Formulaic Openings in Debussy

JAMES A. HEPOKOSKI

By now it comes as no surprise that much of grows from not merely one, but several syntac- what may at first strike us as innovative in De- tical conventions. On the one hand, Debussy bussy's music was in fact carried out within the perceived the language of Wagner as the most framework of historical precedent and estab- progressive available style, with its motivic or- lished convention. Indeed, tracing the emer- ganization and transformation, harmonic and gence of his personal style from the early works, formal freedom, aperiodic construction, and ex- with their explicit reliance on existing models, plicit seriousness of purpose.' On the other, he to the later works, where the models or conven- inherited by culture and education the set of tions are more tacit, is an issue of fundamental languages of such French contemporaries and musicological importance. Perhaps no com- immediate predecessors as Gounod, Saint- poser of this fin-de-sikcle era exemplifies more Sains, Faur6, Duparc, Chabrier, Franck, and clearly the expressive tension that results from Massenet-languages not untouched by the ex- the forging of a creative language that simulta- ample of Wagner (and Liszt), but ones more con- neously works within a received tradition and servative in their melodic emphasis and perio- strives for radical originality. dicity, even while they admitted considerable The question of the composer's development harmonic experimentation, particularly in the is particularly complex, because his music area of modality. Debussy's early works blend in differing proportions the existing German Notes for this article begin on page 57. and French late-nineteenth-century conven- 19th Century Music VIII/1 (Summer 1984). @by the Re- tions: appropriate responses from a student and gents of the University of California. young composer searching for a distinctive

This content downloaded from 128.36.7.70 on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 20:33:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms JAMES A. voice.2 Gradually, as he matured, he was able to ages, where the stillness of the pedal functions as a HEPOKOSKI permit original material to rise in importance to kind of metaphor for the more typical initial silence. Openings in the point where it disguises-in some in- 2. An unaccompanied melodic line breaking the Debussy silence. Typically, the melodic line begins with a rel- stances, annihilates-the existing models. atively prolonged initial pitch, piano or pianissimo, Debussy's reliance on syntactical models in and glides gracefully into more active rhythmic mo- generating his own style is nowhere more evi- tion in a manner that is not emphatically metrical. dent than at the beginnings of his works. He ha- The line is often undular, returning at points to its initial pitch in a supple curve, and it generally im- bitually returns to the same initial gestural pat- plies a rather weak tonic, because of the use of penta- terns-involving distinctive treatments of tonicism, chromaticism, modality, gapped scales, or phrasing, melody, texture, and harmonic syn- other such devices. This line leads directly into: tax. These recurring patterns, whose primary 3. Either chordal confirmation or nonconfirma- purpose is to move from silence to a world of tion of the implied tonic. If confirmation, the line ex- musical motion, may be located within the lan- pands to a multivoice texture and either establishes the tonic at once (as in Hommage a Rameau from the guage options available to him as he began to piano Images) or passes through one or more preca- compose; they have demonstrable historical an- dential harmonies before arriving at a clear and reso- tecedents. Debussy's openings are often formu- nant tonic (as in La Fille aux cheveux de lin from the laic, in the general sense of the OED's first Preludes). If nonconfirmation, the line moves di- definition of a formula: "A set form... in which rectly into a chord (or set of chords) that functions to unsettle the tonality implied in the initial melodic something is defined, stated, or declared, or material (as in Printemps of 1887). which is prescribed by authority or custom to be used on some ceremonial occasion."3 The most Many examples besides those indicated frequent of the formulas are readily recogniz- above may be mentioned. Those with confirm- able, and they may easily be grouped into fami- ing chords-the larger subdivision-include the lies, bearing in mind that Debussy often devi- early Pantomime, Le Faune and, in an ambigu- ates from the "ideal" convention for expressive ous, whole-tone situation, Colloque sentimen- purposes. tale from Fetes galantes II, the Danse sacree, This study raises more questions of taxon- Bruydres from Prdludes, book II, Ballade que omy than I shall attempt to deal with here. My Villon feit ca la requeste de sa mdre pour prier present concern is merely to introduce the Nostre-Damegen- from the Trois Ballades de Fran- eral idea of formulaic openings in Debussy-to gois Villon, Soupir from the Trois Poemes de advance the concept without pretending to Stiphaneex- Mallarme, and Pour invoquer Pan haust all of its particulars. Further ramifica- from the Six Epigraphes antiques. L'Isle joy- tions of the idea may be pursued within deeper euse and Pour un Tombeau sans nom from the studies of individual works. I shall begin by Sixpre- Epigraphes antiques extend the confirming senting a summary description of the formulaic principle to the whole-tone scale, as does Voiles categories with brief exemplifications (I), move from Preludes, which also thickens the mono- onward to a consideration of the aesthetic and phonic line into a succession of parallel major- conceptual function of the formulas within third a dyads. basically Symbolist environment (II), and con- Those with nonconfirming or contradictory clude by looking more closely at the openings of chords include Spleen from the Ariettes oubli- three representative pieces (III). des, Prelude ac "L'Apres-midi d'un Faune", acts II and V of Pelleas et Mdlisande, Crois mon con- I seil, chore Climene from Le Promenoir des A. The Monophonic Opening. This category deux amants, Jimbo's Lullaby (whose ambigu- covers beginnings that pass through three ges- ous major-second dyad in m. 4 effects a momen- tural phases, the second of which seems to tary shift from Bb to F pentatonic) and The Little define the formula most clearly. Shepherd from Children's Corner, La Danse de Puck from book I of the Prdludes, Prdlude: Le 1. The silence preceding the opening notes. This is by no means an inconsequential component; De- Sommeil de la boite from La Boite ~ joujoux, bussy sometimes replaces the silence with a prelimi- and the Etude pour les 'cinq doigts'. A number nary pedal point, as in Gigues from the orchestral Im- of closely related examples are less strictly for-

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mulaic because of the presence of extraneous Consider a clear instance: the monophonic material, such as relatively static opening opening of Printemps of 1887 (ex. la, mm. 1-8). chords or accompanying pedal points, as men- The opening pianissimo dynamic seems inti- tioned above with Gigues: these include L'En- mately related to the preceding silence or, bet- fant prodigue, Harmonie du soir from the ter, to grow in crescendo out of it-a creatio ex Baudelaire songs, En sourdine and Claire de nihilo. The single melodic line flows gracefully lune from Fetes galantes I, act III of Pellkas withet a smooth, elegant shape: the Debussian ar- Mdlisande, Dialogue du vent et de la mer from abesque.4 It is static, undular, and revolves La Mer, the Premiere Rapsodie for clarinet, and around a central pitch, here a mediant axis, A#, many other such openings. and suggests in mm. 4-5 a merging back into its

This content downloaded from 128.36.7.70 on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 20:33:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 23 JAMES A. HEPOKOSKI

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beginning. The opening monophonic phrase am aware are six of the twelve principal sym- implies a tonality, pentatonic on FO, or "black- phonic poems of Liszt: strings in octaves in note" pentatonic. The chord that appears in m. Tasso and Les Preludes; percussion in 5, F# t, suggests with its minor seventh that F# Festkliinge and Heroide funebre; other solu- might not be the tonic. This is a contradiction, tions in Hungaria and Hunnenschlacht. Per- or at least the introduction of an ambiguity, and haps even more influential were the Wagnerian it works to unsettle the presumed tonic. This music dramas. The prelude to Tristan and unsettling proceeds as the first chord changes Isolde is archetypal here-monophonic open- into a second in m. 8, an unexpected E6,. Most ing leading to an ambiguous or rich chord-as listeners would hear the Eg9 chord as an embel- are the prelude to act III of Die Meistersinger lishing sonority, not a functional one: it and the prelude to Parsifal. Nor are French mod- emerges out of the preceding chord by holding els lacking. One need only recall the single-line the enharmonic common tones A# and C #. openings of Franck's Les Beatitudes, Rebecca, V9/ii, enharmonically, is not its immediate Le Chausseur maudit, and Redemption (with point. More likely, it strives simply for a pedal point), Chabrier's La Sulamite (a model dreamy, tonal remoteness. for Debussy's La Damoiselle dlue), and several Predecessors or models for the monophonic examples from French opera ranging from Mey- opening formula are abundant, particularly ebeer (Robert le diable, acts II and V, Le Pro- from the mid-nineteenth century onward. The phete, act II, L'Africaine, act III) to Massenet clearest and most consistent models of which I (Herodiade, act I, sc. 2), and so on.

This content downloaded from 128.36.7.70 on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 20:33:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 19TH CENTURY B. The Modal/Chordal Opening. After with the fluctuating fifth and sixth above the root- MUSIC initial silence, this formula begins, in its a chordsim- contradicting either prior interpretation plest form, with a statement of four of quiet the tonic, modal or major. This Bb moves by chords in equal time values-chords with a fifth to an Eb-major chord with fluctuating fifth "mysterious" modal quality to suggest, accord- and sixth in m. 4. In the entire first phrase only ing to the designated context, primeval times, the Eb chord is prepared by its upper fifth, and ecclesiastical austerity, quasi-mystical reverie, that Eb contradicts the tonal implications of the or uncommon experience in general. In the first two measures. The point, once again, is most characteristic instances the four separate ambiguity. chords comprise only three sonorities: one The most obvious historical antecedent of chord is sounded twice. The four chords often the "magical" four-chord introduction is Men- close back on themselves and are repeated at delssohn's Overture to A Midsummer Night's least once before proceeding onward to some- Dream, but, doubtless, two-chord examples, thing different. Once again, as in the first cate- such as one finds at the beginning of G6tter- gory, the effect is of a swaying, static circularity, diimmerung, served as models as well. Debus- a gentle rotation around a central axis. sy's parallel fifths in the Damoiselle are not un- The locus classicus in Debussy is probably precedented: the opening recalls a passage from La Damoiselle glue, but act I of Pellias et MIli- the interior of an early, but celebrated ballade of sande would serve equally well, as would a Saint-Saens, Le Pas d'armes du Roi Jean (1852), number of songs: the early Nuit d'etoiles, Beau a work orchestrated by Saint-Siens, and almost Soir, and De Fleurs from Proses Lyriques. Piano surely known to Debussy. This music (ex. 3) pieces avoid the more strictly formulaic types of evokes the funeral cortige of a soldier, with the modal/choral opening, although openings chanting clerics and the tolling of bells. Debus- such as those in the Sarabande from Pour le pi- sy's Damoiselle opening also evokes things reli- ano, the three chords of the Danseuses de gious, austere, and funereal. Curiously, a simi- Delphes, and the floating, circular chords of lar texture is also found at the beginning of Canope are doubtless progeny of this formula, Massenet's Herodiade, act I (1881), where it de- as are the orchestral openings of Nuages and Le picts dawn at Jerusalem. Martyre de Saint-Sebastien. Openings with two chords, not four, are also found: for instance, in C. Introductory Sequences/Expansions.5 the songs L'Ombre des arbres from Ariettes ou- This procedure works in conjunction with one blides and De Rave from Proses Lyriques, and at of the first two formulaic openings: it is a the beginning of the Violin Sonata. method of extending the earlier formulas by The opening of La Damoiselle glue (ex. 2, varied phrase repetition or expansion-of link- mm. 1-4) illustrates the formula in its purest ing together two or three varied, but still formu- state. The first measure contains four chords laic, phrases. The entire procedure serves either from three sonorities, e-d-C-d, with "archaic" as a separate introduction to contrasting mate- parallel fifths in the lower staff. Phrygian inter- rial or as introductory material that finally pretations are possible here, as is a pandiatonic "blossoms" into more ongoing, less formulaic reckoning in a weak C major (the key in which music. In either case its character is emphati- the work concludes), within which the chords cally introductory. After the initial silence, the would be construed as the unusual, "modal" iii- phases of the procedure are as follows: ii-I-ii succession. Debussy strives here to break the expectation of strong root movement and 1. A phrase of the monophonic or modal/chordal functionally harmonic syntax. The four chords type (henceforth the a phrase). This leads to: move after repetition to a nonconfirming chord, 2. A fermata or grand pause: the arresting of ongoing motion, a return to the initial silence, now perceived not unlike the procedure discussed in the first as genuinely palpable and structural. category. In La Damoiselle lue we have two 3. A varied repetition (the 3 phrase) growing out of statements of the Phrygian (or vague C-major) the second silence. The variation may be accom- chords before plunging onto a Bb-major chord plished in a number of ways-a simple sequence, a

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This content downloaded from 128.36.7.70 on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 20:33:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 19TH P sempre CENTURY MUSIC

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harmonization (or reharmonization) of the opening, As a whole the three phases may be taken as a an expansion in length, etc. Its repetitive and expansive character, however, metaphor is never for the process in ofdoubt; generation or-par-one senses that a has branched out ticularly or grownwhen considered into with theP. interpolated In a few instances of the formula pauses-for prior meditative to Debussy, respiration: multiple this phrase can move directly into breaths.6 more Classic instancesongoing in Debussy music. include More typically, it leads to: Pantomime, Printemps (see exs. la and ib), La 4. Another fermata or grand pause, and: 5. Either the beginning Damoiselle of contrasting dlue (ex. 2), the preludes material, to acts I, II, usu- ally in more periodic phrases III, and V of Pellas (with et Mdlisande, a sense and the Pre-that the introduction is over and the main narrative of the lude to La Boite a joujoux. Varied examples oc- piece is now beginning) or another varied repetition cur in the Prelude a "L'Apres-midi d'un (the y phrase, if it exists), exemplifying further, and Faune", the third movement of La Mer, and now decisive, growth and expansion. When y is present, it establishes a more energetic pulse or aPour invoquer Pan and Pour la Danseuse aux clearer harmonic drive and proceeds into the remain- crotales from Six Epigraphes antiques. der of the piece, thus launching it and setting its tone. Historically, the most direct models are

This content downloaded from 128.36.7.70 on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 20:33:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms found in Wagner. The Parsifal prelude, the prox- century would take us far afield, as would the JAMES A. HEPOKOSKI imate model for the opening of Debussy's Prin- location of earlier antecedents, like Mozart's C- Openings in temps and La Damoiselle glue, opens with two Minor Fantasia, Weber's Oberon, and Chopin's Debussy arching double-phrases (each a monophonic Fantasie, op. 49 (or the provocatively varied opening with enriched-harmonized and re- later instances, such as Strauss' Also sprach scored-immediate repetition) with a in Ab ma- Zarathustra and Stravinsky's The Firebird and jor and 3 in C minor. These are initiatory se- The Rite of Spring). quences and expansions that move onward into the "Grail" and "Faith" motives. G6tterddm- II merung begins similarly, but with three initial Almost equally complex and difficult to ad- gestures, not two. Each gesture-here of the dress adequately is the question of the aesthetic type that I am calling modal/chordal in De- function of these openings. Why and to what ef- bussy-consists of two chords, the second of fect does Debussy employ the formulas? And which is enriched by prolongation and rich scor- why is this primarily a mid- to late-nineteenth- ing.7 The prelude to Tristan is another triple- century phenomenon? gesture opening: each phrase is a sequence of Here the recent work of Carl Dahlhaus with the first, and the third moves into more uninter- the nineteenth-century Germanic repertoire rupted music after bursting onto the rich fortis- provides several clues.8 In brief, Dahlhaus has simo in mm. 16--17. argued that mid-nineteenth century composers, Non-Wagnerian antecedents also exist, guided by the "unquestioned aesthetic doc- mostly dating from mid-century and later. trine"9 of originality, sought alternatives to the Liszt's symphonic poems appear to be the earli- prevailing periodic syntax: the classical, rhetor- est consistent use of the device. Nine of the ically balanced antecedents and consequents, twelve principal symphonic poems begin with and so on, in which the quality and idiosyncrasy unequivocal examples of introductory se- of the individual parts had been subordinated to quences/expansions. Seven open with double the proportioned and balanced effect of the gestures (Tasso, Orpheus, Prometheus, Fest- whole. This earlier language of "schematic" or kldnge, Heroide funebre, Hungaria, and Ham- "architectural" form1' had issued from Enlight- let) and two with triple gestures (Les Preludes enment thought and rationalism-indeed, it and Die Ideale). seems inseparably bound with it and required And once again, there are French examples. modification only when faith in rationalism be- Franck's Rebecca begins with a clear triple-ges- gan to falter." Wagner, in particular, came to ture formula, and similar sequential/expansive view foursquare or "quadratic" syntax as a false, openings may be found in his symphonic poems rational limitation on the essentially irrational, Le Chausseur maudit and Redemption, and truth-bearingin medium of music, and on the new the influential third of Chabrier's Trois Valses aesthetic principle that "every part or detail is romantiques. And one may cite such closely re- supposed to be an original idea or the conse- lated operatic occurrences as the introduction quence of an original idea."'2 to Gounod's Faust, along with its entr'acte be- The four-square, periodic phrase was under fore act III, the opening of act III of Bizet's Car- attack. As Wagnerian ideas began to seep into men (here the double-gesture formula is com- France in the 1870s and 1880s the standard pressed to a mere four measures), the preludes French practice of two- or four-measure the- to Delibes's Jean de Nivelle and (perhaps not matic periods or phrase chains (Gounod, Mas- quite so clearly) Lakme, and the overture to senet, Saint-Saens, Franck, etc.) was particu- Massenet's Le Cid (1885). A few early instances larly vulnerable.13 French music, while rather also exist, for example, the Prelude to Meyer- bold harmonically (especially modally), re- beer's Robert le diable-strictly speaking there mained syntactically antiquated with its sym- are more than three gestures here-and, more metrical periods. Such a syntax was "in touch," obviously, the introduction to act II of the same one might argue, with the positivistic/rational- opera. Tracing the numerous appearances of the istic culture-the liberal patrons of the opera model through the mid- and late-nineteenth and ballet, the "scientifically" organized peda-

This content downloaded from 128.36.7.70 on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 20:33:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 19TH mons, all of art "in speaking to us so intimately, CENTURY gogy of the Conservatoire, etc.-that domi- MUSIC nated France during those years. so solemnly, as only religion had hitherto spo- Debussy rejected that culture, as did many ken toof us ... becomes itself a kind of religion, his generation, and with his rejection he withgradu- all the duties and responsibilities of the sa- ally filtered out a reliance on explicit periodic- cred ritual."'7 ity from his musical style in favor of techniques The quintessential symbolist aesthetician that stress persistent originality and remain and high priest, St6phane Mallarm6, was per- more open to non-rational, mysterious interpre- sonally acquainted with the young Debussy tations. We know that in the 1880s his mind during the period when the latter's musical teemed with new aesthetic ideas: Wagnerism, style was in the process of formation and con- Pre-Raphaelitism, and Symbolism. These three solidation.'8 As a poet Mallarm& envied the cer- aesthetic movements, though differing in par- emonial qualities he perceived in music, partic- ticulars, agreed to the extent that the propo- ularly in the ritual of concert attendance-ideas nents of each advocated a flight from the world that could not have been unknown to Debussy. of "normal" experience. Materialistic reality, As a point of simple observation, Mallarm6 ac- they all argued, was a real threat, an illusion: knowledged the public concert as a modern the artist's task is to withdraw into a higher community-religious experience, the inbreak- world of art-to create an alternative world of ing of mysterious "truths," all presided over by truer meaning. Wagner claimed in Beethoven the conductor as celebrant. For instance, in the (1870) and Religion and Art (1880) that art 1893 essay, Plaisir sacre Mallarme notes, not should ceremonially fulfill the truth functions without irony or envy: that religion could no longer convey: "One could say that where religion is becoming arti- These days the note signalling the reopening of the ficial it is for art to salvage the nucleus of reli- capital is given by the opening (ouverture) of public gion by appropriating the mythic symbols, concerts ... A wind-or the fear of missing something de- which the former wished to propagate as true, manding their return-drives people from the hori- for their symbolic worth, so as to reveal the zon into the city when the curtain is about to rise on truth buried deep within them by means of ideal the desertlike magnificence of autumn ... presentation of the same."'14 The essentially hi- The conductor awaits a signal ... erophantic tendencies of Pre-Raphaelitism The elite is there: the usual artists, wordly intel- were indicated as early as 1885 by F.W.H. lectuals and so many sincere lesser types. The true music enthusiast, although very much at home, re- Myers in his Rossetti and the Religion of cedes in importance. [Here] it is not a matter of aes- Beauty. More recently, the Rossettian religion thetics, but religiosity. of art, based on faith in irrational, inner experi- But the temptation will be to understand why ence, has been discussed by Graham Hough, Os- what began as an effusion of art acquires, by that quiet power, another motif. Because in effect-of- wald Doughty, and John Heath-Stubbs (1974),is ficial celebrations [like these] aside-Music prom- and, within the field of musicology, Richard ises to be the last complete human cult ... Langham Smith has demonstrated the relation- That multitude ... finds itself face to face with the ship of the Pre-Raphaelite silence, stillness, and Unutterable or the Pure-poetry without words!19 otherness to the early aesthetic of Debussy.'6 The Symbolists, to whose aesthetics Debus- Similarly, from Mallarme's Catholicisme sy's are most clearly indebted, similarly ele- (1895): vated art to the level of a theophany through the sensual. Nowhere is the symbolists' credo more The miracle of music is this reciprocal penetration of explicit than in Arthur Symons's The Symbol- myth and the concert hall..... The orchestra floats, ist Movement in Literature, of 1899. Here Sy- fills-and in so doing, the [musical] action separates itself from us and we remain [mere] witnesses: but mons writes of French Symbolism as a "revolt from each seat, through the bursts and pangs, we take against exteriority, against rhetoric [that is, turns being the hero .... A play, a [holy] office.20 against standardized, rational, or symmetri- cally balanced artistic procedures], against a To what extent did Debussy share these materialistic tradition." Now, according to Sy- views? William Austin is right to protest that

This content downloaded from 128.36.7.70 on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 20:33:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms scribed art as a wonderful dream, a mystery pur- JAMES A. "surely Debussy was no mere disciple of Mal- HEPOKOSKI larm6, or translator of his ideas into the lan- sued for mystery's sake (not for the sake of ac- Openings in guage of music."21 Nor does the composer ap- cess into ontological reality, as in Wagner), the Debussy pear to have been a "mere disciple" of Wagner's conveyor of the unutterable by means of pure theories-or anyone else's, for that matter. Still, imagination, an alternative world opposed to that the ideas of Wagner or Mallarm6 (and the the shabby, merely realistic world: Pre-Raphaelites and the other Symbolists) provided the immediate intellectual context for his Music is a dream from which the veils have been early work is beyond doubt. We know too much drawn! It's not even the expression of a feeling-it is of Debussy's early literary and musical enthusi- the feeling itself. ... All of which gives one courage to go on living in one's own dream, to go on seeking the asms to suggest that he wished to remain even inexpressible which is the aim of all art [18921.24 moderately immune from their influence. Art is the most beautiful deception of all! ... Ordi- His embrace of the details of any particular nary people, as well as the 1lite, come to music to aesthetic system was probably never complete; seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception? ... this seems especially true of the Wagnerian sys- Let us not disillusion anyone by bringing too much tem, whose Teutonic seriousness and lofty reality into the dream. . ... Let us content ourselves with more consoling ways: such music can contain transcendental claims find little explicit echo an everlasting expression of beauty [1902]. in his own writings on music. But while De- Although music was never meant to confine itself bussy, neither an original nor a profound philo- solely to the world of dreams, it doesn't gain any- sophical thinker, was little concerned with vali- thing by concerning itself too much with everyday dating the axiom of the metaphysical content of life. It is weakened by trying to be too human, for its primary essence is mystery [1903].25 music,22 he does seem to have been attracted to the "feel" of Wagner's (and Mallarme's) theories But if art might be no more than a dream or a de- and the ways that their spiritual textures af- ception-as the world is ultimately a decep- fected his own imagination. He could thus ap- tion-why treat it as something sacralized? One propriate as his own the importance of music as presumes that Debussy adhered to a view simi- something mysterious, the exalted position of lar to an early position of Mallarm6, in which the artist, and the unfolding of music as though art is justified as an escape from normal social it were something sacred. This is a lightened or existence and its concomitant miseries and in- "demythologized" Wagnerism-and to some it justices, for which there is no legislative rem- may appear to provide the husk without the ker- edy. According to this view, art is a benevolent nel-but it helps to explain why Debussy can drug that protects us from the constant threats construct so much of his earlier music along of the outside and, to some extent, hides the ug- quasi-Wagnerian lines without becoming a liness of the existing world.26 Even though it re- transcendental idealist himself, or accepting mains a deception, art as benign escape, our fully what he later was to call (in 1909) Wagner's only refuge from squalor, can acquire a kind of "lofty artificial theories."23 secular holiness: it can become "the Sunday By embracing the shiver of music's mystery washing away of banality."27 And if the world as a worthy goal in itself-and apparently caring thus fled is crude, false, and demeaning, the art- neither to elaborate nor to inquire very much ist is free to insist that the alternative world of further-Debussy could treat much of his mu- the aesthetic frisson must be truer and more vi- sic as ceremonial, as something sacralized, tal-a conclusion easily achieved in the swirl- without being obliged to proclaim his alle- ing midst of the Wagnerian and Pre-Raphaelite giance to any ultimate truth content within the currents. Imagination and mystery may prop- created work. He could remain a skeptic and erly be treated by the artist as if they were sa- still claim the right to create art as a "believer." cred, even though the issue of ultimacy need This seems very nearly to have been his posi- not be squarely faced. tion, and it helps account for the sometimes startling juxtaposition of luscious indulgence and cold-eyed cynicism that is met with in his This brings us back to the Debussian formulaic, music and writings. Debussy frequently de- non-periodic openings, for they fulfilled in a

This content downloaded from 128.36.7.70 on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 20:33:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 19TH CENTURY concise and thoroughly French way more what predictable Sy- music. More traditional me- MUSIC mons called the "responsibilities of lodicthe patterns, sacred for instance, are found after the ritual" within a now-sacralized aesthetic. openings of Printemps (the main theme begin- These curious, static openings function ningritual- fourteen measures after rehearsal number 2 istically, as thresholds linking secular and suggests sa- a modified double-period structure), La cred/aesthetic space-linking the "normal" Damoiselle blue (e.g., the periodic, C-major (but sadly banal and unclean) world with "third the theme" beginning in m. 35), the Faune (the purer world of enchantment and art. Once central art melodic section, while not explicitly peri- has thus been sacralized, even as an aesthetic odic, is notoriously underpinned with functional fiction, the mode of entry into a work suggests harmonies), and so forth. It would appear that the ipso facto a corridor or vehicle of passage youngfrom Debussy believed that more traditional one experiential realm to another. As Mirceamusical activity could be pursued once the lis- Eliade has shown, ritualized entrances into tener pre- had been conditioned or initiated into the sumed new modes of being bear the double new, bur- vaguer world. It follows that one aspect of den of exorcising the old world and creating Debussy's a stylistic growth is his gradual suppres- new one: they are "solutions of continuity" sion of inherited structures within the interior of that help to bridge the essential "nonhomoge- a work. Our concern here, however, is the formu- neity" of profane and sacred experience, laic "the openings themselves, for they, too, can be paradoxical place where those worlds commu- examined as indicators of a growing stylistic nicate, where passage from the profane to maturity. the sacred world becomes possible."28 Musical openings within a sacralized aesthetic become III entrance rites. They become cosmogonic, and The opening of Printemps (1887) combines a any opening with a creatio ex nihilo structure monophonic opening with the triple-gesture becomes symbolically and ritualistically signi- version of the formula of introductory expan- ficant. sions. As usual, the triple-phrase elements pro- Through evocative silences, gentle, repeti- ceed from concise (a, mm. 1-8) to elaborate (y, tive gestures, and metaphors of growth and ex- mm. 23-48): each is longer than its predecessor. pansion, Debussian formulaic openings strive Debussy mentions his poetic intent for the to condition the listener to the newer and truer whole piece in a letter to Emile Baron of 9 Febru- world within. The openings aim to affect proc- ary 1887. Debussy also includes the customary, esses within us. They exorcise the expectation fashionable disavowal of a program, but only af- of the conventional world by defying traditional ter insisting that Printemps does indeed have a periodic syntax, (a mode of the now-discredited poetic subject, that of a "human" springtime: "I rationalism) by blunting the expectation of should like to express the slow and sickly [souf- functional harmony in favor of vague, tonal sug- freteuse] genesis of beings and things in nat- gestion, and, quite often, by negating the pre- ure-then their blossoming, their ascending, sumption of the forward thrust of time itself and their finally ending in a burst of joy at being through their emphasis on circularity and reborn into a new life, so to speak."30 The lan- turn.29 They evoke the free-floating dream, rela- guage here includes sacralized (cosmogonic) im- tively unattached to the emphatic, unambigu- agery-genesis, blossoming, ascending, being ous statement and explicit linear time which born into a new life-and these images guide characterize normal, secular experience. the structure of the entire piece. Not surprisingly, Debussy's openings are psy- The triple-gesture opening (exs. la and Ib), chologically modern and particularly rich in according to this interpretation, mirrors the im- "progressive" harmonic and phrasal techniques. age of genesis (a reawakening from the death or In his early years they are important seedbeds for profound sleep of winter). The more periodic his ultimate contribution to twentieth-century melodic material (beginning fourteen measures musical thought. Curiously, they are often richer after rehearsal number 2), development (three than much of the interiors of the works they be- measures before number 4), and reprise of the gin. The radical thresholds often lead directly to melodic material (seven measures before num-

This content downloaded from 128.36.7.70 on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 20:33:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ber 9) correspond to the blossoming and ascend- and 39, JAMES and A. the prominent A?9, tres ralenti, in mm. HEPOKOSKI 40-41, before regaining its true identity as V7 of F# in ing. The entire second movement, based on Openings in m. 42 and being purified of its seventh in the succeed- themes from the first, corresponds to the idea of Debussy ing six measures. being reborn into a new life with a burst of joy. Throughout all three elements of the open- The structural and harmonic content of Printemps' ing, the embellishing chromatic surface activ- tripartite opening is shown in ex. 4, a plotting of the ity masks a simple harmonic motion. Thus De- bass line and root movements within the a, 3, and y elements, here separated by barlines. The triads im- bussy unites the three opening gestures in a plied in the graph are almost all blurred with sev- traditional way, even though the surface of the enths and ninths, or prolonged by means of embel- music remains richly colored, hazy, and lishing chords, and the harmonic rhythm moves blurred. The blurring, the slowness, the fore- extremely slowly. The first element (a), for instance, ground richness, the triple-gesture, circular rit- juxtaposes only two chords, F0 and D#I, by means of ual itself-all of these work as local solvents to common tones in the manner of Franck or Grieg.3' The entire triple-gesture formula is bound together the underlying tonic-dominant structure to ini- on a deeper structural level by functionally harmonic tiate the listener into a new, sacralized aes- means. The a and the P phrases encompass a motion thetic world. down the circle of fifths. Measures 1-16 (a and most The La Damoiselle glue opening (ex. 2) is at of p: ex. la) arpeggiate the lower fifth of the F# tonic (F#-D#-B?): the subdominant chord, that is, B major, once simpler, cleaner, and more progressive. which becomes V/? VII and resolves in m. 17 onto its Here we have a modal/chordal beginning with a lower fifth, E? (with seventh), thus "missing" the "Parsifalian" opening double gesture. In Dam- tonic F# and landing instead on the subtonic, E?. A oiselle the stepwise quasi-modality serves to much more expanded, third element (y; ex. ib) en- evoke ecclesiastical connotations and to disori- compasses a motion similar to that of mm. 1-16, i.e., ent the listener from the world of functional down a fifth, but this time beginning on G# in order to arrive at C#, the "proper" V of F# major-to which harmonic practice. Here the pattern is not so it resolves in m. 49 (with new melodic material) after much one of florification and growth (a and p y closes on the dominant in the preceding measure. are of equal length, although P is slightly more elaborate), but one of the evocation of stasis, calm, and mystery. As in Printemps, the opening phrases are bound together by an overarch- 8 9 13 17 23 31 36 42 49 ing plan of voice-leading. The plan of Damoi- selle, however, is less conventional than that of TV I Printemps: we have a slow, whole-tone descent from E to E an octave lower (ex. 5). This repre- Example sents an "advance" over the4: more functional Printemps, mm. 1-49. plan of Printemps and shows Debussy moving toward a more intrinsically ambiguous lan- More specifically, y begins in G# minor in m. 23 and reinforces guage. Still-and characteristically-the that temporary tonic with chords borrowed whole-tonefrom descent is permeated with digress-the parallel major, enharmonically re- spelled: ing interpolations without of root movement by fifth, considering inversions or nonhar- monic andtones, the E-prolongation implicit in the entireV7 (m. 28), V7/V (m. 29), and V7 (m. 30). The expected opening descent functions structurally as V of A GO-minor cadence in m. 31 is blurred by a sensuous 9-8 suspension and by the introduction of a chord-seventh, major-the A major that appears with a new FO, which initiates a set of color- istic shifts "Parsifalian" motive in m. 9. over the GO bass. Thus we hear the g#7 (now anticipating its properly functional role as ii7 of F#, the tonic we must regain) in mm. 31 and 33 and an embellishing chord, comprising the notes of an E 9above m. 1 3the 4 5 7 8 G# bass in mm. 32 and 34-35 (the two chords thus furnishing enriched versions of the shift from a 5 minor chord to an embellishing 6 above the bass). The G# bass moves to C# in m. 36 (no. 2), V9 of F#. That C# is embellished by several common-tone chords, Example notably 5: La Damoiselle blue, mm. 1-8. the a#?7 throughout most of mm. 38

This content downloaded from 128.36.7.70 on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 20:33:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 19TH Both Printemps and La Damoiselle blue furnish tition of sounds spun off from the A# dominant sev- CENTURY enth: the reiteration of an e#7 half-diminished chord MUSIC "classic" instances of formulaic openings. The (which can be heard as a harmonic expression of the first thirty measures of Prelude c~ "L'Apres-midi upper fifth of the preceding A# chord) oscillating d'un faune" illustrate one of Debussy's with many its own common-tone embellishment, a C# modifications of the formula-another "ad- dominant seventh. Thus we have once again, but in a vance." Here the composer combines the more complex manner: opening-contradiction-rep- monophonic and triple-gesture expansion for- etition or elaboration of the contradiction. The y- phrase (mm. 21-30), typically the decisive mulas. Each of the three phrasal gestures is member in a multiple-gesture formula, recomposes a roughly of equal length (ten measures long, but and P, but reverses an important structural procedure with internal time-signature changes), but each in the earlier gestures. The principle of inner repeti- is richer and more harmonically complex. The tion (which had been the exclusive property of the florification is not horizontal (a matter of in-contradiction in a and p) is now applied to the opening melodic material, i.e., to what had been the ini- creasing length), as in Printemps, but vertical-- tial monophonic line. This opening material, now re- a growing-inward in thickness and complexity. peated, appears three times within the y gesture, in mm. 21, 23, and 26 (over basses on E, B, and E: tonic, The first gesture, a (mm. 1-10), consists of an implic- dominant, tonic). These three appearances form min- itly E-major monophonic entrance with all of the ear- iature a, P, and y gestures: involution or recursion, marks of the formula: a piano entrance, doux et ex- wheels within wheels. This much accomplished, y, pressif, growing out of silence; a prolonged initial as usual, continues more decisively. This time, logi- pitch; a static, circular melodic line that returns cally enough, the original contradiction (A#) is rein- more than once to the first pitch; and a rather weakly terpreted as the third of a functional V9/V chord in m. felt tonality. The opening arabesque in the flute leads 28: this is the moment of the sudden breaking-out, directly into a formulaic "nonconfirming" chord inforte, into a strongly functional harmony and the re- m. 4. In this instance Debussy expands the contradic- sultant cadence in the dominant in m. 30. Put an- tory chord into two chords, a#7 half-diminished (at other way, with the principle of inner repetition now first suggesting vii7 half-diminished/V in E major) applied to the opening of y, the contradictory A# is transmuting into B67 (dominant seventh sound), an now liberated to become functional. A change in the equivocal succession that could be forced into D# mi- psychology of structural repetition, that is, unblocks nor (with B67 as enharmonic V7) or G# minor (with the tonal path to permit more clearly directed har- B67 as enharmonic V7/V).32 The aesthetic point, of monies to ensue, and this change is expressed with course, is not to explain away these ambiguities, but an explicit, satisfying cadence. A simplified plan of to savor them as part of a musical language of uncla- the chordal motion of these opening thirty bars is rifled possibilities.33 Somewhat unexpectedly, the provided in ex. 6. usual formulaic pause after the contradictory chord (m. 6) does not signal the end of a. Instead, it leads to a repetition of the A#-Bb contradiction: a lazy, luxuri- ous embrace of the ambiguity. Thus we have an ex- I 1 pansion or circular repetition within a itself: mono- m. 1 4 11 13 14 19 21 23 26 28 30 phonic opening-contradiction-repetition of contra- -c---- diction. p (mm. 11-20) is essentially oa recomposed with a thicker, more involuted texture. The monophonic opening is now harmonized: it is delicately colored Example 6: Prdlude a' "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune", with a D7chord, a major-major seventh chord built mm. 1-30. on the presumed subtonic, which further obscures the initially implied E major. Notice, however, that the D7 is harmonically "prepared" by the preceding This modification of the opening formulas is B67 chord, which may be reinterpreted as a German more sophisticated than the corresponding sixth chord. The D7 oscillates lazily with its own col- oristic embellishment on the third beat of mm. 11 plans of the earlier two pieces. Debussy's style and 12 before moving toward E major in m. 13. It is is maturing. In the Faune he created an eloquent only in m. 13 that we realize that the D(m. 11) and D# musical analogue to the prevailing Decadent (m. 13) in the bass have been double chromatic neigh- and Symbolist ideal of interior, rather than exte- bors to the tonic, E, which now emerges clearly. But rior, growth. This is a musical counterpart of the A# "contradiction" follows immediately on the the centripetal subtlety and ambiguity of Mal- second beat of m. 14 (now sounded as dominant seventh, not as half-diminished seventh) and is explic- larm6 in the Faune poem, the sealed-off, private itly regained in mm. 17-18 after a brief digression. luxury of Des Esseintes's house in Huysmans's The ensuing mm. 19-20, strictly speaking, are a repe- A Rebours, the exotic, interior vegetation of the 56

This content downloaded from 128.36.7.70 on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 20:33:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Maeterlinckian hothouses or serres chaudes. JAMES A. troduction has become self-sufficient, or HEPOKOSKIhas The mysterious florification in Debussy's become a kind of wispy introduction to silence Openings in Faune is all vertical, inward, involuted, like the(cf., for example, Pour la Danseuse aux crotales Debussy closed mind feeding on itself-producing, in y,from Six Epigraphes antiques). repetitions of the whole fundamental pattern inAnd so on. Recognizing the underlying struc- miniature, static circles within circles, as turalthe patterns can be crucial in determining inner foliage grows thicker, not spatially longer, what is innovative in Debussy's openings: the as in earlier Printemps. Here in the opening whole-tonerit- middle-ground descent in the Dam- ual of the Faune, one finds a legitimate transla- oiselle, for instance, and not its parallel fifths or tion of the Symbolist aesthetic of interiority, quasi-modality; a or the nature of the inner sacralized aesthetic carried out within a context growth in the Faune opening. Such an approach of sensual pleasure. helps to deal with these and other works within a context of living conventions and argues once IV again that any given piece derives much- The patterns continue to undergo fascinating though certainly not all-of its system of mean- modifications in Debussy's later works. Very ing from outside of itself: from patterns of briefly, for instance, in act I of Pellias et Meli- thought and expectation derived largely from sande one encounters a classic modal/chordal prior experience. opening that unfolds by means of a germinating Finally, it might be mentioned that formu- triple-gesture, y proving decisive for the piece laic analysis of the kind proposed here intends and flowing into Golaud's opening words: thenot to stress the objective what of analysis- Gdtterddmmerung model. The harmonic ambi- identification and taxononomy-but rather guity here is most strikingly effected by the vir-hopes to invite the questions of how and why. tual renunciation of major-minor chordal syn- How and why do these works operate within a tax in favor of a more pervasive modality and itscomplex matrix of listener expectation; and sharp contradiction by whole-tone harmon- how do the inner processes of the music and the ies-its fluctuation between scalar systems. listener give meaning to the work at hand- Occasionally, a formulaic opening can consti- both purely "musical" (structural) meaning and tute an entire piece: The Little Shepherd from poetic substance? Bringing to analysis more ac- Children's Corner consists only of a mono- tive (and riskier) models of inner and historical phonic opening (with contradictory chord) expanded in three gestures. Here the formulaic in-directionprocess for and future relation research. seems a desirable .

NOTES

'The most recent treatments of the Wagner issue we in may De- generalize here to read: fixed or stereotyped mate- bussy include Robin Holloway, Debussy and Wagner rial used(Lon- by composers or performers at certain points in a don, 1979), who stresses poetic content and the technique composition of (the assumption being that such material is Wagnerian quotation and allusion; William W. Austin's found inre- several different, but related, compositons). In or- ply to Holloway in "Debussy, Wagner, and Some derOthers," confidently to assert that the composer (or performer) this journal 6 (1982), 82-91; and Carolyn Abbate's actuallydeepen- used a formula, Treitler stresses, one must estab- ing of the entire question through sketch evidence lishin "Tris-sufficiently clear "boundary criteria" to distinguish an tan in the Composition of Pellkas," this journal individual5 (1981), formula, even in its variants, from non-formulaic 117-41. material. 2Cf. Debussy's confession to Ernest Chausson, 6 September The concept of formula in the present study stresses its 1893: "So the hour has chimed for my thirty-first year, and manifestation I as a sequence of ordered procedures rather am not yet very sure of my aesthetic." Quoted in Prelude than to as stereotypical sonic material per se. Process and rela- "The Afternoon of a Faun" by Claude Debussy, ed. William tionships are more decisive than the objective sound, and W. Austin (New York, 1970), p. 133. any two members of the same formulaic category may 3Cf. Leo Treitler's definition of a formula in " 'Centonate' sound quite dissimilar. Chant: Ubles Flickwerk or E pluribus unus?," Journal of the 4For the conceptual roots of the aesthetic of the arabesque in American Musicological Society 28 (1975), 15-17, which Schlegel, Hoffmann, Poe, Baudelaire, and Mallarm6, see es-

This content downloaded from 128.36.7.70 on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 20:33:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 19TH pecially Claudia Zenck-Maurer, "Arabeske," "Seein alsoVersuch Dahlhaus' discussion of eighteenth-century con- CENTURY MUSIC fiber die wahre Art, Debussy zu analysieren, Berliner cepts of taste Mu- and the correction and absorption of individ- sikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten (Munich, 1974), ual pp. eccentricity 105-38. and accident into the sensus communis, in Cf. Frangoise Gervais, "La Notion d'arabesque his Esthetics chez De-of Music [1967], trans. William Austin (Cam- bussy," La Revue musicale, no. 241 (1958), pp. bridge,3-22. England, 1982), pp. 8-9. 'Perhaps a separate category, not discussed here, 12Dahlhaus, is the grad- "Issues," pp. 44, 61. ual production of a chord or cluster-and often '3Cf. a rhythm-Martin Cooper on a "typical" Massenet melody (the from a fundamental bass tone. Like the first category, prelude 'to this scene is 2 of the oratorio Eve of 1875) in French Mu- a gradual creation of sound from silence, and it may sic: From be foundthe Death of Berlioz to the Death of Faurd (Lon- clearly in Recueillement from the Baudelaire don, Songs, 1951), p.Pa- 24: godes, the beginning of La Mer, and in highly stylized, [It is] typical arti- not only for Massenet himself but for a ficial ways in La Cathedrale engloutie and even whole in generation Jeux of French composers who came under (which tacks on a modal/chordal formula for good his measure influence. The structure is consistently two-bar; in the fifth bar). The historical sources of this formula, each phrase if one ends with the slurred feminine cadence. The wishes to consider it as such, include the obvious: whole melody is short-winded-it has no breadth, no Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Wagner's Das emotional drive to force it over the meagre two bars or to Rheingold. modulate from the tonic. It was unquestionably inher- 6The airy, diffuse quality of these openings (and other por- ited from Gounod, and the perpetuation of the type in tions of Debussy's music) has been apparent to more than French music was unhappily assured when Massenet one observer. Holloway in Debussy and Wagner, for exam- was made professor of composition at the Conservatoire ple, speaks of La Damoiselle dlue as beginning with "two in 1878. wafts of sonority" (p. 24). Such metaphors are not as histori- See also Cooper's remarks on Massenet's "symmetrical, cally ungrounded as they might initially seem. Cf. Pierre short-breathed" melodies that rely on "extensive repeti- Louys's letter to Debussy of 29 October 1896, which under- tion" in his article on that composer in the New Grove Dic- scores this "spiritual" (in the sense of the Greek pneuma, tionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, "wind or spirit") quality of Debussy's music: "Music is the 1980), vol. 11, especially p. 805. breathing in your Prelude to the Faun, it is the sudden breath 14Quoted in Dahlhaus, Richard Wagner's Music Dramas of air as Pelleas emerges from the subterranean vaults. It is [19711, trans. Mary Whittall (Cambridge, England, 1979), pp. the wind from the sea in the first act." (Trans. in Edward 143-44. Dahlhaus refers to Religion and Art as "the philo- Lockspeiser, Debussy: His Life and Mind [London, 1962] I, sophical complement to Parsifal" (p. 143). 164.) '5Hough, "The Aesthetic of Pre-Raphaelitism" (pp. 142-43); Debussy's idea of music as ideally moving and floating in Doughty, "Rossetti's Conception of the 'Poetic' " (pp. 158- free space, in open air (a concept probably borrowed from 61); and Heath-Stubbs, "Pre-Raphaelitism and the Aes- Mallarm6), is relevant here, and Debussy intermixes the thetic Withdrawal," (pp. 166-85), all in Pre-Raphaelitism, concept with the florification metaphor. Cf. his remarks in ed. James Sambrook (Chicago, 1974). Heath-Stubbs, in par- La Revue blanche on 1 June 1901, "Music in the Open Air," ticular, drives to the core of the prevailing socio-aesthetic in Debussy on Music, ed. by Frangois Lesure, trans. and ed. problem within the predominantly liberal and scientific Richard Langham Smith (New York, 1977), p. 41: culture: I envisage the possibility of a music especially written For most [artists] the foundations of traditional faith, for the open air, flowing in bold, broad lines from both which had sanctioned a more imaginative vision of the the orchestra and the voices. It would resound through world, seemed irreparably shaken. In these circum- the open spaces and float joyfully over the tops of the stances the only course for the artist who sought to re- trees, and any harmonic progression that sounded stifled tain his integrity was a withdrawal from the confused within the confines of a concert hall would take on a new and unintelligible reality which lay without. The subjec- significance.... [Music] could certainly be regenerated, tively apprehended reality of aesthetic experience could taking a lesson in freedom from the blossoming of the at least not be explained away by science. By concentrat- trees.... Music and poetry are the only two arts that live ing upon this, a coherent vision might yet be attained (p. and move in space itself. 169). Cf. Baudelaire's Harmonie du soir. For Mallarme's dream of For a discussion of F. W. H. Myers on Rossetti, see Robert D. an open air theater see Paula Gilbert Lewis, The Aesthetics Johnston, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (New York, 1969), pp. of Stiphane Mallarme in Relation to His Public (Ruther- 136-40 (cf. also pp. 16, 54-56). ford, 1976), p. 140. '6"Debussy and the Pre-Raphaelites," this journal 5 (1981), 7The G6tterdiimmerung opening, of course, restates a half 95-109. step lower a portion of Briinnhilde's Awakening in act III of '7Rpt. New York, 1958, p. 5. For a discussion of the social Siegfried. The restatement in G6tterddmmerung is varied, crisis within France after 1870-71 and the emergence of the however, in its y phrase; here the initial chord, Eb minor, Symbolist/Decadent response, see especially Koenraad instead of "growing" into a second chord, repeats itself and Swart, The Sense of Decadence in Nineteenth-Century decays into the "Fate" motive and the Norns' music. Thus France (The Hague, 1964). the music drama is launched in an atmosphere of entropic '8Details of Debussy's friendship with Mallarm6 in the early futility-a pointed contrast with the parallel passage in 1890s may be found conveniently in Lockspeiser, I, 150-59; Siegfried. and Austin, ed., Prelude, pp. 9-16. 8Dahlhaus, "Issues in Composition," in Between Romanti- 'gMallarm6, (Euvres completes, ed. H. Mondor and G. Jean- cism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Aubry (Paris, 1945), pp. 388-89. Mallarm6's daughter re- Nineteenth Century [1974], trans. Mary Whittall (Berkeley ported that before attending the Sunday Lamoureux con- and Los Angeles, 1980), pp. 40-78. certs, the poet would announce to his family, "I am going to 9Ibid., p. 42. Vespers" (in Lewis, p. 72). Cf. Jean Lorrain's satire on Debus- 10Ibid., pp. 44, 59. sy's audiences in the early twentieth century ("Thanks to

This content downloaded from 128.36.7.70 on Sat, 23 Feb 2019 20:33:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms these ladies and gentlemen, M. Claude Debussy became the Words'," in Between Romanticism and Modernism, pp. 19- JAMES A. head of a new religion, and during each performance of 'Pel- 39, and Dahlhaus, "Die Idee des musikalisch Absoluten und HEPOKOSKI leas' the Salle Favart took on the atmosphere of a sanctu- die Praxis der Programmusik," in Die Idee der absoluten Openings in ary"), in Leon Vallas, Claude Debussy: His Life and Works, Musik (Kassel, 1978), pp. 128-39. Debussy trans. Maire and Grace O'Brien [1933] (New York, 1973), p. 31John Trevitt, in the article on Franck in the New Grove 147. Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 6, remarks on the 20Mallarm6, cEuvres completes, p. 393. See also Lewis, pp. influence of Franck's juxtapositions of unrelated chords on 45-85 ("The Function of Art"), and Wallace Fowlie, "The the early Debussy (p. 781). Trevitt also remarks that Franck Poet as Ritualist," in Mallarme (Chicago, 1953), pp. 21 attributed to F# major "a kind of cosmic joy" (p. 781), and -49. Laurence Davies, in Cesar Franck and His Circle (London, 21Austin, ed., Prelude, p. 11. 1970), p. 103, refers to "the far-reaching sharp-keys" as rep- 22Although we do know that he was at least aware of the phi- resenting "the light of Paradise" for Franck. Cf. the remarks losophy of Arthur Schopenhauer by 1889. See Margaret on F# major in Vallas, p. 42. Whether such tonal associa- Cobb, ed., The Poetic Debussy: A Collection of His Song tions guided Debussy in Printemps cannot be proven, but if Texts and Selected Letters (Boston, 1982), p. 187. See also light, joy, paradise, etc., are the immediate Franckian con- Debussy's 1911 statement on religion, religious music, andnotations of F major, the fiat-lux quality of this creation "the mysteries of nature" in "M. Claude Debussy and formula Le is correspondingly underscored. Martyre de Saint-Sebastien" (interview by Henry 32Within the context of the initially implied E major the two Malherbe), Debussy on Music, pp. 247-49. chords have multiple connotations. The BV could be a com- 23Debussy on Music, p. 247. mon-tone embellishment of the a#7 half-diminished; the 24Lockspeiser, I, 171-72. latter could be an appoggiatura chord moving to a functional 25Debussy on Music, pp. 85, 155. BV by holding two enharmonic common tones, G# and A#; 26Lewis, pp. 45-47. or the A# in m. 4 and the stressed D and Bb in m. 5 could be 27Mallarm6, Plaisir sacrd, in cEuvres completes, p. 390. The construed as evoking the defining pitches of one of Debus- translation is that found in Lewis, p. 47. sy's favorite synthetic modes of the period, the #4- 67 scale 28Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Reli- (lydian-mixolydian, here on E), which resonates elsewhere gion [1957], trans. Willard R. Trask (New York, 1959), pp. in the work. 24-26. 33The procedure is analogous to Mallarme's verbal images in 29For the crucial importance of circularity, cyclical time, "L'Apres-midi d'un faune," which remain capable of multi- and eternal return in the aesthetics of Mallarm&, see Lewis, ple interpretations. See, e.g., Wallace Fowlie's elucidation of pp. 65-70. the senses of the word "perpetuer" in the poem's first line in 30Claude Debussy: Lettres 1884-1918, ed. Frangois Lesure Mallarme, p. 152. Cf. Mallarm6's famous remarks in "Sur (Paris, 1980), p. 18. For some senses in which a program can l'Evolution litteraire" [1891]: "To name an object is to sup- be simultaneously affirmed and denied in the late nine- press three-quarters of the enjoyment of the poem, which is teenth century, see Dahlhaus, "The Twofold Truth in made to be gradually discerned, little by little: to suggest it, Wagner's Aesthetics: Nietzsche's Fragment 'On Music there's the dream" ((Euvres completes, p. 869).

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