DQ for Watkins, 64-95 (grad students: please continue reading through p103)
Please be prepared to respond in either seminar meeting or in "Comments" on the course blog. In all venues, you must be prepared to cite specific passages (by page, paragraph, line, and quotation) in support of your responses—and specific works.
This section seeks to place Debussy in his time, place, and compositional context, and to address the ways in which Debussy’s resources as a late-19th century composer both paralleled and also contrasted those of the Viennese composers we have previously looked at. In this particular section, I will suggest some additional ideas, resources, and motives, beyond those Watkins provides—so please read carefully and think hard about the questions I pose.
(1) The first and most obvious question: why does Watkins choose to address Debussy here in the text, having just closed a discussion of the 2nd Viennese school? To do this requires him to jump back in time, to investigate a composer whose years of active composition began in the 1880s and ended with his death in 1917. It would seem on the surface that Watkins is addressing Debussy in an illogical sequence; please articulate a convincing argument in favor of the sequence Watkins uses. What does this tell us about Watkins’s own model of musical history in the 20th century?
(2) Throughout this chapter, certain musical characteristics in Debussy are described as being reflective of and dependent upon a certain set of aesthetic models and goals. What are these aesthetic models and goals, from what other sources (particularly what other art forms) does Debussy draw them, and how do they play out in specific SHMRG musical characteristics? NOTE: this is a very broad question demanding both an articulate thesis and detailed discussion of examples. In responding to this (on the blog, in class, or in an examination), do not simply settle for broad, general, unspecific, or vague statements: be specific, articulate a specific thesis, and provide specific concrete examples.
(3) Provide, in your own words, a concrete and specific definition of Symbolist poetry’s goals and techniques. In turn, link your definition to specific characteristics in specific works of composers influenced by Symbolist poetry. Include discussion of at least one work by Debussy and one work by each of two other composers.
(4) A more deductive and inductive question: what are the root causes of the Symbolist movement in literature? In music? Why now, at this time, in this particular geographical part of the world, were Symbolist aesthetics and techniques seen as a “new way forward”? Again, be specific, relate poetry to music, and provide examples from specific pieces.
(5) Similar to (4) above: what is the role of Richard Wagner’s music in all this? Of his artistic philosophy? Of the Wagner “cult” that enveloped European (not just German) arts (not just music) culture by the end of the 19th century? Cite at least three composers, each of different nationality, and using specific pieces, who were affected by Wagner, and describe ways in which each composer sought to “break free” of this early influence?
(6) Beyond the obvious connection with Symbolist poetry (and the frequent choice by French composers of the period to set this poetry to music), what is the significance of text in these works of Debussy? What compositional factors might drive the choice of texts, or the choice whether to include text at all? Explain and cite examples.
(7) On pp69-70 Watkins cites the influence of Satie upon Debussy, and particularly of Satie’s interest in (a) old French music and (b) popular or “café” music of the period. He also (c) describes Satie’s apparently-intentional naiveté in saying that “nothing could be simpler” than to translate Impressionist painting techniques to music. We will speak about (b) in class, but in understanding (a), you need to understand why old French music might have seemed an attractive source for new compositional ideas. Undergrads: be prepared to articulate the motive behind this borrowing from old French music. Grad students: begin from the indicated section of this Wikipedia article on Rosicrucianism and then quickly “read for musicological content” the JSTOR article “Erik Satie and Vincent Hyspa: Notes on a Collaboration.” Be prepared to share insights from these with the class as a whole.(8) Be prepared to summarize Watkins’s insights about the Prelude a “L’apres-midi d’un faune, paying particular attention to (a) Debussy’s musical language and the question of whether that language is more concerned with “mood” or with “text”; (b) considerations of formal organization in Debussy’s “post-functional” harmonic world. Articulate and cite passages supporting your summary.
(9) See Watkins’s detailed discussion of this piece and transcription of large chunks of its libretto (pp75 & ff). Why does Watkins choose to function on this work, which is relatively anomalous in Debussy’s catalog (his only completed opera), not widely played in the repertory, and typically not used as an example of Debussy’s “quintessential style”?
1 comment:
DQ due Thursday, February 1, 2007, from Lisa Lee.
Note to the reader: The following responses need to be read in sequence. If you choose to read a later numbered DQ “out of sequence,” it will not make as much sense as if you were to read it “in order.” Also: Is a blog spot a place to make informal comments and give opinions as well as answer DQs? I will assume that it is and say that the “graduate” readings on DQ7 are a blast, lots of fun, and worth reading for a treat as well as for knowledge.
1. That Watkins chooses to address the 2nd Viennese school before addressing Debussy is a choice based on a logical procession deriving from tracing the roots of early twentieth-century musical mentality to earlier Austrian and German roots, not only back to Wagner, Strauss, and Mahler, which is usual, but to Beethoven. (Burkholder traces it to Brahms.) The composers of the 2nd Viennese school were more directly a continuation of the prevailing nineteenth-century Viennese tradition—indeed, they thought of themselves as such—than was Debussy (although Wagner influenced Debussy both directly and in his desire to turn away from him). Watkins’ choice makes more sense than that of Eric Salzman, who in his book on twentieth-century music goes from Wagner/Strauss/Mahler in a chapter called “The Sources,” and then breaks off from that line and treats Debussy in the following chapter. Peter S. Hanson, in his book on twentieth-century music, like Watkins, goes back as far as Beethoven in a chapter called “Nineteenth Century Background,” but like Salzman, abruptly switches to Debussy in the next chapter. Watkins model of musical history in the twentieth century, then, is that its roots can be seen in nineteenth-century German and Austrian music and that the roots are most evident in composers who felt themselves tied to this history (cross-reference the historicist view of Burkholder).
2. Debussy’s aesthetic goals seem to have paralleled those of the Symbolist poets, described so eloquently as an interest in the “sonic mysteries of language” (p. 65, 3rd full paragraph, line 1; Verlaine, C’est l’extase langoureuse, pp. 68-69). This preference for sonic beauty over other considerations (for example, formal or structural concerns) is evidenced in the dialogue between Debussy and his teacher, Guiraud, and in that famous statement, “Pleasure is the law” (p. 79, lines 7 ff). The Impressionist artists, with whom Debussy was and still is compared despite his dislike of the comparision, were similarly concerned with a type of visual equivalent of sonic mystery and beauty, that is, the mystery and beauty of the surface play of light on nature, objects, and people (people, Renoir, Moulin de la Galette; objects, Monet, Rouen Cathedral, West Façade, Sunlight; nature, Monet, Bassin des Nympheas). Also, the Impressionist artists tended to blur lines and formal distinctions ( Monet, Impression: Sunrise). These impressionist tendencies can also be seen in Whistler, for example, in Nocturne in Black and Gold; Debussy used the term “nocturnes” for an orchestral composition. Specific SHMRG characteristics reminiscent of Impressionism and evidenced in Debussy’s music include the seemingly improvisatory formal schemes, that is, formal schemes that do not, at least superficially, seem to follow a pre-conceived form or be in any “form” at all, but unfold in a series of disparate images. (However, Watkins writes that La Mer “endorses a structural clarity” and that Roy Howat “has argued for . . . a different type of formalism” ((p. 95, last paragraph)).) Moreover, the outlines of these “images” are blurred through indefinite cadences that do not seem to imply closure but seemingly float off into the air, liberal use of a kind of written-in tempo rubato caused by shifting rhythmic groupings to which is added reinforcing performing directions, and sounds that seem to “hang in the air” until they dissolve. The assertions of the preceding two sentences can be seen in popular piano prelude known as The Girl with the Flaxen Hair and in the piano teaching piece, The Little Shepherd. Symbolist interest in sonic mystery and beauty sonic beauty can be seen in his famous “planing” parallel chordal constructions as in Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir and in his use of evocative modalism in compositions such as La cathedrale englutie, which also uses parallel chordal constructions. Modality and parallel chordal constructions are also featured in Debussy’s Ariettes oubliees, written on texts of Verlaine (p. 67, last paragraph, and p. 68, musical example).
3. The late nineteenth-century French poets who were associated with symbolism—including Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarme, and Laforgue (with Baudelaire as a precursor)—sought to evoke evanescent moods or images (as opposed to providing linear narrative) through subtle exploitation of the sound of the language. They often used synesthesia—the description of a sense impression in terms of another seemingly inappropriate sensation. They often spoke of language as if it were music and viewed music as the ideal. The moods were evoked in disconnected ways that placed little emphasis on formal structure. To quote myself from 2) above: Debussy’s aesthetic goals seem to have paralleled those of the Symbolist poets, described so eloquently as an interest in the “sonic mysteries of language” (p. 65, 3rd full paragraph, line 1; Verlaine, C’est l’extase langoureuse, pp. 68-69). This preference for sonic beauty over other considerations (for example, formal or structural concerns) is evidenced in the dialogue between Debussy and his teacher, Guiraud, and in that famous statement, “Pleasure is the law” (p. 79, lines 7 ff). Some of the SHMRG characteristics that I wrote that were reminiscent of Impressionism and evidenced in Debussy’s music might also be compared to Symbolism, and include the seemingly improvisatory formal schemes, that is, formal schemes that do not, at least superficially, seem to follow a pre-conceived form or be in any “form” at all, but unfold in a series of disparate images, as in Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest, The Girl with the Flaxen Hair, The Little Shepherd, and Prelude a l’apres- midi d’un faune (However, Watkins writes that La Mer “endorses a structural clarity” and that Roy Howat “has argued for . . . a different type of formalism” ((p. 95, last paragraph)).) Debussy referred directly to Symbolist poetry in Ariettes oubliees and Fetes galantes, written on texts by Verlaine and obliquely in Pelleas et Melisande, as Maeterlinck was influenced by Symbolism. Gabriel Faure set Verlaine’s poem C’est l’extase (as did Debussy). Other composers who set Verlaine were Chabrier, Charpentier, Chausson, and Stravinsky (p. 67, lines 13 ff). Ravel set poems by Mallarme (Trois Poemes d Stephane Mallarme). If one includes Baudelaire as a member of rather than a precursor to Symbolism, one might mention Duparc’s setting of L’invitation au voyage (p. 66, 6th and 7th lines from the bottom of the page). I do not know enough about these pieces (yet) to comment on SHMRG characteristics that might be reminiscent of Symbolist ideas. Schoenberg, of course, wrote Pelleas und Melisande, but the notion of “sonic beauty” seems appropriate to Sommermorgen an einem See from his Five Pieces for Orchestra Op. 16, which exploits and depends almost totally on changing tone color; however, I have no clue as to whether or not he was influenced here by Symbolist ideas. The same might be said of Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra Op. 10. I will ask in class for appropriate examples of composers other than Debussy who were influenced by Symbolism and how they evidenced it in their music. Much depends on how narrow or loosely the term Symbolism is defined and whether or not the compositional or SHMRG references reminiscent of Symbolism can be included here only if they are intentionally referential on the part of the composer.
4. A root cause of the Symbolist movement in literature was the rebellion of the Symbolist poets against the external objectivity and depictions of human suffering that were typical of the prevalent Realism and Naturalism in French literature, for example, the novels of Zola, such as Nana. Realism was a movement in visual arts, as well; for example, under the tenets of Courbet’s Realism, the most suitable subjects for painting are everyday, contemporary, scenes, most often from the lives of the lower classes; a famous example is Courbet’s acclaimed work The Stone Breakers (1849), in which two laborers are depicted breaking stones. To reject French Realism and Naturalism, to reject this obsession with the empirical seeking of external truth, the Symbolists turned inward, using metaphors to create images that recreated and nourished the mystical inner being. This happened in France at that time because France was the home of Realism and Naturalism and Realism and Naturalism had been the avant-garde movement preceding Symbolism. By rejecting that which came before, the Symbolist poets were creating a “new way forward.” Wagner was also seen as a “new way forward,” particularly in his writings, and was espoused by the Symbolist poets in the frenzy of Parisian Wagnerism that developed after Wagner’s death. In Paris, Wagner for a while became the symbol of all that was progressive, and the Symbolist poets wanted to be progressive. (Zola described the frenzy of Wagnerism in a famous passage in one of his novels, L’Oeuvre). Moreover, the Symbolist poets confused Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk with a type of synesthesia or Baudelaire-inspired correspondence between music and poetry; inspired by their confusion, perhaps, they created a monthly journal called the Revue wagnerienne (p. 67, 1st paragraph, lines 3 ff). Quite paradoxically, in music, in France, Symbolism—this literary movement that praised Wagner—became associated with Debussy who, while influenced by Wagner, was trying to get away from Wagner’s influence and to create, perhaps, a decidedly French style or, at least one that was not Wagnerian, according to Satie, on Satie’s advice (bottom of p. 69 and top of p. 70). Symbolism’s desire to move away from Realism and Naturalism can by seen in the mythological, totally unrealistic, setting of Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune by Debussy and in his evocation of the remote Medieval world in La Cathedrale engloutie. The use of modality and open fifths (Medieval church modes and early polyphony, as in La Cathedrale engloutie), pentatonic scales (Eastern associations, as in Pagodes), whole tone scales (Voiles), and Spanish rhythms (La Soiree dans Grenade) certainly take the listener away from his or her harsh world that would have been described in Realism and Naturalism. One might include dance hall rhythms here as “taking one away from one’s reality,” or not, as being part of the real world (Minstrels, Golliwog’s Cakewalk). (Debussy’s SHMRG characteristics reminiscent of Symbolist ideas and techniques are discussed above under 2.)
5. I described the Wagner “cult” that enveloped specifically Parisian arts culture by the end of the nineteenth century (indeed, even before Wagner’s death) above under question 4, in relation to the Symbolist poets and Parisian Wagnerism. Various artists and writers associated with Realism, which Symbolism was rejecting, also espoused Wagner as a prophet. Wagner was linked to Realism through the association of the term by critics with that which was new, revolutionary, and adventurous at the time, rather than with subject matter or stylistic and technical considerations. Wagner’s preference for far-off places and times appealed to the Symbolists. (I wrote a paper on Fantin-Latour and Parisian Wagnerism for Dr. Hobbs’ Wagner class.) Wagner’s musical influence was felt all over Europe. England was dominated at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries by pro-German, Wagnerian-type of compositional instruction and criteria, personified perhaps by Parry. Elgar, while influenced by the Wagnerism “in the air,” got around some of this by being essentially self-taught and by consciously appropriating “English” song-style and techniques. In his cantata Caractacus, much of the music sounds as if it is in the German/Wagnerian tradition, but attempts were made by Elgar to find a more English voice in the use of English folk- or ballad-inspired tunes and English madrigal-style settings; the inclusion of Druids, while superficially English, nevertheless reminds one of the Teutonic mythological characters of Wagner. In France, Debussy struggled with Wagner’s influence and noted it in the Tristan chord/motif incorporated into one of his piano pieces that I teach to children, I think it is Golliwog’s Cakewalk, as well as in Pelleas et Melisande, along with other fleeting references to Wagner and the use of leitmotifs in the latter work (p. 76, 1st full paragraph, lines 1ff). According to Satie, Debussy took his advice to move away from Wagner (p. 69, bottom of the page and p. 70, top of page). He did this in a variety of ways, all described above, but perhaps they are merely conventions that I memorized earlier and could now be shown by Watkins as not really being different from Wagner--partially by the use of parallelisms and planing (Ce qua vu le vent d’ouest), partially by the amorphous structures and attention to sonic beauty reminiscent of Symbolist poetry (Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune), partially by his use of a recitative style that was more conductive to the French language (Pelleas et Melisande), partially by his use of whole-tone scales ( Voiles) and pentatonic scales (Pagodes), partially by his use of modality (La Cathedrale engloutie), partially by his use of old forms (Sarabande from Pour le piano), but I think mainly by not only creating vertical sonorities not dependent on thirds (Ce qua vu le vent d’ouest), but in freeing dissonant sonorities from the need to resolve altogether. From what I remember from my class on Wagner with Dr. Hobbs, Wagner seemed to always have an eventual resolution, or at least an untraditional resolution to another dissonant sonority, but always some sort of resolution, always a sense or awareness of the resolution either being performed or circumvented or performed unusually. Debussy seemed to dispense, admittedly not always or completely, with this constant tension of does it or doesn’t it (resolve, that is). Resolution no longer seems to matter in his music, like virginity in the 1960s. I do not know if Charles Ives, writing in the United States, was bedeviled by Wagner, but I would assume that he probably was at least a little bit in that he studied music at Yale in a traditional, German-influenced environment. He freed himself from Wagner not only by having an eccentric musician for a father and continuing his father’s penchant for independent experimentation (Concord Sonata, first movement, vertical sonority built in seconds or tone clusters, no bar lines), but by drawing on specifically American pre-existent material (Concord Sonata, third movement, gospel hymns).
6. Right now, the only significance and compositional factors that I can postulate upon concerning Debussy’s choice to include texts or the choices of the texts that he made, beyond the “obvious connection with Symbolist poetry,” is that Debussy might have found the use of texts and these specific texts to 1) have served as a compositional spur to creativity, specifically, a spur that produced new, perhaps specifically non-Wagnerian compositional ideas and sounds, and 2) to have served as a substitute for the old, traditional harmonic forms, that is, a scaffold upon which to produce compositions that no longer have the traditional harmonic structures upon which to build, a problem faced by the 2nd Viennese School, as well. I have already cited examples of non-Wagnerian compositional ideas and sounds, and the use of non-traditional forms and simultaneities, above. I will have to ask about this question in class.
7. This DQ was dessert after the ponderous efforts I made for the preceding DQs. I was definitely wrong in my first projections on this discussion question because I neglected to remember what I had read about Satie in years past and what it was about him that so appealed to me. What I did was: before I read the articles assigned to graduate students in the question, I projected upon what the reasons might be that Satie and Debussy were interested in “old French music,” and came up with three possible and serious reasons: 1) It was indicative of the burgeoning historicist position about which Burkholder wrote, a way of connecting to the French past. 2) It was a way to get away from Wagner and German domination, and to assert French independence. 3) It was a way to create form in music that no longer could look to the traditional harmonic formal structures. After I read the article, I realized that it was parody-- parodic quotation and allusion, melodic and harmonic caricature, using the words of the article--that was the essence of what I liked about Satie. Much of Satie’s interest in old French music was in its wonderful ability to be parodied, perhaps as what one might call “the music of the old establishment,” that is, although not the academic music of the academy in Satie’s day, still a source of parody that academics might recognize—however, there are indications in the article that he did not want the parody to be recognized—I will have to read the article in detail after I have it printed out tomorrow. The article described a marvelous cabaret world of Paris in the late nineteenth century and postulated, with much evidence, the influence of a fascinating cabaret singer-poet-satirist-writer etc. named Vincent Hyspas upon Satie. The assertion is that the underlying technique of Satie’s parodic quotations and allusions and melodic and harmonic caricatures is that of the cabaret parodist Vincent Hyspas.
8. While Debussy himself stated that his Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune is “a general impression of the poem” (p. 73, quotation, lines 2-3), that is, it does not follow the poem as a story and as such should be viewed as more concerned with mood than text, it is nevertheless perhaps the text itself that Debussy is concerned with if viewed as Watkins views it—“no poetry is more reflective of the sonic tendencies . . . the words so tenuous, that they appear to be shed of meaning beyond their sound” (p. 72, lines 3 ff. after heading). In his compositional devices, Debussy might have had as his goal precisely the reflection of the nature of the text, although not telling the text as a storyline (which apparently it did not really have, anyway). Watkins writes about the form of the piece on p. 73. The number of measures in Debussy’s work is the same as the number of lines of Mallarme’s poem. Wenk concludes that Debussy’s work is not a “word-by-word translation,” nevertheless (p. 73, middle of page). Watkins writes that most analysts conclude that the piece is in ABA1 form, although they differ as to where B begins, and writes that the work is a “gradually unfolding transformation of a single idea” (p. 73, 2nd paragraph from the bottom of the page). Debussy suggests that the mode is “what one happens to choose at the moment,” thus articulating a post-functional harmonic sense of form, a form determined by mood (p. 75, 1st quotation, line 7).
8. Watkins states the reason for his focus on Pelleas et Melisande, a work that is not usually discussed in detail in treatments of Debussy, on p. 80, lines 1-4: “a study of the score not only secures most of the features associated with Debussy’s mature language, but underscores through its textual background the relationship of Symbolist values to the development of a new musical language.” In addition, the piece provides opportunities for Watkins to discuss parallels between Debussy and Wagner—and variations of the parallels and deviations, as well—which in context of the intentions of Watkins in this book bear “another look.”
Post a Comment