1

K. Scott Eggert

Seminar on Historical Research

Course Paper

12/3/2012

Debussy and Images Vol. 1

There can be no doubt that the work of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) has had

major impact on the development of music in the West. His revolutionary approaches to

melody, harmony, and form turned the French art world on its collective ear, and quickly

impacted the rest of Europe and America. The lineage of influences that contributed to

Debussy’s musical voice stretches back to the ancient expressive forms of Greece and the

Orient, and leads forward to forms that birthed in America (jazz, minimalism).

It is also undoubtedly true that nowhere has his impact been felt more strongly

than in the field of piano music. Such great operatic and orchestral works as Pelléas et

Mélisande and Prélude á l’aprés d’un faune notwithstanding, one could read in Groves as

early as 1938 that “his piano music has probably done most towards the wide extension

of his fame among the generality of music-lovers. Technically he is the inventor of a new

pianism.”1 Even the relatively uneducated occasional listener of classical music will be

familiar with the lovely Clair de Lune (1890), perhaps more so than anything else he

wrote, orchestral or otherwise.

Yet for a clear picture of his brilliance one must examine what has been

determined by critical consensus to be most representative of his creative maturity, along

with the philosophy and development that led him to that pinnacle; and so for this

1 Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 3rd ed., s.v. “Debussy.”

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purpose let us look to the first set of his piano pieces to bear the evocative title Images

(1905).

Debussy’s Early Development

Achille-Claude Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire in October 1873 at the

age of 11 for classes in piano and solfége, having been recommended by his private piano

instructor Antoinette Mauté. Conservatiore theory professor Albert Lavignac maintained

a fruitful relationship with his young pupil, getting immense enjoyment from Claude’s

inquisitive mind and advanced comprehension of harmony and rhythm. Piano professor

M. Marmontel was less sympathetic to Debussy’s argumentativeness, and reacted to his

improvised preludes to practiced works (in which he would explore outlandish harmonic

structures and complex rhythms) with a combination of exasperation and amusement.

Debussy’s companion Gabriel Pierné wrote of Marmontel’s classes with him: “He used

to astonish us with his weird playing…he used literally to throw himself on the keyboard

and exaggerate every effect. He seemed to be in a violent rage with the instrument…”2

Nonetheless, Marmontel decreed in 1874 that he would “become a distinguished

musician,” and Debussy won high honors in his examinations in 1874 through 1877.

1878 saw his first failure in that regard, the beginning of a downward trend in

recognition by his teachers. Debussy grappled famously with conservative professor

Émile Durand, and was dropped from the class rolls in 1880, after deciding to become a

composer rather than a concert pianist (although he found his first employment as an

2 Léon Vallas, Claude Debussy: His Life and Works [New York: Dover Publications, 1973], 6.

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accompanist that same year). He rejoined the Conservatoire later that year to study

composition with Ernest Guiraud.

Maurice Emmanuel recorded one amusing incident in 1883 when Guiraud was

late to class. Debussy took to the piano and began a wild chromatic imitation of the sound

of the buses driving past, to the astonishment and fright of his companion students. He

barked at them: “What are you so shocked about? Can’t you listen to chords without

wanting to know their status and their destination? Where do they come from? Whither

are they going? What does it matter? Listen; that’s enough.”3 Another time he exhorted

them: “Dissonant chords must be resolved. What’s that you say? Consecutive fifths and

octaves are forbidden. Why? Parallel movement is condemned, and the sacrosanct

contrary movement is beatified. By what right, pray?”4 By such exclamations Debussy

earned himself a reputation amongst his more conservative colleagues and teachers as a

dangerous and subversive fanatic.

Yet we all know that such subversion is the mother of innovation. Staying true to

his instincts, Debussy pressed on, inspired by the work of Modest Mussorgsky and

Richard Wagner (although he would later rebel against Germanic influence) and had one

of his greatest musical epiphanies upon experiencing Vietnamese theatre and Javanese

gamelan music for the first time at the World Exposition of 1889. “He listened

spellbound to the ‘infinite arabesque’ of the Javanese gamelan with its percussion—the

Western equivalent of which he likened to the ‘barbaric din of a fairground’—and the

counterpoint ‘beside which Palestrina’s is child’s play’.”5 This emboldened him to

embrace modalism in his writing, declaring to Maurice Emmanuel that “music is neither

3 Ibid., 18. 4 Ibid., 18. 5 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 6th ed., s.v. “Claude Debussy: Debussyism.”

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major nor minor”. His friend Edmund Bailly, a publisher and amateur composer, also

introduced him to Indian raga. Incorporating these influences led him to the style of

writing originally dismissed as “Debussyism” but which later gained another more lasting

label: impressionism.

This was a term that Debussy himself despised—perhaps because he did not want

to be typecast—but one that has endured due to its accuracy of description. The term

originates from painting and was originally intended as an insult, but it was a label that

Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, and other artists eventually embraced. In art it represents the

obscuration of color and outline, mixing the photographic with the imaginary, using the

impressions of the inward eye. In music it refers to the obscuration of traditional

harmonic structure, the use of dissonance to enhance chords, adding textures like exotic

tastes and smells; as spoke Baudelaire, “Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se

respondent” (“The odors, the colors and the sounds relate to one another”).6 Impressionist

composers also tend to avoid the high drama of Romantic music, favoring a more

subdued approach. Debussy was greatly inspired by what he perceived as an ancient

Greek aesthetic; modal flavors, flowing rhythmic patterns and subtle nuances rather than

loud and overwrought declamations.

Robert Earl Mueller defined and categorized three apparent aspects of the

impressionist style:

1. Emphasis on sonorities that obscure definite tonal functions in terms of

traditional concepts. (Tertian structures which have no determined function and

resolution; chords with varying types of dissonant auxiliary notes; pentatonic, whole-

tone, modal sonorities.)

2. Linking of sonorities, unrelated to a tonal center based on a major or minor

scale, in a continuous mosaic-like pattern.

6 Nicolas Slonimsky, Lectionary of Music: An Entertaining Reference and Reader’s Companion [New

York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1989]. 228.

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3. Utilization in a composition of tonal “pillars” (melodic fragments, alone or in

conjunction with a particular sonorous structure) which have no clear harmonic

implications or do not define one tonality. Emphasis on harmonic variation of these

pillars as a developmental principle rather than melodic or thematic manipulation.7

Debussy’s experiments with this new way of writing were met with mixed

responses, naturally. He suffered the same fate of all innovators; ridicule and derision

from those who only understand or seek to maintain the status quo, and excitement from

those who hear the new voice and are enthralled by it. But press on he did, swimming

against the stream, even reassuring himself in his critical writings by the aid of a fictional

alter ego he presented as “M. Croche”:

‘Any imbecile can make fun of a pretty idea while it’s in the formative stage.

You can be sure that there is more potential for beauty in men who have been made fun

of than in those who flock like docile sheep to the slaughterhouse which a clearsighted

fate has readied for them. Remain unique…unblemished! Society’s enthusiasm spoils an

artist for me; I’m always afraid that he will end up being nothing but the expression of

society. Discipline must be sought in freedom, not in the formulas of a decrepit

philosophy fit only for the feebleminded. Listen to no one’s advice except that of the

wind, which tells us the story of the world.’8

Historical Backdrop

At the turn of the century, Wagner reigned supreme in the world of European art

music—and managed posthumously to permeate other areas of society as well, including

politics, visual art, literature and theatre. In spite of his vehement anti-Semitism his work

even managed to inspire Zionists, as well as liberals, bohemians, feminists, and African-

7 Robert Earl Mueller, “The Concept of Tonality in Impressionist Music: Based on the Works of Debussy

and Ravel” [PhD diss., Indiana University, 1954], 10. 8 Claude Debussy, “Conversation with Monsieur Croche,” in The Attentive Listener: Three Centuries of

Music Criticism, ed. Harry Haskell [London: Faber and Faber, 1995], 215.

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American activists.9 Simultaneous with this rise in Germanic cultural influence came a

burgeoning of philosophies alternative to the mainstream:

All over fin-de-siécle Europe, strange young men were tramping up narrow stairs

to garret rooms and opening doors to secret places. Occult and mystical societies—

Theosophist, Rosicrucian, Swedenborgian, kabbalistic, and neopagan—promised rupture

from the world of the present. In the political sphere, Communists, anarchists, and ultra-

nationalists plotted from various angles to overthrow the quasi-liberal monarchies of

Europe…The world was unstable, and it seemed that one colossal Idea, or, failing that,

one well-placed bomb, could bring it tumbling down. There was an almost titillating

sense of imminent catastrophe.10

Debussy was one of those looking outside the sphere of the bourgeois, dabbling in

the avant-garde, attending gatherings of the Symbolist poets (Mallarmé, Baudelaire) and

occultist groups such as the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross. At one time he even

called for the founding of a Society of Musical Esotericism. By the 1900’s Debussy was

on a different tack, looking to purge the Germanic from his work in favor of creating an

authentic French voice in a Modernist world—yet incorporating exotic influences in a

unique stew, expanding and redefining the rules of harmony. German Romanticism was

marked by high emotions, which Debussy eschewed in favor of a more intellectual

approach.

Following the trend of the 19th century, composers of Debussy’s time sought to

stand out from the crowd, each with their own unique tonal language. Debussy stood on

the bridge between conventional harmony and atonality, following a philosophy of

rugged individualism, paving the way for others. As this breakdown in traditional musical

laws transpired, interestingly enough, the old alliances between the empires of Europe

began to fray at the edges, leading down the path to the eventual Great War, around the

same time that Schoenberg and Stravinsky caused riots with their first forays into the

9 Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century [New York: Picador, 2007], 12. 10 Ibid., 40.

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“emancipation of the dissonance.” It seems more than just a little ironic that Debussy

died in 1918, quietly in his bed from cancer, almost unnoticed as the Germans were

pelting Paris with bombs.

“A New Pianism”

From 1888 to 1890, Debussy distinguished himself with piano pieces that have

endured in popularity to this day; the sets Deux Arabesques (1888) and Suite

Bergamasque (containing the aforementioned Clair de lune, 1890), Reverie (1890), and

Valse romantique (1890). After a long hiatus he returned to piano composition with Suite

pour le piano (1901), Masques (1904) and L’Isle joyeuse (1904).

James Friskin and Irwin Freundlich, in their excellent sourcebook Music for the

Piano, describe Debussy as “at the height of his power” beginning with Estampes (1903),

a title that means “prints.” One can see Debussy establishing a link between his music

and frozen images in the manner of a painter, as well as propensity for natural landscapes

and beautiful buildings to interpret musically, as we can see in his titles for the individual

pieces: Pagodes (depicting an Oriental temple), La soiree dans Grenade (“Evening in

Grenada”) and Jardins sous la pluie (“Gardens in the rain”). Continuing down this path

he reached a pinnacle with Images (1905), the first of two sets of piano music bearing

this name, the second set appearing in 1907. He also used this titular concept previously

in another piano set, Images oubliees (1894) and later in Images pour orchestre (1912).

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Images Vol. 1

Images was written between 1901 and 1905, and published by A. Durand & Fils

in that final year. In September of 1905 Debussy wrote to Jacques Durand regarding the

pieces: “I think I may say without undue pride, that I believe these three pieces will live

and will take their place in piano literature…either to the left of Schumann (as Chevillard

would say) or to the right of Chopin…as you like it.”11 The set consists of three pieces:

Reflets dans l’eau (“Reflections in the Water”), Hommage á Rameau (“Homage to

Rameau”) and Mouvement (“Movement”).

1. Reflets dans l’eau

The first piece, Reflets dans l’eau, is the most frequently performed of the set, to

this day. Friskin and Freundlich regard it as an outstanding piece of Debussy’s mature

period and the most successful out of the three. It stands as a fine example of the

impressionistic style at its most evocative, with cascading rhythmic and chordal patterns

easily reflecting its subject. E. Robert Schmitz describes it thus:

A subtle interplay of diatonicism with whole-toned series and short passages in

pentatonism is the tonal medium enriched by a ‘chordal’ conception which in truth is

made up of minute contrapuntal movements of patterns superimposed, crossing each

other, complementing or supplementing each other in their delineations, and in their

freedom bringing the rich by-product of dissonance, i.e., of simultaneous sounding of

intervals basic to the harmonic progression and of notes alien to it.12

In the opening theme Debussy presents a marvelous effect by first introducing a

slow three note theme (Ab-F-Eb) in the middle register while playing various inversions

of mixed dominant/subdominant sonorities in a spiral pattern above it, and then resolves

11 Ibid. 2, 164. 12 E. Robert Schmitz, The Piano Works of Claude Debussy [New York: Da Capo Press, 1984], 101.

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to a tonic chord with some added flavors, continuing the chordal pattern but embedding

the melodic answer to the original theme within the continuing spiral, in a manner that

leaves some question in the listener’s mind as to what the answer truly is (Eb-Db-C-Bb?

Eb-Db-Eb-F?). Rich harmonies play out in near-constant rippling arpeggios, exploring

contrasting rhythmic cycles and weaving the melodic in, around, above, below, and

through the center of the flow. This music flows over you like an intoxicating bath, but

also invites you participate as you listen, exploring the various layers of complexity,

allowing your own consciousness to make connections between the voices.

2. Hommage á Rameau

Hommage á Rameau honors a French composer of a different time, Jean-Philippe

Rameau (1683-1764), widely regarded as one of the most important composer/theorists

of the Renaissance, author of the groundbreaking work Treatise on Harmony (1722). The

piece is not composed as an imitation of Rameau’s work but as a tribute rendered in

Debussy’s own tonal language. Debussy’s admiration for Rameau is well documented in

his own writings and in remembered anecdotes such as his famous outburst “Vive

Rameau!” at the close of a public performance of Rameau’s Guilande in June 1904.13

Mostly Debussy spoke of the importance of his works to the French musical tradition:

“They combine a charming and delicate tenderness and strict declamation in the

recitatives…none of that affected German pomp…”14 “…he knew how to find sensibility

13 Nicolas Slonimsky. Music Since 1900, 5th ed., s.v. “22 June 1904.” 14 Terry Lynn Hudson. “Links Between Selected Works of Paul Dukas, Claude Debussy, and Maurice

Ravel and the Keyboard Works of Francois Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau” [PhD diss., University of

Texas at Austin, 1997], 80.

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within the harmony itself; and that he succeeded in capturing effects of color and certain

nuances that, before his time, musicians had not clearly understood.”15

Debussy writes dans le style d’une Sarabande mais sans rigueur (a dance loosely

in the style of a Sarabande) at the outset of the piece. Sarabande is a Spanish dance from

the Baroque period always done in a fairly slow triple meter, usually marked by a tying

together of the second and third beats of each measure. The piece is based in G sharp

minor but cycles through various medieval modes—Aeolian, Phrygian, Dorian,

maintaining a sound more ancient than the composer being honored.

It is not known how much of Debussy’s appreciation for Rameau is based on the

Treatise, but a few things bear mentioning with regard to this. Along with his love of

nature, Debussy’s love of symbolic mathematics, interest in occultism, and his use of the

Golden Section—also known as the Divine Proportion—is well documented.

The Divine Proportion is a geometrical proportion with fascinating

characteristics. Its presence is detected when both the larger of its two proportions is

divided by the smaller and the sum of the two proportions divided by the larger are both

equal to “the never ending, never repeating number 1.6180339887…” (Livio 4), a

number represented by the Greek letter called “phi”…Phi has generated enthusiasm

since antiquity due to its “almost uncanny way of popping up where it is least expected”

(7) in formal systems like mathematics as well as biological systems generated by

nature…it has also drawn the attention of biologists, artists, historians, architects,

psychologists, musicians (6), and composers.16

One of the ways Debussy incorporated the Golden Section is by instigating a

transitional passage in the measure that correlates with the Divine Proportion (total

number of measures multiplied by 0.61803…reveals the measure where this takes place).

In the Hommage this measure (46) is right in the middle of a unique phrase (measures 43-

47) that brings “a gradual acceleration not only of tempo but of tension”, as well as the

15 Ibid., 79. 16 Michael Vezzuto. “The Divine Proportion and its Uses in Musical Composition: an Investigation and

Interpretation” [master’s thesis, University of California Dominguez Hills, 2007], 1.

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first crescendo going all the way to forte; but what is most noteworthy is the unusual

mode, Lydian Dominant (Lydian with a flat 7th) based on D. This mode is made up of all

the closest approximations of the overtone series ascending from the tonic (partials 1, 9,

5, 11, 3, 27, and 7). Given that Rameau based his Treatise on the assertion that the

fundamental laws of harmony are based in the naturally occurring acoustic phenomenon

of harmonics, and demonstrated a mathematical and philosophical foundation for that

conclusion, it is reasonable to assume that this passage in particular—a rather joyous one

in the heart of a piece that begins and ends in a rather funereal mood—is where the true

homage to a revered maestro is taking place. (Note: in Reflets dans l’eau Debussy even

went so far as to structure the phrases according to the Fibonacci series—a series of

numbers related to each other by means of the Golden Section.17)

3. Mouvement

Mouvement, like Hommage, gets mixed reviews from the experts. Friskin and

Freundlich call it “musically a bit unsubstantial”; John Gillespie (Five Centuries of

Keyboard Music) dismisses it as “a kind of prelude based on insistent triplet rhythm”18;

Stewart Gordon goes further with “…built on an opening theme with a rather fragile

texture. This is contrasted with a fanfare-like fragment, some whole-tone excursions, and

a slightly more substantial middle theme. A whole-tone passage acts as a coda for the

piece, as it rises figurally by scale steps, receding into silence.”19

17 Roy Howat, The Art of French Piano Music: Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, Chabrier [New Haven/London:

Yale University Press, 2009], 51-55. 18 John Gillespie, Five Centuries of Keyboard Music [New York: Dover Publications, 1965], 334. 19 Stewart Gordon, A History of Keyboard Literature: Music for the Piano and its Forerunners [New York:

Schirmer Books, 1996], 367.

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There is no doubt that Mouvement is a bit of an oddity. First we have a title that

gives no image to work with; it stands as merely the description of an action that any one

or thing could engage in. Once again we have a three-note motif starting us off, but

repeating and cycling at a frenzied speed, so that it ceases to have any melodic character

at all but merely becomes a rhythmic undulation. This undulation is encased within a

repeating perfect 5th at first, and then the pattern spreads out to include notes above and

below. Other than two jarring effects when the notes spread out to dissonances at the last

eighth notes of measures 6 and 8, only diatonic pitches are used until measure 12, when a

shifting between dissonances adds new dimension to the harmony and the dance. We

cycle through a progression of sonorities in a counterpoint that speeds by us so quickly

we have no choice but to accept its effect as waves of color/smell/flavor that finally land

with a pedal C in the bass and ringing fifths clanging like bells in the upper registers, and

then the aforementioned “fanfare-like fragment,” ringing out triumphantly.

The dismissive attitude with which many experts have treated this piece speaks of

an unwillingness to plumb its depths—perhaps due to the way it simply does not fit the

conventions of its time. Yet on further examination we find this to be Debussy at his most

poetic. Schmitz, who is more generous with his praise, describes it thus:

…a composition of a basically abstract nature, despite the very human charm of

its central theme; an uninterrupted moto perpetuo of triplets in sixteenth-notes,

punctuated by steady eighth-notes, conveys a mechanical inexorability which is the

herald of the “machine age,” and for all its delicate texture embodies an early expression

of the rhythmic dominance which inspired many composers during the first quarter of the

twentieth century. The impression is that of a delicate wheel running at high velocity,

repulsing and then attracting strange harmonic elements, as though these were

microscopic animalcules, at times absorbed by the irresistible centrifugal force of

gyration.20

20 Ibid. 12, 108.

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Indeed, rhythm is important here, and so is precision. No room for the usual ebb

and flow of tempo that pianists indulge in at every opportunity; the motion is so constant

and unrelenting it calls for a rigidity of timing. Nothing even resembling a melodic idea

intrudes until measure 30 with the fanfare; this amounts to about 35 seconds of playing at

this tempo before the entrance. Too long for a mere introduction, this movement is the

whole idea of the piece, not the trumpet-blast that comes later on. The phenomenon of

motion itself, the dance of energy, is our subject—and any melodic idea would just be a

distraction. This is no painting of a newly mechanized world; what is happening here is a

quickening of kinetic energy, a gathering of forces that leads to a birth, the unfolding of a

flower, the bird breaking out of its shell. When did Debussy ever write of machines? His

subject, always, was nature. He used music to draw esoteric connections between the

actual and the imaginary. He looked deep into natural things to find evidence of the

supernatural. This piece represents the Primum Mobile, the animating principle, the

driver of Creation. It is absolutely brimming with occultist symbolism.

…Debussy was the first composer to turn entirely from the human and write

Nature-music pure and simple. It was his mission to begin at the first rung of the Devic

evolutionary ladder, and echo the music of the gnomes and fairies, the spirits of the water

and the spirits of the clouds…it has sufficed to show its similitude to the subtle music of

Nature, yet only those who possess clairaudience will realize how great that similitude.

For what may be heard with the physical ear—the sighing of the breeze, the laughter of

the brook—is but the outer manifestation of Nature’s minstrelsy; there is an inner song

made by every movement of the leaves, of the butterflies’ wings, of even the flower-

petals as they open to the kiss of the sun. And it is this which Debussy has reproduced as

far as it has been possible with our present-day instruments.21

(Cyril Scott, British composer-colleague of Debussy’s, 1879-1970)

21 Cyril Scott, Music: Its Secret Influence Throughout the Ages [Santa Fe: Sun Books, 1996], 136-137.

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Publication History

Debussy published his first work in 1882 (Nuit d'étoiles), and worked with several

publishers before signing an exclusive contract with A. Durand & Fils, a company

originally founded in 1869 as Durand-Schoenewerk & Cie by Marie-Auguste Durand

(1830-1909) and partners. Louis Schoenewerk withdrew from the company in 1891,

prompting Durand to reorganize the firm with his son Jacques as a new partner.

Jacques Massacrié Durand (1865-1928) and his father were both composers who

had studied at the Paris Conservatoire—Auguste at the same time as Saint-Saens, and

Jacques at the same time as Debussy. Jacques remained friends with Debussy and fellow

classmate Paul Dukas, another composer whose work he published. In July of 1903

Debussy signed a contract with Durand to publish both sets of Images for piano, as well

as for what would later become the Images pour orchestre. In July 1905 Debussy entered

into an exclusive contract with Durand to publish all his works from that day forward.

They also maintained a frequent correspondence for the remainder of Debussy’s life,

which Durand published as Lettres de Claude Debussy á son éditeur in 1927. Durand has

also published the works of Saint-Saens, Roussel, Fauré, Milhaud, Poulenc, and

Messiaen. The company currently exists as Éditions Durand-Salabert-Eschig and is

owned by Universal Music Publishing. They offer the complete works of Debussy as a

34-volume set.22

22 Durand-Salabert-Eschig Editions Musicales. “The Complete Works of Claude Debussy.”

http://www.durand-salabert-eschig.com/english/debussy.html [accessed Nov. 29, 2012].

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Performance History

The Hommage á Rameau debuted first (12/5/05), performed by Maurice

Dumesnil, but the honor of performing the complete Images in public for the first time

was reserved for Ricardo Vines, a Spanish pianist who also studied at the Paris

Conservatoire and whom Debussy had engaged to play his compositions on several

occasions prior (Pour le piano, Estampes, Masques, L'Isle joyeuse) since 1901. The

performance was recorded by Leon Vallas as having been at the Société Nationale on

March 3rd, 1906; James R. Briscoe and the Centre de Documentation Claude Debussy put

the first performance one month earlier on February 6.

Vines was known as a champion of brand new music and a specialist in French,

Spanish, Russian, and Latin American composers. He was also friends with Ravel and

Satie, and performed the debuts of Ravel’s Jeux d’eau and Gaspard de la nuit as well as

the second set of Images (2/21/08). Debussy went so far as to dedicate Poissons d’or, the

third piece of Images Vol. 2, to Vines.

When these three ‘Images’ (Vol. 1) were subsequently performed at one of the

Concerts Durand, the program contained notes by Maurice Emmanuel drawing attention

to some of the characteristics of the new Debussyist style and its ultra-modern chemical

ingredients, such as: the enveloping of the real notes of a chord in notes alien to it;

harmonic ellipses and omissions; passing chords traversed by the persistent outline of an

unchanging pattern. In his critique in La Liberté, Gaston Carraud drew attention to the

felicitous and very individual manner in which Debussy had adapted devices from the

technique of other composers like Balakiref. ‘We find the processes of subdivision and

inlaying common to the Russian composers, and all their voluptuous, capricious

picturesqueness, treated with a superior skill, subordinated to a keen, subtle sense of

logic, and transformed by unity of thought’. But this style of writing and this type of

sensibility did not appeal to all. Many of the audience, though moved by this subtle art,

seemed dumbfounded. According to the Guide Musical, Ricardo Vines succeeded ‘in

making the composer’s ideas intelligible, expressed though they were in the most abstract

formulas and the most complex equations. But it was highly entertaining to watch the

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expressions of the audience who were obviously overwhelmed by mingled feelings of

bewilderment, delight, and ecstasy’.23

The first apparent performances of Debussy’s piano works within the United

States occurred in Boston. Pianist George Copeland performed Deux Arabesques in

January of 1904, and then on November 24 1908 gave a performance of Reflets dans

l’eau and the newly published Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut from Images Vol.

2. Philip Hale of the Boston Journal had this to say about it: “In the music of this strange

being [Debussy], who now seems a genius beyond doubt and peradventure, and now a sly

mocker of all Debussites and ‘Pelléastres,’ the singular talent of Mr. Copeland is fully

displayed…Debussy has written nothing more daring. It is the limit of Impressionism.”24

Conclusion: the Endurance of Images

Images Vol. 1 stands at a unique place in the canon of great piano works. It shows

a composer at the height of his power and maturity, being exceptionally creative in a

daringly original format. It requires exceptional maturity and technical expertise to play,

although they are clearly written by a composer who understands the piano well. Reflets

remains the most popular of the three, perhaps at least partially for the reason that the

subject matter is more accessible. Long before Reflets and Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, many

composers used water as a source of inspiration, and many listeners easily related to it as

23 Ibid. 2, 164-165. 24 James R. Briscoe, “Debussy in Daleville: Toward Early Modernist Hearing in the United States,” in

Rethinking Debussy, ed. Elliott Antokoletz and Marianne Wheeldon [London: Oxford University Press,

2011], 236.

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an objet d’art. Homage to a long-dead composer written in medieval modes is a far

headier proposition.

This writer had the opportunity to interview Allen Birney, piano teacher and

former Music Director of the Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra, regarding Images. “These

are not easy pieces,” said Birney. “Particularly for the two outer ones, you’ve got to have

somebody technically secure…your average student is going to make a mess of these.

Especially the Reflets dans l’eau, which everybody loves, but not that many can play it

well. Debussy is a not so much a writer of emotional music, but a writer of creative

music. He appeals more to the intellect than to the obvious emotions…its harder for a

student until they are used to hearing well beyond the basic outline into the greater

detail.” Even on the page, the subtle nuances of this music are not readily apparent. Any

pianist who attempts them will only do them justice by taking pains to understand them

on a very deep level. Indeed, it is mature music for mature performing artists.

Yet it has endured, as has the legacy of impressionism. Debussy played his part to

free musical expression from the tyranny of arbitrary laws, and paved the way for the

journey away from tonality and back again. Weaving “sound-worlds,” constructing

chords made of sevenths, ninths, elevenths and thirteenths, obscuring the harmony and

melody—all these methods carried forward not just into Western art music but also into

jazz (Bix Beiderbecke of Chicago and Duke Ellington both named Debussy as a major

influence; New Orleans Creole musicians were educated in French opera and European

marches),25adding a richness of harmonic color to the simplicity of blues progressions.

Even New Age and minimalist composers could claim a sense of lineage to Debussy’s

25 Joachim E. Berendt, The Jazz Book: from Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond [Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill

Books, 1992], 27.

18

sound-worlds, modalism, and Oriental influence (gamelan), if not his sense of form or

poetry.

It is certain that listeners of the future will continue to be enthralled by the tone-

magic and elegant construction of Debussy’s finest pieces. His own prediction to Durand,

in the aforementioned letter in the fall of 1905 (see page 7), rings with prophetic truth.

Only a select few composers for the piano have had the same lasting impact, and the

ability to faithfully interpret his mature works reveals a true artistic sensibility in the heart

of the performer. And only those listeners who care to delve deeply into Debussy’s music

will discover not just the excellence of structure, but the depth of symbolism and

mysticism imbued there. His work remains a great gift to the artistic soul of the Western

world.

19

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Berendt, Joachim E. The Jazz Book: from Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond. Brooklyn:

Lawrence Hill Books, 1992.

Briscoe, James R. Claude Debussy: A Guide to Research. New York/London: Garland

Publishing, Inc., 1990.

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Debussy, Claude. Images Vol. 1. Paris: A. Durand & Fils, 1905.

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Scott, Cyril. Music: Its Secret Influence Throughout the Ages. Santa Fe: Sun Books,

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Dissertations

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