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  • 8/18/2019 Portrait of Debussy 5, Debussy and English Music

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    Portrait of Debussy. 5: Debussy and English Music

    Peter J. Pirie

    The Musical Times, Vol. 108, No. 1493. (Jul., 1967), pp. 599-601.

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    Portrait of Debussv-5

    Peter J.

    Pirie

    DEBUSSY

    A N D

    ENGLISH MUSIC

    In this series q articles 1r.e arrenlpt to brtilrl a

    oin

    posite portrait o f Debu s.\) the nzrtsician throrrgh

    exarrtination of the very diferent irrtpressions he left

    on the mrtsic of othev cornposers: in general, anrl also

    in particular 6 ) docrimentation of ~ohar works thej .

    heavrl, and w hen, their .staten lents, and the reflections

    fbrmd in their 0br.n compositions.

    In discussing Debussy s emotionally conlplicated

    relations with England several issues have to be

    clarified at the beginning. Debussy, though arguably

    the greatest French composer between Berlioz and

    Boulez, was less French in his essential nature than

    Faure or Ravel. In spite of his ambivalent attitude

    to Wagner the emotional atmosphere of Tvisran, and

    to a lesser extent

    Parsifal,

    found so strong an echo

    in his own temperament that such dark, sensual,

    erotic music is never far away in his mature works.

    It is interesting to note that his barbed sarcasm is

    usually directed at

    The Ring;

    for

    Tristan

    he had a

    reluctant, but passionate, respect. This realization

    clarifies his attitude to Wagner considerably. This

    is of importance because Debussy entered the Eng-

    lish consciousness in the trough of the great Wagner-

    ian wave; and English milsic in the first quarter of

    this century reveals the considerable influence of

    Wagner, but the Wagner of

    The Ring

    almost exclu-

    sively. This is clearly seen in the music of Hol-

    brooke and Bantock-Holbrooke actually attempt-

    ing an English

    Ring.

    Even in France the Wagnerian

    influence on d Indy, Chausson and Chabrier was

    that of The Ring. as can clearly be seen from their

    subject matter. In fact, the only definite cont inua-

    tion of the Tristan atmosphere and technique in the

    first quarter of the century is found in Debussy and

    the Second Viennese School-this is the elusive link

    between Debussy and Schoenberg. One must note

    too that Debussy was not only a distinguished

    individual composer hut also closely associated with

    the French symbolist movement and the artists of

    the Decadence generally.

    His early music can be described as light and

    pretty, with Massenet and Rimsky-Korsakov the

    predominating influences. The mature, character-

    istic works begin with

    L apres-rnidi d un fartne; and

    towards the end of his life his music underwent a

    change, becoming hard and prophetic. (It is worth

    noting in this connection that the picture of the lazy

    Debussy married to a rich woman and disinclined

    to compose has been proved false. Lockspeiser s

    authoritative new life proves that Emma Bardac s

    marriage cost her her inheritance, and that the

    desperately ill composer had to accept conducting

    engagements to provide for his wife and child. )

    His nearest English contemporaries were Elgar

    (1857-1934), Delius (1862-1934; he was born in the

    same year), and Holst (1874-1934). It would be

    difficult to imagine a composer who had less in

    common with Debussy than Elgar. If Debussy had

    Lockspe i ser : Debrrssy his lif

    on

    irrind

    1965).

    11,

    1 4

    Tristan

    at the back of his mind, as it were, Elgar, the

    eclectic, had in his musical make up, apart from a

    dash of Berlioz and a touch of Verdi, several

    different German strains. The Brahms influence is

    not the only one; comparison between the openings

    of Don Jrtan (1 888) and Froissarr (1890) reveals how

    strikingly Elgar was at one with the post-Wagner

    generation of German composers, while his later

    development revealed some kinship with Mahler.

    In this he takes the opposite face of the German

    coin from Debussy: the line that led from Schubert

    through Schumann to Mahler. There is nothing in

    Elgar of

    Tristatz s

    brooding eroticism.

    Like Bax and Frank Bridge, Delius stands a little

    apart from the most typical streams of English

    music; the nationalist school of Vaughan Williams,

    Holst, Rubbra, Finzi ere and the Elgarian eclectic of

    Elgar himself, Bliss, Walton and, distantly, Britten.

    He lived for many years in France, and had the

    same background of poets and painters as Debussy

    himself: one of his early works is called Paris. All

    this has led a contemporary critic to describe Delius

    as the only German Impressionist : a remark

    revealing a characteristic mastery of historical back-

    Edward

    Elgar

    A

    short biography of

    pages by \rX'illiam

    _\lcN augh t is available

    at

    S

    6d f rom

    NOVELLO CO LTD

    B or ou gh G ~ e e n

    Sevenoaks

    I

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    Elgar at Birchwood, near Malvern:

    a pkotograplt of about

    19 1

    ground but complete helplessness in face of an

    aesthetic and technical issue. Delius is not very

    German and his technique does not resemble that of

    Debussy. It may well be true that the first ten years

    or so of our lives are the most vital, for the music of

    Delius can be proved to be Nordic-to have strong

    English and Scandinavian characteristics. (Unless

    anyone wants to call him an American composer,

    on the strength of Ward s teaching, residence in

    Solano Grove, and Appalachia.) The texts Debussy

    and Delius set should be decisive-one cannot

    imagine Debussy setting Whitman, Nietzsche,

    Keller, Shelley. Like Elgar, Delius was born into

    the same world as Debussy, but that is where it ends.

    Debussy s technique of moving chromatic higher

    discords by exact transposition and step is nowhere

    found in Delius, who approaches such chords by

    leap and does not repeat them; Delius s long, flow-

    ing melodies, often folk-inspired if not actually folk

    tunes, are most unDebussian. On the other hand,

    his forms are quite unGerman. His most typical

    form, free variations with a meditative middle

    section, is found elsewhere only in the FitzwiNiam

    Virginal Book and the music of Arnold Bax: and in

    all three it is probably instinctive, if distinctively

    English. Thereis, actually, one example of Debussy s

    technique, in some of its aspects, exactly imitated, in

    Delius. This is the second half of In a Summer

    Garden, which uses individual chords as sensations

    in a pointillist technique. It is unique in Delius s

    output. The music of Holst, austere, cold, and

    transparent. shows no trace of awareness of the

    French composer. In fact, these three contempor-

    aries were set in their ways (very different ways)

    before Debussy came into their ken.

    But with the next generation it is the same story.

    Debussy s music did not impinge on England until

    the new century had well begun. (In

    1904

    Arnold

    Bax, progressive and alert, had not heard a note of

    his music.2) He was here, however, in

    1902, 1903,

    1904

    and

    1905;

    in

    1908, 1909,

    and

    1914

    he con-

    ducted here.3 There is a point here that must

    be

    taken into account. That is the fall of Oscar Wilde in

    1895.

    From the point of view of English apprecia-

    tion of the background to Debussy s music, apart

    from Debussy himself as an isolated modern

    composer, this is important, and I shall return to

    it.

    Vaughan Williams, like Elgar, is usually described

    as very English . I sometimes wonder. The two

    composers have little in common.

    It could be said

    that Elgar is the Englishman as the Englishman

    likes to see himself, while Vaughan Williams

    accords more with the continent of Europe s idea of

    us. We should not be flattered. To judge from the

    small Vaughan Williams pieces known over there,

    the main ingredient would seem to be insipidity.

    The most purely English of English composers, all

    partial views aside, is probably John Ireland. In

    fact, the English composers of the generation after

    Elgar have very little in common with each other;

    and this is also true of Elgar, Delius, and Holst. But

    there is one major psychological trait that all Eng-

    lish composers have in common, at least until

    1950

    or thereabouts, and to that too I shall later return.

    There is a tenuous link between Vaughan Williams

    and Debussy; Vaughan Williams studied with Ravel.

    Ravel and Debussy have not much in common, but I

    believe that Vaughan Williams s studies with the

    former were crucial to his survival of the great crisis

    of his life as a composer; the period between the

    Pastoral

    and F minor symphonies. The pupil of

    Stanford might not have made that great and

    triumphant leap forward without the encourage-

    ment of a progressive, continental composer in his

    youth. One should examine the Ravel String Quartet

    and Vaughan Williams s On Wenlock Edge side by

    side to see how much Vaughan Williams absorbed of

    Ravel s technique; no wonder Ravel admired On

    Wenlock Edge 4 And one should lay the opening of

    the

    Pastoral Symphony

    beside almost any mature

    work of Debussy to see what they have and have

    not in common. Vaughan Williams s consecutives

    are almost always triads, diatonic or modal, in

    streams against each other, and owing a good deal

    of their effect to the fact that each chord is not

    exactly transposed, but left to make its full impact as

    a unique structure conditioned by the scale pattern.

    It would perhaps be wrong to run through all the

    English composers between

    1900

    and

    1939

    denying

    any influence of Debussy; but even when that in-

    fluence is obvious, as it is on Cyril Scott and Eugene

    Goossens, it is of early music like

    Petite Suite, Pour

    le piano, Suite bergamasque, and La dam oiselle Plue.

    Moreover, one can never be sure that the influence

    is not that of the composers who influenced Debussy

    ee Bax: Farewell My Youth (1943), p.22, pp.58-9 for a

    remarkable thumb-nail sketch of Debussy

    3Lockspeiser, 11 116

    *Kennedy:

    The works

    o f Ralph

    Varrghan

    WiNiams (1966)

    chapter

    5

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    Lorrj;s' photograph of Debussy

    1894),

    lnutilated by the composer

    rather than that of Debussy himself, and, in the case

    of Constant Lambert, those who headed the

    reaction against Debussy-Satie, Les Six, Stravinsky.

    An inquiry sent to Sir Arthur Bliss produced

    courteous bewilderment: not only had Bliss never

    reacted to any Debussy except some early pieces-

    those named above, in fact-but it seemed that the

    later, great Debussy was not particularly sym-

    pathetic (as one expected). Gerald Abraham

    wrote that Bax's music was made up of 'the debris

    of impressionism'. It might be more true to say that

    Bax is the missing link between the two extreme

    poles of the 20th-century symphony: Sibelius and

    Mahler.

    He has the cold, Nordic, nature rugged-

    ness of the first and the anxiety, complexity, and

    mixture of the lyrical and the epic of the second.

    Apart from a deliberate parody in Mediterranean

    (and he parodied Vaughan Williams in

    Country

    Tune), The Garden of Fund is Bax's most impres-

    sionist work, but here Rachmaninov and Ravel also

    appear. It is not very typical of the composer of

    those most unDebussian symphonies. Frank

    Bridge, most unfairly treated by Frank H o w e ~ , ~n

    his later music showed some awareness of Debussy,

    particularly in the String Trio recently published

    (Faber); but of Bartok and Stravinsky also. Delius,

    Bax, Bridge, lacked Debussy's particular harmonic

    and fragmented technique and his erotic undertow;

    but they have paid for superficial resemblances by

    being the less popular with their fellow countrymen:

    they are the cinderellas of English music.

    The point has been sufficiently made, I think. No

    major English composer of the first half of the 20th

    century shows much influence of Debussy, and what

    there is is from the early, uncharacteristic works. In

    fact, if Debussy had never lived English music would

    have been much the same. The English composer, at

    least until after 1945, did not really like the erotic,

    urban, hedonistic aesthetic of the French symbolists

    and of Debussy's most characteristic work. Apart

    from Wagner in the beginning of the century, until

    1945 by far the greatest influence on English music

    was that of Sibelius, and the extraordinary Sibelius

    cult of the 1930s shows that the average English

    music lover felt the same. There was a similar cult

    of Nielsen in the late 1940s. There was, as has been

    said, an attempt to draw England into the conti-

    nental sphere in the 1890s by a group of artists who

    were directly influenced by Tristan, Baudelaire, and

    the French symbolists. English society waited its

    chance, and then turned on their spokesman, Oscar

    Wilde.6 His fate was considered sufficiently exem-

    plary. Beardsley and Dowson died young. The

    group, significantly, held no English composer. The

    way was open for the Georgian poets, for Elgar,

    Vaughan Williams and Holst. The English poetic

    revolution, when it came, was at the hands of

    puritans; Eliot, Pound, and Yeats, and the violently

    unfleshly Wyndham Lewis. Debussy was slowly

    accepted in the first quarter of the century, but not

    $The English musical renaissance ( 196 6), pp.160-2

    OGaunt: The aesthetic adventure (194% V Debacle

    as the member of the group of artists that he was;

    rather as an isolated progressive composer, one

    among many.' There was much criticism of his

    mannerisms, and of his vague and unhealthy atmo-

    sphere. Debussy himself was very conscious of these

    islands, rather curiously so. The references

    in

    his

    music have a way of being Scottish rather than Eng-

    lish

    (The Keel Row

    in

    Gigues,

    and

    The La ss wi' th'

    lint-white locks) and he seems to have suffered from

    the delusion that Swinburne was the major English

    19th-century poet-which is typical, ~omehow.~

    There is a curious link here between Debussy and

    Schoenberg. In fact, it took the Schoenberg revolu-

    tion of the 1950s to convince theEnglish ofDebussy's

    true stature. Still more, it was the magnificent

    Debussy ieadings of Pierre Boulez, and Debussy's

    music filtered through his own. Even today, we

    prefer Debussy at a distance. The Manchester

    School of composers shows at last something like

    the direct influence of Debussy, especially in the

    work of Peter Maxwell Davies. But even here one

    ingredient is missing-the torrid late romanticism

    of Tristan, felt through Debussy's personality. It is

    as lacking in Davies as it is in Walton, Britten, and

    Tippett.

    English art, and especially English music, is

    Nordic, and musically we are a Scandinavian

    nation. There has been a good deal of hypocrisy

    and prudishness, but the basic fact is that our

    artistic temperament is moderate, cool, open-air,

    lyrical and wistful. Cotman, Palmer, Constable,

    with the occasional wild man like Blake and Turner.

    No need to deplore it. There must be differences,

    and Debussy's range, for all his great stature, is

    actually rather narrow. Even more so than Delius's.

    Lambert:

    Music Ho (1934).

    Debussy as Key Figure

    SGray:Survey of contemporary music (19 24) ,chapter onDebussy

    Lockspeiser, I, 11 3