tower, whence on a clear day he
can see Mt. Blanc, he composes the works in which these principles
are so nobly exemplified. Besides the early "Chant de la Cloche," by
which he won the grand prize of the city of Paris in 1885 and first
established his reputation, he has written three other large choral
works: the two operas "Fervaal" (1895) and "L'Étranger" (1901), and
the oratorio "La Légende de St. Christophe," recently completed.
For orchestra, aside from the early trilogy of symphonic poems
"Wallenstein," over-Wagnerian in inspiration, and other early or
lesser works, there are four masterpieces of the first order: "Istar,"
symphonic variations, 1896; the second Symphony, in B flat, 1904; the
symphony, "Un Jour d'Été à la Montagne," 1905; and the symphonic poem
"Souvenirs," written to the memory of his wife, 1906. This incomplete
list may be finished with three equally masterly chamber-music pieces:
the second String Quartet, E major, 1897; the Violin Sonata, 1904, and
the Piano Sonata, 1907--not to mention the youthful Piano Quartet of
1878, or the delightful Trio for Clarinet, Violoncello, and Piano of
1887.