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    Modos y semitonos en los preludios de Debussy

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    108 views24 pages

    Modes and Semitones in Debussy's Preludes and Elsewhere

    Uploaded by

    Leniad Wolfschanze Muñeira
    Modos y semitonos en los preludios de Debussy

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    Roy Howat ‘Studies in Music: The University of Western Australia 22 (1988): 81-104 MODES AND SEMITONES IN DEBUSSY’S PRELUDES AND ELSEWHERE We hardly need to argue a case for how important the semitone 1s to Western diatonicism—most of all in its obvious functions as leading note, chromatic agent and modulatory pivot. Since Debussy‘s mature style moved increasingly away from the cadential and modulating formulae of the preceding two centuries—while still relying on dominant-tonic implications for much of its control of tensionsome study of Debussy’s form-building use of the semi- tone could tell us much about both Debussy and that interval. Debussy appears to have observed early on that if the semitone defines the tonic, or local tonic, of the standard Western modes, this use can be expanded to define contrasts and oppositions of more varied modes, and eventually to expand one’s tonal techniques by manipulating tensions between stability and instability, stasis and mobility, and between different types of tonal relation- ship (such as intervallic symmetry versus overtone symmetry). Investigating this here leads to various implications regarding his musical and aesthetic phil- osophy, and these are pursued as the present article progresses, involving links with Debussy’s nearest contemporaries. : ‘Jimbo’s Lullaby’, from the Children’s Corner of 1908, provides a decep- tively innocent-looking example of his way with modal and semitone relation- ships, shown in example 1. Each hand has almost the same pentatonic mode (Jimbo' is presumably an Asian elephant), except that only the left hand has the tonic B flat, and only the right hand has the theoretical leading-note A. 1 call it theoretical because Debussv’s stratagem stops it from resolving at the same octave, leaving instead an elephantine lurch down to the bass B flat. The effect is cadential only in the literal sense that it falls—by two octaves—and the point is humorously prodded home by Debussy’s hairpin crescendo and staccato at the crucial moment.’ Debussy had already used a related technique of modal juxtaposition to more deliberately dramatic effect in L isle joyeuse of 1903-4. The first mode involved, presenting the piece’s main motive (first bar of example 2a), is a standard mode in south Indian music,? using the sharpened fourth and flat- tened seventh that approximate to the sixth and tenth natural overtones (example 2b). Debussy then sharpens some of the seventh degrees, when the motive descends rather than ascends, to the closely related Lydian mode 81 STUDIES IN MUSIC (second bar of example 2a). The other mode involved is the whole-tone scale, used to great effect later in the piece, together with tour-bar sequences and pedal points, as a crescendo device. As seen in example 2c, one simple step, @ Chromatic convergence of two notes to the semitone between them, suffices to pull the rug quietly from under the tonally stable first mode of example 2a, turning it into the basically atonal whole-tone scale (bar 21 in example 2c). Debussy emphasizes the coup by repeating the new note, F, in the new motive marked ‘un peu en dehors’—but for the moment takes the device no further. It is later that he follows through, building the piece to its culmination through a repeated play on this modal juxtaposition, As more forcible modal cuontiast becomes required, he adds the other part of his device, by including the Lydian part of the main motive in order to produce a double chromatic convergence of three notes to two (example 2d). Again he emphasizes the two new notes, F and G. Lisle joyeuse used chromatic convergence to turn tonally stable seven-note modes into the unstable six-note whole-tone scale. The prelude ‘Voiles’ of 1909 (the second piece of the first book) mirrors this by using a similar double chromatic convergence to turn the whole-tone scale, which dominates the piece’s outer sections, into E flat minor pentatonic for the piece’s climax—the veils of the piece’s title lifted, as it were, for a few instants (example 3a). In this case the modal shift lies symmetrically across a D—A flat (or G sharp) axis (example 3b). The music could hardly emphasize the axis more clearly, the opening phrase defining it by its careful spelling of G sharp down to A flat, the closing chord surrounding its centre with C and E, and the transition to the pentatony teetering on A flat in bar 41, after repeated emphasis of D (example 3canda).* In both Lisle joyeuse and ‘Voiles’ the modes move by mirrored or wedge motions, disguising leading-note implications in favour of motion inwards and outwards. And yet, if we observe how constantly the opening two-and-a-half pages of ‘Voiles’ emphasize the notes D and A flat above the piece’s B flat bass pedal, it becomes inescanably visible—and audible—that the piece constitutes 2 large perfect cadence, masked only on the surface by the whole-tone play and by the fact that the insistent B flat bass holds the eventual tonic chord to a secdnd inversion. “Voiles’ in these respects incorporates five distinct characteristics: (1) an obsession with B flat; (2) vertically mirrored chromatic motion, resulting in (3) a very audible modal polarity of tonal stability versus instability, (4) an under- lying dominant-tonic polarity, and therefore (5) a dual system of tonal tension, diatonicism and modal polarity. All these ideas, prominent throughout the first half of the first book of Preludes, are developments of the opening bar of the very first prelude, ‘Danseuses de Delphes’ (example 4). One of Debussy’s most obviously diatonic pieces, this prelude, in B flat major, follows a clear tonal progression of I-V, I-V, Y-II-V-I (characteristics | and 4 above). Yet the undercurrents are audible in the first measure: the opening B flat is chro- matically split in the second chord A aud B (characteristic 2 above), taking the diatonic stability of the first chord straight to whole-tone instability (characteristic 3), and thence to the augmented (whole-tone coloured) domi- nant of the third beat (characteristics 4 and 5). 82 MODES AND SEMITONES To a surprising extent these two adjacent preludes seem deliberately recipro- cal. ‘Danseuses” opens out by chromatic divergence, whereas ‘Voiles’ moves into its climax by chromatic convergence. ‘Danseuses’ makes a great show of diatonic progression, but in reality clouds it all with whole-tone tendencies (that obstinate C sharp in the opening and closing lines), whereas ‘Voiles’ makes a great show of whole-tone construction, but in reality underpins it all with an underlying perfect cadence. Again Debussy seems to be manipulating us, Edgar Allan Poe-like, sneaking in either an innovative idea under a con- ventional surface or else a conventional progression under an innovative sur- face. In cither casc it is the successful rusc that is completely original. The characteristics above, not exhausted in ‘Voiles’, continue through the following preludes in various forms. The third prelude, ‘Le vent dans la plaine’, is dominated, like *Voiles’, by a B flat dominant pedal, and its first harmonic departure, at bar 15, splits the B flat chromatically in the same way as the first bar of ‘Danseuses de Delphes’ (example 5),* Thus the third prelude of the collection opens by bringing together two main threads from the preced- ing two preludes, After ‘Le vent dans la plaine’ ends on isolated B flats, the fourth and fifth preludes move away, but not far. First of all their keys, respectively A major and B major, merely transfer the same chromatic split to a larger scale. Second, B flat or A sharp remains present as an unresolved “blue* note charac- terizing each piece, prominent as a Phrygian second from the first bar of ‘Les sons et les parfums’ onwards, and as a non-cadential seventh up to the last bar of ‘Les collines d’Anacapri’ (example 6a). In each case the note diverges to, or converges from, its chromatic neighbours at a strategic point in the piece—B as an appoggiatura to the tonic A in the closing line of ‘Les sons et les par- fums’, and A, conversely, as an unfunctional colouring to the tonic B shortly before the close of ‘Les collines d’ Anacapri’—as shown in example 6b. If this, is a less functional use of B flat than in the first three preludes, it has method, for it leaves a breathing space before the sixth prelude, ‘Des pas sur la neige’, returns to all the previous preoccupations in minute detail, leading them full circle in a number of respects. (Ihe whole piece 1s reproduced as example 7.) Bars 1-4 fill out a complete Aeolian mode on D, with B flat (the beginning of the melody, marked by a fenuto dash) emphasized as the one black note (or footprint in the snow of white notes ...). Bar 5, beginning the consequent phrase, withdraws B flat and replaces it by a B natural strongly set off against A—an opposition given both ways round for emphasis—and allows two more bars for that strong qualitative change to sink in. Bars 8-15 follow through quickly to complete the musical paragraph, chromatically exploiting the way the initial Acolian mode was cracked open. The first chromatic note added was B natural; now Debussy adds in order F sharp, C sharp and G sharp together, then E flat, emphasized tenuto in bar 12. This order of rising (enharmonic) fifths completes the twelve-note chromatic collection (in the piece’s first twelve bars, as it happens), leaving a strong sense of how the chromaticism is in- creased step by step. If we continued the sequence the next note would he R flat, completing the circle; as if to say this, the paragraph closes in bar 15 on B flat, preceded by B natural to sum up the process. In a sense Debussy has led us through the whole key cycle without modu- 83 STUDIES IN MUSIC lating, and there is a characteristic irony in his having used this ostensibly most tonally static and astinato-ridden of all his twenty-four preludes for such a journey. In view of its publication in 1910, one wonders how closely Schoen- berg must have looked at this piece of protododecaphony. Seen from the other direction, it also echoes in brief the rising fifths key cycle of Chopin’s twenty- four Preludes; we can begin to see why Debussy’s Preludes make no attempt to imitate Chopin's key sequence literally.* Bars 16-25 form the piece’s next main paragraph, a variation of sorts on the preceding paragraph, recapitulating the shift to B natural in bar 20 just as at bar 5 and then, with the enharmonic twist to C flat, bringing in a new idea. This time the first foreign note to have already set the new mood, or mode, is A flat in bar 16; from bar 21 the remaining black notes—footprints or what- ever—arrive in the order D flat, E flat, G flat. The progression this time is fan- shaped or wedge-shaped (see figure 1), and begins by dividing the piece’s D tonality symmetrically at the tritone. If we were to continue this progression of fifths another step, we would arrive at B flat and B natural (= C flat).” To see how Debussy’s play on B flat and B natural is related to his choice of D as the key of this prelude, we need only continue the fan sequence further and watch both sides converge enharmonically on D. This time one wonders how closely Bartok—a confessed devotee of Debussy’s music—looked at the piece, since this last passage foreshadows Bartdk’s mirrored fan progression by fifths in the fugue of the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. The third paragraph of ‘Des pas sur la neige’, bars 26-31, is the most com- pressed of all. Chromaticism starts immediately, and the structural link this time is not to the piece’s opening material but to the new melody introduced by the second paragraph, which is taken up again at bar 28.* The chromatic notes (which can now logically include C flat or B natural) arrive in the order D flat and G flat, G sharp/A flat, B natural/C flat, and finally E flat. Again this is a fan progression (see figure 2), this time starting with D flat and ending with E flat. This last note is emphasized by the melodic entry in bar 28, the end of the paragraph recalls D flat, and from these two notes it is a simple chromatic con- vergence back to the tonie D of the piece’s short coda. The final symmetrical touches to this are on a larger scale. With these preogcupations worked through exhaustively in ‘Des pas sur la neige’, the remaming six preludes of Book 1 move off in other directions. Debussy’s pre- ‘occupation with the relationship between B flat and its chromatic neighbours, extending through the first six preludes, therefore divides the twelve preludes 6 + 6. (Pianists instinctively tend to sense this as a main division, emphasized by the hushed ending of ‘Des pas sur la neige’.) Similarly the first six preludes are divided 3 + 3, in that the first three are the ones explicitly dominated by B flat before the process goes underground, as it were, in the following three. There is no evidence that Debussy wanted the Preludes necessarily to be played integrally in sequence; nevertheless we can begin to feel why the sequence in which he presented them is so satisfying. Given the intensity of philosophy that underlies Debussy’s art and his sym- bolist background, the question hovers of what symbolism, personal or universal, might be embedded in these patterns and relationships. There are some implications apparent that link up remarkably with the observations of 84 MODES AND SEMITONES other commentators who similarly scent the philosopher in Debussy’s musical processes. Carolyn Abbate finished a recent article by showing a quotation from Tristan in an early sketch for Pelléas.” In its context, she argued, the quotation suggested a metaphor between personal and universal levels, likening the elder Golaud’s lethal shadow over the younger Pelléas and Mélisande to what Debussy felt as the lethal shadow of Wagner looming over later composers struggling, like himself, not to be swamped by Wagnerism."* That allusion occurred only in an early sketch of Pelléas. An unpublished chapter by Peter Platt suggests an answer to it in the final page of the upera's Published score, where the modal juxtapositions and sequences can be seen as @ metaphor between the personal and the universal: the completion of the opera’s destiny and the beginning of a new order, in the form of Mélisande’s infant, are linked to Debussy’s vision of a new musical order leading out of the ravaged past.'" By 1909, with these and other elements worked through on various levels, Debussy could well have continued the imagery in the Preludes. If we return to the beginning of ‘Danseuses de Delphes, (example 4), with its move in two chords fromi the old order of diatonicism to whole-tone anarchy, we can observe that the next move—a mere slip of a semitone from B to C in the right. hand—invokes the Wagnerian shadow, in the form of the half-diminished ‘Tristan’ chord. Debussy’s way out is the following augmented dominant chord, which here could aptly represent a reconciliation of the new with the vld, wholetonality with the gravitational pull of the dominant, the new inter- vallic symmetry characteristic of twentieth-century language with the overtone symmetry of the diatonic tradition.'? Perhaps to mirror this combination, ‘Minstrels’ finishes Book 1 of the Preludes with a similar marriage of two other complementary components of Debussy’s language, a pentatonic group and a plagal cadence (example 8a). Whatever the case there, the first two bars of “Minstrels” have already drawn a link across the first book of Pre- ludes by virtually quoting the first two bars of ‘Danseuses de Delphes’ in rhythmic disguise, with the same harmonic progression of tonic to augmented dominant, and melodic line of dominant to leading note (cf. examples 8b and 4). All this might seem to be reading too much into details, were it not so closely mirrored in the second book of Preludes, composed between late 1911 and early 1913, a time encompassing the premiare and publication of Stravinsky’s Petrushka. Debussy’s letters of the time make it clear how affected he was by Petrushka; even had they not, the second book of Preludes would make the point, laced as it is with echoes of Stravinsky’s kalcidoscopic score, and taking Debussy’s music for the first time into a methodical exploration of octatonic techniques." Example 9 quotes the opening bar of the first prelude, ‘Brouillards’, With both hands taken together, the first eighth-note beat makes up an almost com- plete octatonic collection from C, D flat, etc., and the next beat almost cam- pletes one of the two complementary octatonic collections, from B, D flat, etc. Rhythmically and texturally, however, these are divided into two elements, the white-note diatonic left hand threatened by the chromatic right hand, sug- 85 STUDIES IN MUSIC gesting a polarity of old and new orders. In two chords example 9 recapitulates what happened step by step in ‘Des pas sur la neige’. Viewed in terms of Wagnerism or of Golaud—or of the archetypes inherent in the later En blanc et noir and the earlier ‘Des pas sur la neige’—a clearer picture can emerge through the fog of the pieces title. At the same time the left hand of example 9, taken on its own, echoes something else. Its apparent allu- sion to the tragic end of Petrushka (and perhaps within it the ostinato of the Fool’s song from Boris Godunov)* not only reflects Debussy’s increasing general pessimism of the time, but also suggests a specific new shadow over him from Stravinsky's sudden success and fame, blossoming just as Debussy was facing a crisis of musical language which expressed itself most obviously in his relative silence from late 1913 until a creative resurgence in the summer of 1915.'* The arrangement of hands in the same bar lends weight to this idea, since the first right-hand pentatonic group, together with the left-hand triad, encompasses the C-F sharp ‘Petrushka’ chord. What this signified to Debussy is perhaps explained by the following right-hand group, which spells out once again the half-diminished ‘Tristan’ chord. Such a juxtaposition of Wagnerian and Stravinskian elements had already come explicitly from Debussy ina letter to Stravinsky of April 1912, where he expressed admiration for Petrushka, and particularly for ‘an orchestral sure- ness that I’ve never encountered except in Parsifal’.'* The fact that this was hardly the most diplomatic thing to tell the anti-Wagnerian Stravinsky sug- gests a double edge to Debussy’s reaction that later became explicit."” However we regard that, “Brouillards" launches Book 2 of the Preludes in a C major threatened by chromaticism; and the piece’s final page expands this to a larger scale by almost installing C sharp as the home key before the bass returns to C (example 10). The second to fourth preludes of Book 2 respond by establishing the tonality of C sharp or D flat—an unusual obstinacy of key, especially after the first book of Preludes had completely avoided this key, normally one of Debussy’s favourites. Again the relationship is a semitone one used non-cadentially, in this case mostly involving the semitone shifts of octa- tonic modes.'* The fourth prelude, ‘Les fées sont d’exquises dauscuses", cuui- bines this with a reprise of the textural motive of white-note figurations in the left hand overlaid by black-note ones in the right hand (example 11). By this stage the relationship is already changing, for, in contrast to ‘Brouillards’, the left hand has now become merely an appoggiatura to the right-hand har- monies. The process is completed by a large-scale symmetry at the end of Book 2, set in motion by the tenth prelude, ‘Canope’, and tying various patterns together. The first reciprocal relationship is to the first book of Preludes. In ‘Des pas sur la neige’ we saw Debussy start with an Aeolian mode on D, change it to Dorian by replacing B flat with B natural, and then add the remaining black notes in order of ascending fifths through the cycle of sharps. In ‘Canope’, the prelude from the second book nearest in character to ‘Des pas sur la neige’, he pre- cisely inverts this procedure (example 12). Beginning with a complete whi note Dorian mode on D, he first changes it to Aeolian by replacing the B natural with B flat (bar 2), and then adds the remaining black notes in order of descending fifths through the flat cycle. 86 MODES AND SEMITONES This also imitates the opening beat of ‘Brouillards’ where, as seen in example 9, a diatonic white-note opening triad was overlaid by the five black keys. This now-familiar gesture is finally expanded into a large-scale tonal sequence, shown in figure 3, that completes and reciprocates the key relation- ships from the beginning of Book 2. ‘Canope’ starts the reciprocation by end- ing unexpectedly in C, and this key is retained by the eleventh prelude, ‘Les tierces alternées’. Into its key structure ‘Les tierces alternées’ also weaves another symbolic thread—that of the Wagner-Stravinsky connection—by strangely mixing numerous echoes of Sieg/ried and Tristan with a clear allu- sion to Le sacre du printemps, a work Debussy already knew—choosing for his auotation. perhaps with deliberate aptness, the ‘Ritual Action of the Ancestors’ (example 13; Debussy’s fenuto dashes show the allusion)."” ‘eux d’artifice’ completes the tonal inversion shown in figure 3. Beginning once again with white-note figurations in the left hand overlaid by black-note ones in the right hand (example 14a), it reaches its dénouement at the top of the final page (example 14b) where the right- and left-hand glissandi, respec- tively on black and white keys, finally sweep the board clean. Some following fragments of opening material can no longer sustain themselves, and with their disintegration the tables are turned, in an exact reversal of what happened in ‘Brouillards’ (examples 9 and 10): the final bass D flat (last two systems of example 14b) remains unshaken by the right hand’s C major echoes of the old order in the form of La marseilleise. It need hardly be laboured how aptly these various tonal patterns in both books of Preludes carry through and develop the metaphors read from Pelléas by Carolyn Abbate and Peter Platt. An intermediate link in this chain is pro- vided independently by Susan Lee Youens in a study of ‘Colloque sentimen- tale’, the final song of Debussy’s second series of Fétes galantes of 1904,?° Youens argues that Debussy’s choice of this particularly macabre poem of Verlaine’s embodied a deliberate metaphor of music shaking off the shades of dead habits and moving into the twentieth century. In this song the broad metaphor is matched by an intense personal element, for Debussy’s choice and setting of that poem coincided with the demise of his first marriage and his elopement to Jersey with Emma Bardac in the summer of 1904." Similar elements, personal and universal, are strongly implicit in his two main piano works of the same year, Masques and Lisle joyeuse.”* If the various personal allusions encode a level in the music that might be argued as inessential to its comprehension by the unknowing listener, the other sides of the metaphor—particularly the various tonal relativuships literally set in motion by the music—are inseparable from the music’s effect. In any case, the relationship of personal and universal levels plumbs another depth if it is, at least in part, the mature expression of Debussy’s early interest in esoteric, Rosicrucian, Hermetic and oriental literature and philosophy—about which otherwise little is traced in his mature years.” A central tenet of all these tradi- tions is the union of personal and universal, microcosm and macrocosm—or, in blunter terms, the surrendering of the self. Debussy himself completes the circle in his introduction to the début ot Monsieur Croche: I was dreaming. Should I not collect my thoughts? Finish off some 87 STUDIES IN MUSIC pieces? Alll these questions were induced, I fear, by a kind of childish egotism and the need to rid oneself at all costs of an idea that has been in one’s head for too long. But all this served only as a thin disguise for that stupid obsession with trying to prove oneself superior to everyone else—a preoccupation that never needed much effort unless it was combined with a desire to better oneself. The alchemy of that is far more complex, for it requires the sacrifice of one’s whole precious little personality.” Some remaining musical relationships come from a source that appears to have considerably influenced not only both books of Debussy’s Preludes but also the intermediate agent of Stravinsky's Petrushke. Onc need only glance at ‘Le gibet’, the central piece of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit of 1908, to see a source for Debussy’s B flat dominant ostinato, a year later, in ‘Voiles’ (examples 15a and b); ‘Oiseaux tristes’ from Ravel’s earlier Miroirs also opens with the same basic idea (example 15c). Debussy’s following prelude, ‘Le vent dans la plaine’, not only continues the same tonality and pedal point but also closes with an apparent echo of ‘Scarbo’, the third piece from Gaspard de la nuit (example 16). In ‘Le gibet” and ‘Scarho’ particularly, Ravel pursues octatonic relation- ships in ways that must have influenced Petrushka—notably the working-out of the relationship between C and F sharp in ‘Scarbo’, and the way this is summed up by the octatonic bass line leading into its final B major climax (example 17). Another striking octatonic passage from ‘Le gibet’ culminates in a cadential progression of descending fifths (example 18a) which reappears un- mistakably in Debussy’s Six épigraphes antiques of 1914 (example 18b), having already been quoted by Alban Berg in 1909.** Even before the Epi- graphes antiques, we can hear echoes of the same passage’s resolution in ‘Des pas sur la neige’ (example 7, bars 21-2), and again in the second book of Preludes, in some of the dominating harmonies of ‘Feuilles mortes’ and ‘La puerta del vino’ (example 18c). The other link lies in the way Ravel made a structural device out of the chro- matic note-split in ‘Scarbo’, most notably at its first culmination to F sharp {example 19): at the moment of resolution in bar 204 the dominant C sharp 1s chromatically split to B sharp and D, and the repetitions of this over the next ten bars eventually set off the piece’s recurring ostinato once again, this time on C dnd D (bar 214). The device perfectly conveys the programme of ‘Scarbo’ in terms of a standard nightmare progression: just as the torment seems on the point of resolution, the resolution itself turns back into the nightmare. The difference here from Debussy’s entire philosophy lies in Ravel’s charac- teristic use of the cadence (often a modal one) as a focus of culmination, as op- posed to Debussy’s characteristic placing of musical climaxes at points of tonal crisis, letting the resolution slip in quietly afterwards, usually in as uncadential a way as possible. (The strong endings of La mer or L’isle joyeuse are excep- tional for Debussy.) Such a difference in emphasis, and many others, remind us that the borrowings of technique or devices discussed here imply no detrac- tion of any one composer’s originality: the complementary evidence of how much Ravel and Stravinsky owed to Debussy is obvious enough not to need rehearsing here. Still, Ravel’s description of Debussy’s first book of Preludes as ‘d’admir- 88 MODES AND SEMITONES ables chefs d’ocuvre’ may have been made with some quiet pride. And if Ravel, that most astute of critics and observers, saw the relationships discussed above follow through in Debussy’s second book of Preludes, he may have taken a special pleasure in completing the circle of modal relationships him- self—albeit in a small-scale context—in 1915, towards the close of the Forlane from Le rombeau de Couperin, where he sums the piece up with a piquant con- trast of whole-tone and octatonic harmonies, using the familiar technique of mirrored semitone shifts (example 20). Notes ' Debussy’s oft-remarked peculiar spellings of ‘Jimbo’ and ‘Golliwogg’ are logical to a French ‘eat: French pronunciation of them would produce the nearest result to the English ‘Jumbo’ and ‘Golliwog’ 2 The simple appearance of this passage deceived Frangoise Gervaise, in an otherwise distin- guished study. inta viewing it merely as a six-note mode. or pentatonic with an added note (Etude ‘comparée des langues harmoniques de Fauré et de Debussy; special numbers 272-3 of Revue musi- cale, 1971, vol. 1, pp. 99-100). Some recent reprints of the Children’s Corner inexplicably omit the staccato dot; it is clearly present in the autograph (F-Pn: Ms. 983) and all Durand editions up to at Teast 1943. 5 Gervaise (vol. 1, p. 41) idemtfies it as the sixty-fourth of the classified Hindu Carnatic modes, the Vachaspati; it was also used by Fauré, Ravel and Bartok. Arnold Whittall also discusses the tension created by modal juxtapositions in Z "isle joyeuse and ‘Voiles’, in ‘Tonality and the Whole- tone Scale in the Music of Debussy’, The Music Review 36 (November 1975), pp. 261-71. “+ Some aspects of symmetrical interval structure in ‘Voiles’ are discussed by Elliott Antokoletz in The Music of Réla RartAE (Rerkeley, 1984). pn. 6-8. 5 In this case the notes are spelt C fiat and B doubie-flat for contextual reasons; the C flat was present from the outset, but only as an appoggiatura, without any harmonic function until bar 15. © Relationships between Debussy's and Chopin’s Preludes could form a separate studdy— begin- ring perhaps with the final chord of Chopin's B flat prelude. 7B natural has not been taken as part of the fan sequence here, since its function at bar 20 is ‘more a recapitulative one, linking this paragraph to the preceding one via bar 5. * The progression of this prelude suggests the influence of the Malay pantun form of poem, in which the second and fourth lines of each four-line stanza recur as the first and third lines of the next stanza, and which ends by repeating the poem’s opening line. In Debussy's prelude each para- graph similarly combines a new idea with one carried over from the preceding paragraph. and its coda similarly closes the circle. This creates a further subtle pantun-lke link to the fourth prelude whose ttle, ‘Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir’, is taken from Baudelaire's poem in pantun form, ‘Harmonie du soir’. In a presently unpublished paper, ‘Debussy's prelude on ‘Harmonie du soir’, Nicholas Routley shows ways in which the prelude subtly reflects the structure ‘and symbolism of the poem, blending them with specific references to associated imagery in Wagner, all seen in the perspective of Debussy’s setting of the same poem in the Cing poémes de Charles Baudelaire of 1889. A few yeats latct Ravel explicitly designed the second movement of his Piano Trio as a ‘Pantoum’; for an analysis see Brian Newbould, ‘Ravel's Pantoum', The Musical Times 116 (March 1975), pp. 228-31. 9 Carolyn Abbate, ‘Trisvan in the composition of Pelléas’, Nineteenth-Century Music V/2 (Fall 1981), pp. 117-41; see particularly pp. 140-1 1@ Ina letter dated 2 October 1893 to Chausson, Debussy relates having torn up a draft of part of Peiléas after finding ‘the phantom of old Klingsor, alias R. Wagner, lurking at the turn of a bar’ (Claude Debussy, Lettres 1884-1918, ed. F. Lesure (Paris, 1980), p. 55). But his real challenge lay in controlling the ways in which he allowed Wagner's influence to permeate his music: on this subject see Abbate (fn. 9 supra) and Robin Holloway, Debussy and Wagner (London, 1979). {i From the draft of a monugraph on wreiticilr-century music as seen across various culture Professor Platt’s reasoning is that Arkel (the old order), in a final statement set to a Wagnerian cadence, says that itis now the turn of the infant; the new life of the infantis then encapsulated the ‘new* post-diatonic technique—but the new technique itself sounds over a pedal point. the old 89 STUDIES IN MUSIC primordial drone, which can be taken to symbolize thatthe new life is simply the perpetuation of ancient cycle or an ancient principle. similar blending of old and new, east and wes, stasis nd change. has already been seen here in the mixture of drone and chromatic techniques in "Des pas sur la neige': another example, again ina black and white setting, is the opening of En lancet noir of 1915 over an Indian tambura-type bass drone. Several ofthe ideas developed inthe present Article were first stimulated inthe course of conversations with Professor Platt '2 Numerous examples of Debussy’s strategic positioning of ‘Tristan’ chords (obviously, from their contexts, valid in various inversions) are listed by Abbate and Holloway (op. cit). For nctures hy various twentieth-century enmposers see ARt examples of symmetrical intervallic «I koletz, pp. 4-25. 10 See Debussy, Lettres 1884-1918, pp. 223-4 and 233. The most obvious musical similarities occur at bars 29-30 of ‘Brouillards’, bar 67 of *Feux d’artifice’, and the opening fanfare of "General Lavine’ (cf. the bar before rehearsal figure 134 in the 1947 score of Perrushka; Lavine, an American clown who appeared in Paris in 1910-12, was famous for a wooden puppet-like walk which must have reminded Debussy of Petrushka). Compare also the opening figurations of ‘Les {€es sont d'exquises danseuses" (example 11) with the piano motive in bar 21 of the Second Tab- leau in Pecrushka; in this case, though, any indebtedness rebounds to the credit of Debussy, who had already used this harmonic texture in the closing cadenza of the piano /mage ‘Poissons dor" of 1907. '4 Debussy had already used the Fool’s song ostinato unmistakeably (at its original pitch, F and E) in the nocturnal grotto scene at the end of Act 2 of Peliéas, appropriately after Pelléas and Mélisande see the beggars (pp. 111-14 in the Durand vocal score); the ostinato is introduced by a sequence of alternating fifths and thirds strongly reminiscent of the second song of Mussorgsky's Sunless sycle. +5 Cyril Scott reports finding Debussy’s confidence at a very low ebb at precisely this time: ‘I last saw him in 1913 [...] That evening, although Debussy was charming and affable to me as usual, he spoke despondently of his own work and was, I gathered, in the midst of an unproduc- tive period. “My style”, he said, “is a limited one, and I seem to have reached the end of it.""* (Cyril Soot, My Years’ of Indiseretion (London, 1924), pp. 104 5.) The works of Debuscy's creative resurgence in 1918, which take his language in new directions, noticeably avoid Stravin- skian or Tristanesque allusions. '6 Debussy. Lettres 1884-1918, p. 224. 1 January 1916 found Debussy, admittedly ill and depressed, describing Stravinsky to Robert Godet as ‘a spoilt child who occasionally sticks his fingers into music's nose [...] As an old man he'll be unbearable [though] for the moment he’s unsurpassed {inoui]' (Letires 1884-1918, p. 270) ‘# For example the penultimate page of ‘Brouillards', leading into example 11, is dominated by a succession of two octatonic modes, the first one from C, D, etc., and the second one from B, D flat, etc.; chromatic convergence of each of these pairs gives respectively C sharp and C, the two tied that lead out of the passage (see example 11). ' On9 June 1912 Stravinsky and Debussy played through Le sacre in piano duet form at Louis Laloy’s home. In November of that year, shortly before composing ‘Les tierces alternées', Debusdy wrote to Stravinsky that the memory of the occasion still haunted him ‘like a beautiful nightmare’ (Lettres 1884-1918, p. 233)—another double-edged reaction. ‘Les tierces alternées’ was probably the last of all the preludes to be composed, in January 1913 (to replace another itended prelude with which Debussy was dissatisfied); the detailed chronology of the Preludes is faced in the Foreword (p. XV) to the Ocuvres completes de Claude Debussy, Series 1 Volume $ (Préludes) (Paris, Editions Costallat & Durand, 1985). Robert Orledge has pointed out (in conver- sation) another clear quotation from Le sacre, in bars 59-60 of Debussy’s Berceuse héroique of 1914. 39 Susan Lee Youens, ‘Debussy's setting of Verlaine’s ‘Colloque sentimentale" to the present’, Studies in Music 15 (1981), pp. 93-105. 21 Both autograph manuscripts of the second set_of Féres galanres in the Ribliothéque Nationale, Paris (Ms. 996 and Ms. 17734) show that Debussy inserted “Colloque sentimentale’ only at alate stage in mid-1904, Debussy gave the latter manuscript to Emma Bardac with an envoi con the title page: ‘pour remercier le mois de juin 1904"; this envoi was repeated on the title page of the edition, issued some months later. 22 Various levels of imagery implicit in Masques and L ‘isle joyeuse are discussed, relative to the pieces’ genesis, in R. Howat, ‘Debussy, Masgues, L ‘isle joyeuse and a Lost Sarabande’, Musico- from the past 90 MODES AND SEMITONES logy Australia X (1987). Masques and L isle joyeuse were initially intended as the outer pieces of a triptyeh; Debucsy’s strong predilection for triptych form further underlines the symmetrical divi. sion seen above of the first book of Preludes into 6 + 6 and 3 + 3. Similarly the six pieces of the Children’s Corner of 1908 can be seen as a pair of triptychs with a slow movement at the centre of each, 33’For documentation of Debussy's early esoteric interests and contacts, see Victor-Emile Michelet, Les compagnons de la hiérophanie (Paris, 1937), pp. 66-80 and especially 75 (regarding Edmond Bailly's bookshop and the people Debussy contacted there); Francis Ambriére, ‘La vie romaine de Debussy’, Revue musicale no. 142 (1934), pp. 20-6 (regarding Debussy's esoteric literary interests during his Rome years); and Edward Lockspeiser, Debussy: His Life and Mind (Cambridge, 1978), Vol. 2, pp. 272-7 (quoting an article by Léon Guichard); these sources are summarized in R, Howat, Debussy in Proportion (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 167-70 24 Debussy on Music, collected and introduced by F. Lesure, translated and edited by R. Lang- ham Smith (New York, 1977), p. 4. 25 Although the Epigraphes antiques are largely a reworking of Debussy’s incidental music of 1901 for Pierre Louys's Chansons de Bilis, the extract in example 18c is one of the new passages hhe added in 1914, His main variant from Ravel's reading is to transpose the passage down a tone to accommodate his characteristic love of A flat as an ostinato pitch (a predilection discussed in R.. Howat, "Dramatic shape in “Jeux de vagues”, and Its relatlonship 10 Peiléus, Jeux aud vther scores’, Cahiers Debussy 7 (1983), pp. 7-23); in this respect his B flat fixation in the first book of Preludes was exceptional. ‘Berg's earlier quotation of the patsage occurs at the end of his op. 2 songs of 1909 (a year after Gaspard), appropriately to the word ‘Stirb', after a climax on a repeated bass B flat whose thythm— [JJ d[d —clearly recalls Ravel's in example 15a. Such connections are not lost in Berr's later works: one need only look at the principal row of his Lyric Suite—F, E, C, A, G, D, G#, Cf, Df, F#, A¥ (B>), B—to observe the familiar device of a white-note cluster overlaid by the pentatonic black-note cluster. That row also involves the same type of fan sequence by fifths (con- verging towards D and then diverging from G sharp) as seen here in ‘Des pas sur la neige’, and in- ‘deed ends on the same notes, B Tat and B, as set ine entire tonal structure of ‘Des pas sur ta ueige™ in motion (compare also the second half of Berg’s row with figure 1 above). 26 Letter dated 7 May 1910 to Jean Marnold, quoted in René Chalupt, Ravel au miroir de ses Lettres (Paris, 1956), p. 86. Musical examples reproduced by permission of Durand-Costallat, Paris. 91 STUDIES IN MUSIC Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3. Tonal reciprocity scross Book 2 of the Preludes 1 n nT. 1. Feustles nortes?: ‘Le puerte del vino! Slee féen...7: --> Ie share (oetetonse) D Mat (octatonse? “Broustlerds? opens with Left hang in © major, overlaid with Fight hand chronat iciams *Forls? an attenst on the last page to snstall tne Fey of C-amarp x xt at. » “Conope?: “Les tierces mente SFeux dtartifice’: --> Oftiet, overtatd with right hand ¢ mayors frosts? an attenot on the last page to reinstate C major 92 MODES AND SEMITONES Example 1: ‘Jimbo’s Lullaby’ «slightly Nat ‘ogi’ fa seale ae i — a 2 93 STUDIES IN MUSIC Example 2: (continued) whiole tone $=e=eeetee tee Example 3: ‘Voiles’ pentatonic iSSasSa= = 94 MODES AND SEMITONES Example 3: (continued) sett hoe «. f Example 4: ‘Danseuses de Delphes’ ten et pee ee Example 5: ‘Le vent dans la plaine’ Example 6a: modal prominence of B_ or A ‘Les sons et les parfums ...” w. ase (208) Sense = Sj _ STUDIES IN MUSIC Example 6a: (continued) ‘Les collines d’Anacapri” os Les cline Ameape Example 6b ‘Les sons et les parfums ... MEO bt ok 0 cena eie se MODES AND SEMITONES Example 6b: (continued) Example 7: ‘Des pas sur la neige’ vu Tame et lent (24) TE STUDIES IN MUSIC Example 7: (continued)

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