Charles Griffes and American Impressionism in Music
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CHARLES GRIFFES AND AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISM IN MUSIC A THESIS Presented to the University Honors Program California State University, Long Beach In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the University Honors Program Certificate Kelly Catlin Fall 2015 1 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This undergraduate thesis would not have been possible without the mentorship and inspirational guidance of my thesis advisor, Dr. Alicia Doyle. Her endless encouragement helped me to see my own potential for success in researching and synthesizing such a large body of work. Her enthusiasm for research helped me to realize my own passion for music history, and specifically for the Romantic Era and the Impressionist movement. With her help, I learned that a balanced life of performing, practicing, and academic exploration is not only possible, but also healthy and vital to my success as a well-rounded musician. These lessons have shaped my vision for the kind of musician I want to be in the future. I am grateful for my parents for their never-ending support, and for helping me see the value in a diverse and well-rounded education. When I doubted whether I could give each of my interests and passions enough attention, they gave me perspective and helped me figure out my plan. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the CSULB University Honors Program for providing a nurturing environment for my academic growth. All of the professors and courses I have taken through the UHP have contributed significantly to my ability to understand the world and think critically about issues. My fellow peers in the UHP have challenged me intellectually and continue to inspire me in all of their diverse fields. I am grateful to be a part of this community! 3 I. INTRODUCTION In many respects, Western European art music composed at the turn of the twentieth century broke the rules set by composers of previous eras. While it was derived from previous styles, Impressionism as a musical style broke many of these rigid rules of composition and pushed the boundaries of contemporary music of the time. As a movement, Impressionism was largely a French phenomenon, however it eventually spread to other parts of the world. American Impressionism is distinct from European/French Impressionism in many ways, which will be discussed throughout this body of work; these distinctions manifest themselves in “Poem for Flute and Orchestra” by Charles Griffes, the most prolific American Impressionist composer. Impressionism began as a visual art movement in Paris. A group of French painters around 1860-1900, including Frédéric Bazille, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Edoard Manet, Armand Guillaumin, Claude Monet, Berthe Borisot, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Mary Cassatt, called themselves “Le Societé anonyme des artistes, sculpteurs et graveurs.” These painters all realized they shared similar ideas on painting style and subject and many studied art together; Manet, Degas, and Renoir studied at the École des Beaux-Arts while Cézanne, Guillaumin, Monet, and Pissarro worked at the Académie Suisse in Paris. Jules Antoine Castagnary was the French art critic who first referred to these painters by the term “Impressionists,” however the critic used the term in a negative manner. He stated that “they 4 render not the landscape but the sensation produced by the landscape.”1 The first painting described by the term was Monet’s “Impression Sunrise” in 1874. As their title suggests, these Impressionistic painters’ work depicted a vague impression of the subject instead of an exact detailed representation. These painters often depicted landscapes, cities, or everyday life, paying special attention to unique light and atmosphere. Critics interpreted the painting’s vague nature and broad brushstrokes as a lack of skill or care.2 Some twenty years after Impressionism was established in the visual arts, it inspired the Impressionist movement in music. Claude Debussy was the first composer referred to as an “Impressionistic” composer when the Académie des Beaux-Arts reviewed his work, “Printemps,” composed in 1887. The Académie warned him against composing with “vague impressionism,” which they deemed dangerous to music. Their feedback read, “His feeling for musical color is so strong that he is apt to forget the importance of accuracy of line and form. He should beware this vague impressionism which is one of the most dangerous enemies of artistic truth.”3 While the working definition of Impressionism sometimes lacks specificity, Impressionistic music demonstrates certain universal characteristics. Most sources will say that Impressionistic music aims to create a haziness, a vagueness, and a lack of definition. Debussy accomplished this through breaking free of traditional major/minor key systems. He incorporated plainsong and folk-song into his compositions, using unusual scales like church modes for melodies. Debussy also utilized techniques seen in Russian folk music of the Far East, such as 1 Jann Pasler, "Impressionism," Grove Music Online/Oxford Music Online, accessed February 2 Grace Seiberling, "Impressionism," Grove Art Online/Oxford Art Online, accessed April 10, 2015, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.mcc1.library.csulb.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T040015. 3 Ronald L Byrnside, "Musical Impressionism: The Early History of the Term" (The Musical Quarterly 66, no. 4, 1980), 523. 5 composing melodies with pentatonic scales. Another popular non-diatonic scale from the East used in Impressionism was whole tone scales. Harmony in Impressionism did not simply act as accompaniment anymore, but became part of the melody itself. Debussy used 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th chords as dominant and secondary dominant chords, a technique deemed “wrong” in all previous European western music. Added- note chords, chords containing stacked notes of some or all of the notes in the whole tone scale, and chords consisting of stacked fourths or fifths (quartal and quintal chords, respectively) appear in Impressionism as well. Slow chord progressions of these discordant chords are also a cornerstone of Impressionistic music. Debussy also liked composing music in which the strings play open fifths, a practice formerly strongly discouraged because open fifths do not themselves indicate a specific harmonic functionality. These harmonies and chords did not resolve in traditional ways at cadences, making their functions vague, contributing to the floating, timeless sensation in the music. Timbre is one of the most important variables used by Debussy and other Impressionistic composers. In the 18th and 19th centuries, instruments were organized in four groups: woodwinds, brass, percussion and strings. Debussy reorganized the process of orchestration in terms of each individual instrument’s timbre. He wanted each instrument to play its own specific role in the entire sound; this goal of Debussy’s causes many musicologists to compare his compositional style to the visual art style of pointillism.4 Claude Debussy aimed to represent nature through his compositions and wished his music would bring out “the mysterious correspondences between Nature and the Imagination.”5 4 Christopher Palmer, Impressionism in Music (London: Hutchinson & Co Ltd., 1973), 23. 5 Pasler, Impressionism. 6 Louis Laloy’s biography on Debussy included Debussy’s opinion of the definition of Impressionism: “Sounds used in music have no meaning nor can they represent an object. Music, therefore, among all the arts must originally have been the one which is essentially symbolist and impressionist.”6 Debussy based many of his musical works on literary works; Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem inspired his well-known Prélude à l’Apres-midi d’un Faun, Maurice Maeterlinck inspired Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande, and J.M.W. Turner inspired Debussy’s La Mer. Debussy was also attracted to Asian art, as exemplified by a Japanese painting by Katsushika Hokusai on the cover of La Mer. Debussy even stated that “Non-European musicians, like the Chinese, the Indians and the Sengalese are Impressionists and Symbolists without being aware of it.”7 Similarly, since Impressionism does not adhere to rigid musical forms, this makes it easily susceptible to emulating non-Western music. It seems that no single, commonly accepted technical definition exists for Impressionistic music, perhaps because Debussy believed in letting the music speak for itself as opposed to writing and talking about the music. Debussy said, “There is too much writing of music. Too much importance attached to the formula, the craft.”8 This suggests that Debussy was not interested in defining himself through analysis. He was “a man to whom musical analysis…[has] become utterly abhorrent…there is little if any mention, let alone discussion, of the actual craft 6 Ibid., 527. 7 Ibid. 8 Palmer, Impressionism in Music, 19. 7 of musical composition. Debussy would have none of it.”9 Regardless, the Impressionist movement in music is inextricably linked with Debussy. Many scholars define Impressionism solely as the music of Debussy and those who were influenced by him. The use of the descriptor, Impressionism, started and grew as Debussy’s career developed, even though there was a twenty-year gap between the rise of his career and the start of the Impressionist movement in art. Debussy’s music and Impressionism are so linked that scholars have stated that: “In any case, discussions of Impressionism in music emerged not before but with Debussy’s music.”10 Despite the relationship to Debussy, some composers were referred to as “impressionistic” before he was. In a letter penned by Renoir in 1882, he spoke of a discussion he had with Richard Wagner. He wrote, “We spoke of the Impressionists of music.”11 Renoir might have been talking about Fauré, Duparc, Chabrier, or Chausson, seeing as Renoir did not know Debussy and the letter was written before Debussy had published any of his music. This was a unique usage of the term Impressionism because it occurred before official documentation of the term as applied to music. Other Impressionistic composers mentioned in connection with Debussy were the French composers Vincent d’Indy, Théodore Dubois, and Gabriel Fauré.