Debussy loved and respected the ocean. In 1905 he wrote from Eastbourne:
“The sea rolls with a wholly British correctness. There is a lawn combed
and brushed on which little bits of important and imperialistic English
frolic. But what a place to work! No noise, no pianos, except the
delicious mechanical pianos, no musicians talking about painting, no
painters discussing music. In short, a pretty place to cultivate
egoism.”
At Le Puy near Dieppe, August, 1906: “Here I am again with my old friend
the sea, always innumerable and beautiful. It is truly the one thing in
nature that puts you in your place; only one does not sufficiently
respect the sea. To wet in it bodies deformed by the daily life should
not be allowed; truly these arms and legs which move in ridiculous
rhythms—it is enough to make the fish weep. There should be only Sirens
in the sea, and could you wish that these estimable persons would be
willing to return to waters so badly frequented?”
Houlgate, 1911: “Here life and the sea continue—the first to contradict
our native savagery, the second to accomplish its sonorous going and
coming, which cradles the melancholy of those who are deceived by the
beach.”
Pourville, August, 1915: “Trees are good friends, better than the ocean,
which is in motion, wishing to trespass on the land, bite the rocks,
with the anger of a little girl—singular for a person of its importance.
One would understand it if it sent the vessels about their business as
disturbing vermin.”
“IBÉRIA”: “IMAGES” FOR ORCHESTRA, NO. 2
I. Par les rues et par les chemins (In the Streets and By-ways)
II. Les Parfums de la nuit (The Fragrance of the Night)
III. Le Matin d’un jour de fête (The Morning of a Festival Day)
The _Images_, of which _Ibéria_ is the second movement, are remarkable
in many ways and to be ranked among the first compositions of this
genius. They are impressionistic, but there is a sense of form; there is
also the finest proportion. This music is conspicuous for exquisite
effects of color. There are combinations of timbres and also contrasts
that were hitherto unknown. There are hints of Spanish melodies;
melodies not too openly exposed; there are intoxicating rhythms, sharply
defined, or elusive, and then they are the more madding.
This music is pleasingly remote from photographic realism. The title
might be “Impressions of Spain.” There is the suggestion of street life
and wild strains heard on bleak plains or savage mountains; of the music
of the people; of summer nights, warm and odorous; of the awakening of
life with the break of day; of endless jotas, tangos, seguidillas,
fandangoes; of gypsies with their spells brought from the East; of women
with Moorish blood. _Ibéria_ defies analysis and beggars description.
What phrase-mongering, however ingenious, would impart the beauty of
_Odors of the Night_ to him that did not hear the music? The music that
haunts should not be lightly or openly talked about. The impression made
by it should be guarded or confided only to the closest friend.
To speak of Debussy’s use of instruments to gain effects, of his ability
to reproduce what had not been heard by others, though they may have
felt it feebly and had the wish to hear it clearly and put it in
notation, would be a classroom task. To write of it for the general
reader would be only to rhapsodize. Now Debussy is a rhapsodist of the
rarest nature, and his musical speech is not to be translated by a
rhapsody in words.
* * *
_Ibéria_ is the second in a series of three orchestral compositions by
Debussy entitled _Images_.
The first, _Gigues_—it was originally entitled _Gigue Triste_—was
published in 1913 and performed for the first time at a Colonne concert,
Paris, January 26, 1913. _Ibéria_ was performed for the first time at a
Colonne concert in Paris on February 20, 1910, Gabriel Pierné,
conductor.
M. Boutarel wrote after the first performance that the hearers are
supposed to be in Spain. The bells of horses and mules are heard, and
the joyous sounds of wayfarers. The night falls; nature sleeps and is at
rest until bells and _aubades_ announce the dawn, and the world awakens
to life. “Debussy appears in this work to have exaggerated his tendency
to treat music with means of expression analogous to those of the
impressionistic painters. Nevertheless, the rhythm remains well defined
and frank in _Ibéria_. Do not look for any melodic design, nor any
carefully woven harmonic web. The composer of _Images_ attaches
importance only to tonal color. He puts his timbres side by side,
adopting a process like that of the _Tachistes_ or the ‘stipplers’ in
distributing coloring.” The Debussyites and “_Pelléastres_” wished
_Ibéria_ repeated, but, while the majority of the audience was willing
to applaud, it did not long for a repetition. Repeated the next Sunday,
_Ibéria_ aroused “frenetic applause and vehement protestations.”
_Ibéria_ is scored for these instruments: piccolo, three flutes (one
interchangeable with a second piccolo), two oboes, English horn, three
clarinets, three bassoons, double bassoon, four horns, three trumpets,
three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, side drum, tambourine,
castanets, xylophone, celesta, cymbals, three bells (F, G, A), two
harps, and the usual strings.
Debussy wrote on May 16, 1905, to Jacques Durand, his publisher, that he
was preparing these compositions for two pianofortes: “I. _Gigues
tristes._ II. _Ibéria._ III. _Valse_ (?).” In September of that year he
hoped to finish them. 1906, August 8: “I have at present three different
ways of finishing _Ibéria_. Shall I toss up a coin or search for a
fourth?” In September, 1907, the _Images_ would be ready as soon as the
_Rondes_ were “_comme je le veux et comme il faut_.” In 1908 Debussy was
hard at work on his opera, _The Fall of the House of Usher_, an opera of
which, it is said, no sketches have been found. (Durand received
Debussy’s libretto in 1917.) In 1909 he wrote that he had laid the
_Images_ aside “to the advantage of Edgar Allan Poe.” He also worked on
an opera, _The Devil in the Belfry_.
In 1910: “I have seen Pierné. I think he exaggerates the difficulties in
a performance of _Ibéria_.”
Debussy wrote on December 4, 1910, from Budapest, where he gave a
concert of his works, that _Ibéria_ was especially successful. “They
could not play _The Sea_ no more the _Nocturnes_, from want of
rehearsal. I was assured that the orchestra knew _The Sea_, for it had
been played through three times. Ah! my friend, if you had heard it!...
I assure you to put _Ibéria_ right in two rehearsals was, indeed, an
effort.... Don’t forget that these players understood me only through an
interpreter—a sort of Doctor of Law—who perhaps transmitted my thought
only by deforming it. I tried every means. I sang, made the gestures of
Italian pantomime, etc.—it was enough to touch the heart of a buffalo.
Well, they at last understood me, and I had the last word. I was
recalled like a ballet girl, and if the idolatrous crowd did not
unharness the horses of my carriage, it was because I had a simple taxi.
The moral of this journey is that I am not made to exercise the
profession of composer of music in a foreign land. The heroism of a
commercial traveler is needed. One must consent to a sort of compromise
which decidedly repels me.”
ANTON
DVOŘÁK
(Born at Mühlhausen [Nelahozeves] near Kralup, Bohemia, September 8,
1841; died at Prague, May 1, 1904)
The winning and endearing qualities of childhood were in Dvořák’s best
music: artless simplicity, irresistible frankness, delight in nature and
life. His music was best when it smacked of the soil, when he remembered
his early days, the strains of vagabond musicians, the dances dear to
his folk. One of a happily primitive people, he delighted in rhythm and
color. He was not the man to translate pictures, statues, poems, a
system of metaphysics, a gospel of pessimism into music. He was least
successful when he would be heroic, mystical, profound. It was an evil
day for him when England “discovered” him, patronized him, ordered
oratorios from him for her festivals, made him a doctor of music (as
though he were a cathedral organist), and tried to turn this
_Naturmensch_ into a drawing-room and church celebrity. When Dvořák is
dull, he is very dull. His Slavonic Dances and such a song as “Als die
alte Mutter” are worth a wilderness of “St. Ludmilas” and “Heldenlieds.”
And his work as a creative musician was no doubt at an end when he left
this country to go back to his beloved Prague.
Some have been inclined to think lightly of Dvořák because his best and
vital qualities were recognized by the people. This popularity irritated
those who believe that pure art is only for the few—the purists; they
forget Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Verdi, Wagner, Tchaikovsky.
But this popularity was based on the quick recognition of essential
qualities: melody, rhythm, color. Slavonic intensity has a purpose, an
esoteric meaning. Dvořák might have replied to lecturers, essayists, and
the genteel in Whitman’s words:
_Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well, I have—for the
Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has._
_Do you take it I would astonish? Does the daylight astonish? Does the
early redstail, twittering through the woods?_
Dvořák had his faults, and they were tiresome and exasperating. His
naïveté became a mannerism. Like a child, he delighted in vain
repetitions; he was at times too much pleased with rhythms and colors,
so that he mistook the exterior dress for the substance and forgot that
after all there was little or no substance behind the brilliant
trappings. We believe that he will ultimately be ranked among the minor
poets of music. His complete works may gather dust in libraries; but no
carefully chosen anthology will be without examples of his piquancy,
strength, and beauty in thought and expression.