Debussy: Préludes for Solo Piano

It was around 1907 that certain critics, led by Emile Vuillermoz, began to suggest that Debussy was in decline, that he was no longer at the forefront of musical developments. Vuillermoz was, of course, associated with the group known as 'Les Apaches'. The group consisted of various artists and critics sharing similar tastes in art, prominent amongst whom was Ravel. That Vuillermoz' remarks were tendentiously designed to champion his fellow 'apache' to the detriment of Ravel's celebrated rival is more than likely. Nonetheless, Ravel's technical 'advances' to this point certainly merited comment. The composer of Jeux d'eau, Miroirs, and Histoires naturelles was undoubtedly beginning to challenge Debussy's pre-eminence.
Any insecurity Debussy may have been feeling could only have been exacerbated by developments and innovations elsewhere at around this time. Strauss' Salome had been premiered in 1905 - a work about which Debussy remarked, 'I don't see how anyone can be other than enthusiastic about this work - an absolute masterpiece ... almost as rare a phenomenon as the appearance of a comet' - whilst the supremely abrasive Elektra appeared in 1909. Schoenberg abandoned tonality in the finale of his 2nd Quartet in 1908, to be followed by Erwartung in 1909, and the particularly influential Pierrot Lunaire in 1912. Meanwhile, Stravinsky's groundbreaking series of Diaghilev ballets began with the premiere of The Firebird in 1910, Petrushka (the 'sonorous magic' of which particularly impressed Debussy) in 1911, and that infamous paean to proto-fascism The Rite of Spring in 1913 (a work that Debussy admitted haunted him 'like a beautiful nightmare').
Certainly, the hugely significant Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Nocturnes, and Pelléas et Mélisande were behind Debussy now. For a composer with perhaps impossibly lofty aims, whose motto was 'toujours plus haut', the achievement of his aesthetic ideals (his 'musique de moi') seemed increasingly problematic. Determined as Debussy was never to repeat himself, he found himself 'stifled by the weight of a particular tradition', remarking that the 'fact that this tradition belongs to me by right is hardly relevant ... because whatever masks you wear, underneath you find yourself.'

Furthermore, the demands of his personal circumstances - interminable financial problems, an excessively sybaritic wife, international engagements as a performer etc. - impelled Debussy to compose increasingly according to professional exigencies. The consequent restrictions this placed on his creativity were in stark contrast to the Bohemian attitude with which Debussy had been able to approach his art hitherto.
It was during this period of creative difficulty, then, that Debussy's first book of préludes for piano was composed - specifically, in late 1909 and early 1910. It can certainly not be said that the development of Debussy's music across his career represents an undeviating, uni-linear series of 'advances' towards some particular (though no doubt unattainable) ideal. Each major work seems to embody relatively unique ideas, achieved according to distinct technical means; yet, the very last works to some extent aside, there are consistent threads and preoccupations that are explored in each. Thus, the preludes can be considered on the basis of both their particular aesthetic qualities and the technical features that embody Debussy's ongoing aspirations towards his musical ideals.
In drawing this distinction, the spectre of 'impressionism' inevitably appears. The tenacity with which the term clings to Debussy remains curious, if not exactly baffling given certain specious correspondences (vague 'contours', unblended 'colours' vibrating against one another, etc.). Nevertheless, it is instructive to explore these conceptual weaknesses and metaphorical difficulties.
The term was first applied to Debussy by the members of the Institut de France in response to his second 'envoi' from Rome (required of him as a prix de Rome winner), Printemps. 'It is devoutly to be wished', they opined, 'that he [Debussy] be on his guard against that vague impressionism which is one of the most dangerous enemies of truth in works of art.' Reassuring as this valuable insight into truth (not to mention art) may be, Debussy himself was unguarded enough to describe La Mer as being 'in a word, musical impressionism, following an exotic and refined art, the formula for which is the exclusive property of the composer.' More revealingly, Debussy claimed to his publisher Jacques Durand that in his orchestral Images he was attempting 'realities in some sense - what imbeciles call impressionism, just about the least appropriate term possible.'

The concepts underlying impressionism date back to Hume in the eighteenth century, and on through the French positivists of the nineteenth century. Emphasis is placed on the immediate effect of perceptions, on sensations (or impressions) - for positivists, all knowledge is ultimately based on sense-experience and thus the concern for the effect of objects on sense organs was that of the (undialectical) interaction of object and subject. Impressionist painters, though placing greater emphasis on subjective experience, sought to capture the sensations produced by objects (principally natural) in their paintings rather than the objects in themselves. Appropriating these ideas for music presents significant problems, foremost amongst which is the question of immediacy. A piece of music is diachronic (it presents itself over a period of time), whereas a given painting is synchronic (the image rendered consists putatively of a single point in time). One can understand, though not unproblematically, that a particular instant might be recorded in a painting, but how can an immediate sensation be realised by means that must necessarily unfold over time? This surely defeats the object. We cannot, furthermore, recognise in music a series of punctual instances as this would entail the complete isolation of each instant and preclude the identity, and indeed existence, of the piece. Any given instant must necessarily be suffused by the retention of what came before it, and the 'protention' of what is to come.
These arguments, in identifying such inadequacies, inevitably expose the tenuous nature of certain metaphors in music. Rousseau once said, '[c]olours remain but sounds faint away and we can never be certain that the sounds reborn are the same as the sounds that vanished', and de Man concurred in observing that the 'duration of the colours in painting is spatial and constitutes therefore a misleading analogy for the necessarily diachronic structure of music'. Music, literally speaking, contains no colours, lines or shapes, and this should perhaps serve to remind us to concentrate on the realities of Debussy's music and not obfuscatory (non-)correspondences (something Debussy himself was not always inclined to do). Wisely, Ravel recognised impressionism in music to be a 'rather fleeting analogy' since it 'does not seem to have any precise meaning outside the domain of painting'.

Debussy was perhaps seeking to discourage this analogy by placing the title of each prélude in small print at the end of the piece. Amongst the most remarkable features of the set is not only the sheer breadth of the intended evocations, but also the varying technical and stylistic means by which he seeks to achieve them. Depending upon the 'focus of Debussy's musical telescope', as Lockspeiser would have it, persistent compositional tendencies familiar from much of Debussy's music feature to differing degrees. Thus, in Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest, we find an excellent example of the techniques that were perhaps most influentially to be applied in the ballet Jeux. In evoking a wild, sometimes violent wind, Debussy juxtaposes contrasting segments in quick succession. The harmony tends towards the tonally ambiguous and is thus freed to some extent from articulating the form, whilst melodic interest is restricted to small, repeated fragments. This reduces the compositional significance of the traditionally primary features - melody, harmony, and the tonal articulation of form - and raises texture, sonority, and rhythm to new levels of influence. La Cathédrale engloutie, too, combines contrasting registers and textures with unusual sonorities (based on 4ths and 5ths) in establishing formal contrasts as it depicts the legendary cathedral of Ys and its tolling bells.
The 'mosaic' approach to structure, particularly evident in Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest and Jeux, has been cited by several contemporary composers as the inspiration for their 'moment forms'. Stockhausen defines this approach as rendering every moment 'something individual, independent, and centred in itself, capable of existing on its own'. This might appear to many a slightly dubious ambition on the basis of the retention/protention argument explored above, but contemporary music is never slow to derive its concepts from the most tenuous of philosophical bases. Mosaic structures can often seem, as a consequence, to be a series of aimless fragments meandering into one another as opposed to a hyper-sophisticated contemporary technique (as Monsieur Croche once said to me).

Textures are again defining features, in more exotic guises, in La Sérénade interrompue and Minstrels. The former mimics a Spanish guitar whilst the latter incorporates patterns drawn from American popular music. Elsewhere, however, Debussy adopts a starkly contrasted and refined lyricism, crafting expansive melodies as he adapts his technical means to the requirements of the subject matter as he conceives of it. As examples, La Fille aux cheveux de lin presents one of the four Scottish beauties of Leconte de Lisle, and Danseuses de Delphes evokes ancient Greece. The enduring popularity and technical interest of all these pieces certainly counter any suggestion that Debussy was 'written out' by this time. Indeed, the power of his imagination, in terms both of evocation and variety of technical resources, is comparable in these pieces to any of his works.

Copywright 2007, Simon Clarke