SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
Lully and Rameau
In France we have never had–apart from a few attempts in opéra-comique–a recitative that exactly expressed our natural speech. Lully and Rameau took for their model the high-flown declamation of the tragedy stage of their time. And French opera for the past twenty years has chosen a more dangerous model still–the declamation of Wagner, with its vocal leaps and its resounding and heavy accentuation. Nothing could be more displeasing in French. All people of taste suffered from it, though they did not admit it. At this time, Antoine, Gémier, and Guitry were making theatrical declamation more natural, and this made the exaggerated declamation of the French opera appear more ridiculous and more archaic still. And so a reform in recitative was inevitable. Jean-Jacques Rousseau had foreseen it in the very direction in which Debussy[201] has accomplished it. He showed in his Lettre sur la musique française that there was no connection between the inflections of French speech, «whose accents are so harmonious and simple,» and «the shrill and noisy intonations» of the recitative of French opera. And he concluded by saying that the kind of recitative that would best suit us should «wander between little intervals, and neither raise nor lower the voice very much; and should have little sustained sound, no noise, and no cries of any description–nothing, indeed, that resembled singing, and little inequality in the duration or value of the notes, or in their intervals.» This is the very definition of Debussy’s recitative.
[Footnote 201: We must also note that during the first half of the seventeenth century people of taste objected to the very theatrical declamation of French opera. «Our singers believe,» wrote Mersenne, in 1636, «that the exclamations and emphasis used by the Italians in singing savour too much of tragedies and comedies, and so they do not wish to employ them.»]
The symphonic fabric of Pelléas et Mélisande differs just as widely from Wagner’s dramas. With Wagner it is a living thing that springs from one great root, a system of interlaced phrases whose powerful growth puts out branches in every direction, like an oak. Or, to take another simile, it is like a painting, which though it has not been executed at a single sitting, yet gives us that impression; and, in spite of the retouching and altering to which it has been subjected, still has the effect of a compact whole, of an indestructible amalgam, from which nothing can be detached. Debussy’s system, on the contrary, is, so to speak, a sort of classic impressionism–an impressionism that is refined, harmonious, and calm; that moves along in musical pictures, each of which corresponds to a subtle and fleeting moment of the soul’s life; and the painting is done by clever little strokes put in with a soft and delicate touch. This art is more allied to that of Moussorgski (though without any of his roughness) than that of Wagner, in spite of one or two reminiscences of Parsifal, which are only extraneous traits in the work. In Pelléas et Mélisande one finds no persistent leitmotifs running through the work, or themes which pretend to translate into music the life of characters and types; but, instead, we have phrases that express changing feelings, that change with the feelings. More than that, Debussy’s harmony is not, as it was with Wagner and all the German school, a fettered harmony, tightly bound to the despotic laws of counterpoint; it is, as Laloy[202] has said, a harmony that is first of all harmonious, and has its origin and end in itself.
[Footnote 202: No other critic has, I think, discerned so shrewdly Debussy’s art and genius. Some of his analyses are models of clever intuition. The thought of the critic seems to be one with that of the musician.]
this was: Lully And Rameau
go to next chapter: Debussy’s art only attempts
