The Rhetoric of Suggestion in Debussy's Mélodies
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THE RHETORIC OF SUGGESTION IN DEBUSSY’S MÉLODIES: A CONTINGENT POETICS OF THEMATICITY, TEMPORALITY, AND AGENCY Trina Marie Thompson Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University August 2018 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee _______________________________________________ Robert S. Hatten, Ph.D., Co-Chair _______________________________________________ Eric Isaacson, Ph.D., Co-Chair _______________________________________________ Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, Ph.D. _______________________________________________ Massimo Ossi, Ph.D. _______________________________________________ Frank Samarotto, Ph.D. July 3, 2018 ii Copyright © 2018 Trina Marie Thompson iii Acknowledgements This work is profoundly indebted to so many. All my thanks: To my research director, Robert S. Hatten, for his incredible scholarly and editorial help in shaping this project, and for his equally remarkable generosity and patience. To my entire committee, including Eric Isaacson, Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, Massimo Ossi, and Frank Samarotto, for their significant investments of expertise and enthusiasm, for help correcting errors (any remaining are entirely my own), and for deftly pointing the way forward for the project’s continued growth. To my professors at IU, especially J. Peter Burkholder, Robert S. Hatten, Gretchen Horlacher, Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, Massimo Ossi, Gary Potter, Lewis Rowell, Frank Samarotto, and Mary Wennerstrom, who gave this project its foundation. To Indiana University and Andrews University, for supporting me in this work. And again to Eric Isaacson, Janis Cooper Parker, and the entire Music Graduate Office, for helping to surmount any number of obstacles. To Debra Bakland, who taught me to make music, and Donald Walker, who insisted on Debussy. To Terrie Aamodt, Beverly Beem, Anne Bullock, Dan Lamberton, and Rose Marie Walter, who helped me learn to write. To Ed Klonoski, who told me I should consider music theory, and to Kraig Scott, who drew theory into performance. To my students at Andrews University, who provided wonderful distraction. To Rebecca, who helped me keep track. To my dear friends and colleagues at IU, AU, and from forever ago, especially Helen, Marianne, Pedrito, and Toma, who kept joy with me in this process. To Janet and David, for my Bloomington home-away-from-home. iv To my beloved family, for everything. In particular, to Bedstefar and Grandma Helen, for their example and inspiration, and to darling Bedstemor, who helped make my musical life possible; to Heidi, for assuming this project was a foregone conclusion; to Mom and Dad, for love, support, and celebration from day one; and to Kevin, for truly magical thinking. v Trina Marie Thompson THE RHETORIC OF SUGGESTION IN DEBUSSY’S MÉLODIES: A CONTINGENT POETICS OF THEMATICITY, TEMPORALITY, AND AGENCY The fin-de-siècle rapprochement between Symbolist poets and impressionist composers constitutes a critical era in text-music relations. This study investigates Debussy’s manipulation of musical materials in ways that both enact and contend with the poems’ structures and semantics. The composer’s investment in elusiveness—the “introuvable”—suggests that these songs may be implicated with issues of musico-poetic contingency and suggestion. I thus pursue a hypothetical reconstruction of Debussy’s “rhetoric of suggestion,” a nuanced deployment of harmony, melody, form, and musical topic that evokes a heightened sense of semantic uncertainty or a fraught experience of musical time. These strategies of musical narrative and temporality give rise to an expanded function for musical topics as they respond to and participate in contemporary aesthetic and cultural dialogues. Stefan Jarocinski’s Debussy: Impressionism and Symbolism (1976) provides an embryonic sketch of Debussy’s use of “traditional symbols”1—that is, what would come to be called musical topics.2 While Jarocinski notes that the composer’s use of these signifying textures “generally bears little resemblance to traditional models,”3 (begging the question of how Debussy does use his textures), he also asserts that “often as not Debussy paid no attention to symbolic suggestions when deciding in what form his works would be performed or the way in which their sound-material would be organised.”4 1 Stefan Jarocinski, Debussy: Impressionism and Symbolism, trans. Rollo Myers (London: Eulenburg Books), 1976, 150. 2 Leonard G. Ratner, Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style (New York: Schirmer Books), 1980. 3 Jarocinski, Debussy, 150. 4 Ibid., 151. vi My analyses suggest that this presumed obliviousness (even randomness) in the use of musical topics is instead a hallmark of Debussy’s coherent, albeit subversive, musico-poetic strategies—as part of a larger “rhetoric of suggestion.” This rhetoric combines the nuanced deployment of musical topic along with particular harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic elements to evoke a heightened sense of musical contingency and a fraught experience of musical time. That is, our expectations for logical continuation are either denied or multiplied; expectation (future) contends with both memory and obsession (past), all within a nonlinear narrative. _______________________________________________ Robert S. Hatten, Ph.D., Co-Chair _______________________________________________ Eric Isaacson, Ph.D., Co-Chair _______________________________________________ Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, Ph.D. _______________________________________________ Massimo Ossi, Ph.D. _______________________________________________ Frank Samarotto, Ph.D. vii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iv Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................... viii List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. x Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2. Thematicity, Temporality, and Agency as Analytical Arenas: “En sourdine” (1882) and “En sourdine” (1892) ............................................................... 13 “En sourdine” (1882), Fêtes galantes pour Madame Vasnier, no. 2 ................................ 21 “En sourdine” (1892), Fêtes galantes I, no. 1 ................................................................... 36 Chapter 3. Repetition and Change: “Rondeau,” “Le jet d’eau,” “Rondel: Le temps a laissié son manteau,” and “Rondel: Pour ce que Plaisance est morte” .................................. 48 “Rondeau” (1882) ............................................................................................................. 50 “Le jet d’eau” (1889), Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire, no. 3 .................................. 65 “Rondel: Le temps a laissié son manteau” (1904), Trois chansons de France, no. 1 ...... 90 “Rondel: Pour ce que Plaisance est morte” (1904), Trois chansons de France, no. 3 ... 113 Chapter 4. Confinement and Escape: “De fleurs” and “Placet futile” ........................................ 126 “De fleurs” (1893), Proses lyriques, no. 3 ...................................................................... 127 “Placet futile” (1913), Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, no. 2 .............................. 147 Chapter 5. Real and Surreal: “Spleen,” “Recueillement,” and “Je tremble en voyant ton visage” ............................................................................................................... 167 “Spleen” (1887), Ariettes oubliées, no. 6 ........................................................................ 169 “Recueillement” (1889), Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire, no. 4 ............................ 181 “Je tremble en voyant ton visage” (1910), Le promenoir des deux amants, no. 2 ......... 200 Chapter 6. The Elusive Past: “L’ombre des arbres,” “De rêve,” and “Les ingénus”.................. 214 “L’ombre des arbres” (1885), Ariettes oubliées, no. 3 ................................................... 215 “De rêve” (1895), Proses lyriques, no. 1 ........................................................................ 230 “Les ingénus” (1904), Fêtes galantes II, no. 1 ............................................................... 253 viii Chapter 7. Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 269 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 284 Curriculum vitae ............................................................................................................................... ix List of Figures Figure 1.1. Types of uncertainty ......................................................................................................2 Figure 2.1 Paul Verlaine, “En sourdine,” Fêtes galantes, 1869 ....................................................22 Figure 2.2. “En sourdine”