SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
Debussy’s art only attempts
As Debussy’s art only attempts to give the impression of the moment, without troubling itself with what may come after, it is free from care, and takes its fill in the enjoyment of the moment. In the garden of harmonies it selects the most beautiful flowers; for sincerity of expression takes a second place with it, and its first idea is to please. In this again it interprets the aesthetic sensualism of the French race, which seeks pleasure in art, and does not willingly admit ugliness, even when it seems to be justified by the needs of the drama and of truth. Mozart shared the same thought: «Music,» he said, «even in the most terrible situations, ought never to offend the ear; it should charm it even there; and, in short, always remain music.»
As for Debussy’s harmonic language, his originality does not consist, as some of his foolish admirers have said, in the invention of new chords, but in the new use he makes of them. A man is not a great artist because he makes use of unresolved sevenths and ninths, consecutive major thirds and ninths, and harmonic progressions based on a scale of whole tones; one is only an artist when one makes them say something. And it is not on account of the peculiarities of Debussy’s style–of which one may find isolated examples in great composers before him, in Chopin, Liszt, Chabrier, and Richard Strauss–but because with Debussy these peculiarities are an expression of his personality, and because Pelléas et Mélisande, «the land of ninths,» has a poetic atmosphere which is like no other musical drama ever written.
Lastly, the orchestration is purposely restrained, light, and divided, for Debussy has a fine disdain for those orgies of sound to which Wagner’s art has accustomed us; it is as sober and polished as a fine classic phrase of the latter part of the seventeenth century. Ne quid nimis («Nothing superfluous») is the artist’s motto. Instead of amalgamating the timbres to get a massive effect, he disengages their separate personalities, as it were, and delicately blends them without changing their individual nature. Like the impressionist painters of to-day, he paints with primary colours, but with a delicate moderation that rejects anything harsh as if it were something unseemly.
this was: Debussy’s Art Only Attempts
go to next chapter: need of the French spirit
