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Portrait of Debussy. 3: Debussy and Schoenberg
Robert Henderson
The Musical Times, Vol. 108, No. 1489. (Mar., 1967), pp. 222-226.
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Portrait
of
Debussy 3
by
Robert Henderson
DEBUSSY
A N D SCHOENBERG
In this series of articles we attempt to build a com-
posite portrait of Debussy the musician through
examination of the very diffe rent impressions he left
on the music of other composers: in general, and also
in particular b y documentation of what wo rks they
heard, and when, their statements, and the reflections
found in their own compositions.
T o try to bring abou t some permanent reconciliation
between Debussy and Schoenberg has become an
increasingly tempting proposition. Developments in
musical technique in recent years have made it
abundantly clear that both composers, starting out
from their own very individual responses to the
music of Wagner, or more specifically to the highly
contag ious fever of Tristanism,' were moving
roughly in the same direction, even if along quite
different routes. An d then too it would seem that
the human mind feels an instinctive urge to draw
regular patterns of interlocking relationships, to
trace clean lines of descent an d well-ordered spheres
of influence, to discover intimate connections where
perhap s none actually exists.
As yet, however, the direct confrontation of
Debussy and Schoenberg has almost invariably
resulted simply in a number of vague statements
abou t the emancipat ion of the dissonance, abou t the
suspen sion o r 'liquidation' of tonality, in fact state-
ments which could apply equally well to Sk ryabin or
Reger or m any other com posers working during the
crucial years which immediately preceded the first
world war. Rath er than seek ou t wh at could well be
merely hypothetical links between the two, it would
seem the n t o be much more realistic t o begin by just
accepting the opinion expressed by Edward Lock-
speiser to th e 1962 conference on Debussy's role in
the evolution of 20th-century music that 'the gulf
between Debussy and Schoenberg is indeed
terrifying'.'
In general Debussy appears to have regarded
Schoenberg with a certain amount of suspicion,
while Schoenberg's view of Debussy was one of
respect, tinged with a growing personal antagon ism.
Just how far these opinions were based on actual
know ledge of each o ther's music is difficult to decide,
for there is relatively little factual documentation,
and w hat there is is at times contradicto ry. Did
Debussy, fo r example, have any really direct experi-
ence of Schoenberg's work?
It was apparently the young Edgar Varese who
introduced Debussy to the music of Schoenberg,
and to Debussy it was as shocking as the experi-
m e nt s o f t he It al ia n F u t ~ r i s t s . ~ arese remembers
having show n him to th the Three Piano Pieces op 11
'see Elliott Zuckerman: The Firs t Hundred Years of W agner 's
'Trisran' (New York, 1964)
2Debussq. et i'd~.olu rion e la ntusique au X Xe si2r'le (Paris, 1965)
and the Five Orchestral Pieces op 16. Debussy's
friend Ro bert G odet ad ds to this that Debussy was
certainly familiar with the first two quartets, the
Gurrelieder, the Orchestral Pieces and, if he is not
mistaken, Pierrot lunaire. On another occasion
Go de t gives a slightly less precise list-the f i ~ s t
quartet, several songs, the Orchestral Pieces and
perhaps also Pierrot lunaire. Debussy's biographer
Leon Vallas, on the other hand, insists that accord-
ing to a statement made by Debussy himself in
December 1913, at that time he still 'knew nothing
of Schoenberg and intended only to read through
one of the qua r te ts o f t ha t co m po ~e r ' . ~ ne further
piece of information, and one which has been
quoted on many occasions, completes all that we
know a t present abo ut Debussy's attitude towards
Schoenberg. In his
Expositions and Developments
Stravinsky recalls that when he told Debussy of his
enthusiasm for
Pierrot,
which he had heard in Berlin
in 1912, Debussy merely stared at him and said
nothing, and Debussy may well have had this
particular occasion in mind when he wrote to Ro ber t
God et in October 1914:
Just now we may wonder into whose arms music
may fall. Th e youn g Russian school offers us
hers. But in my op inion they have become as un-
Ru ssian as possible. Stravinsky himself is
dangerously leaning in the direction of Schoen-
berg.
From this it is clear that Debussy profoundly dis-
trusted all that Schoenberg represented, and it has
been suggested that his distrust was produced more
by his own nationalistic fervo ur than by any careful
exam ination of Schoenberg's music.6 Certainly his
feelings towards Schoenberg contrast sharply with
those expressed by Ravel at abo ut the sam e time:
I am l it tle concerned abou t the fact the M onsieur
Schoenberg is an Austrian. H e remains a highly
significant composer whose interesting dis-
coveries have had a beneficial influence on
certain composers from the allied countries and
am on g us as well. '
Curiously enough Schoenberg's own rather chauvin-
istic frame of mind has also been brought forward,
by H . H . Stuckenschmidt, as a part ial explanation of
his lack of sympathy with Debussy's creative
p o s i t i o ~ l . ~
Schoenberg men tions Debussy for the first time in
the closing two ch apters of his Harmonielehre (pub-
lished in 1911) which deal respectively with the
whole-tone scale and chords built out of fourths
3Lockspeiser: De buss j~: is life arid niind, Vol 2 (London, 1965)
p.196
'Leon Vallas: Claude Debussy el son temps (Paris, 1932) p.351
5Lockspeiser Vol 11 p.185
Vean Barraque:
Debussy
(Paris, 1962) p.175
'Lockspeiser Voi
11
p.216
8 D e b u s a , et I'dvolulion p.331
.150
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Schoenberg b y Egon Schiele
(Quarten-Akkorde). And what he has to say there
makes quite explicit the essential nature of the
virtually unbridgeable gulf between their two modes
of thought. Fundamentally the division between
them was one of tradition, of the closed, self-
generating, severely dialectical German tradition as
opposed to the open, much more eclectic tradition
of the French, who were willing to absorb new ideas
from many different sources, from the Russians, for
example, or the far east.
His discussion of his own use of the whole-tone
scale, which he believes was simply in the air at the
time, the natural outcome of all previous musical
events, is strictly formal, approached always from
the point of view of logical developments in har-
mony and counterpoint. And he says quite cate-
gorically: 'I have never known any exotic m~ s i c . ~
Where the wholetone scale and the whole-tone
chord occur in his symphonic poem Pelleas und
Melisande, which was written in 1902, the same year
as Debussy s opera was first performed but at least
three or four years before I had heard any of his
music ,1° they develop in a purely harmonic/
melodic way, out of the form, as a means of transi-
tion from one chord to another or as a natural
influence on the contour of the melody.ll
Debussy, however, uses his chords and scale, like
Strauss in Salome, more as an impressionistic
means of expression, as a timbre .12 The whole-tone
scale, he adds, has predominantly a colouristic
effect, and Debussy is undoubtedly right to use it
in this way, for in his work i t is always effective and
bea~tiful . ~ But a t the same time he is astonished
that Debussy should hope to discover nature
behind art, that he did not realize that to regain
nature one must go forward and not back. And
then wmes a comment very characteristic of Ger-
man idealism,
'I
believe that there is something much
higher than nature. *
In the chapter devoted to the Quarten-Akkorde
he again returns to the subject of Debussy, whose
imagination seems to him to be particularly sensitive
to the mysterious, very fine and tender nuances
suggested by this novel chord. What is striking in
Debussy is the extraordinary power with which he
expresses his impressionism through these chords.
Indeed they seem to be inseparable from his new
way of thought, so much so in fact that one can
consider them to be his intellectual property
it really sounds as if nature itself would speak .16
Although these scattered sentences from the
Harmonielehre suggest that by 1910 Schoenberg had
reached a clear understanding of the main features
of Debussy s creative character and of the main
differences between them as composers, he in fact
refers specifically to only one Debussy work, the
Schoenberg:
Harmonielehre,
3rd ed (Vienna, 1922)
p.467
leibid
p.470
b i d
p.471
ibid
p.471
laibid
9.475
%bid
p 474
lSibid
p.482-3
opera Pellkas et Mklisande.
And this inevitably
raises the question of just how much of Debussy s
music Schoenberg actually knew, what other works
had he seen or heard. This problem has already
attracted the attention of the American scholar
William Austin who has carefully collected and
collated all the available information.16 In the
Harmonielehre Schoenberg insists that he first came
across Debussy s music in about the year
1906.
And
he returns to this point in his obituary notice of
Alban Berg written in
1936:
in the early years of the
century while he was his pupil, Berg, he says, had
occupied himself extraordinarily intensively with
contemporary music, with Mahler, Strauss, and
perhaps even Debussy whose work I did not know .17
Although it is not known for certain, Schoenberg
could well have been at the concert which Debussy
himself conducted in Vienna in 1910 (it included
L'aprPs-midi d'u n faune, Zbkria and the Petite Suite).
Mrs Helene Berg, however, recalls quite clearly that
she did not see Schoenberg at the first Vienna per-
formance of Debussy s Pellkas in 191 1 she did see
Webern there. (It is perhaps of some interest too
that Melisande was sung in this performance by
Marie Gutheil-Schoder who was also the soloist in
the first performance of Schoenberg s second string
quartet of 1907-8.
After examining all the relevant facts (which are
lucidly diagnosed in his article) Austin reaches the
unconfirmed but nevertheless persuasive conclusion
that Schoenberg wuld well have derived his notions
about Debussyisme not so much from direct con-
tact with Debussy s music as through his experience
of Puccini
(La Bolrdme and Butterfly had been pre-
sented by Mahler at the Vienna Opera
in
1903
and
I6His ull report appears in
Debussy et I'Pvolurion
p.317.
Willi Reich:
Albm Berg
(London, 1965) p.29
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1907) and above al l through Dukas's Ariane
t
Barbe-bleue
which his brother-in-law Alexander
Zemlinsky had condu cted in Vienna in 1908. Austin
also points out the strange and extremely intriguing
fact tha t after his initial contacts with Debussy, w hich
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were roughly contemporary with his second quartet,
Schoenberg quickly abandoned any use in his own
music of the whole-tone scale.
In th e years following the first world w ar a decisive
event in Viennese musical life was the formation by
Berg, Webern, Eduard Steuermann (a devoted
Schoenberg pupil who was also a notable Debussy
pianist) and Erwin Ratz (another young pupil who
in 1916 had bought a score of Debussy's Pellias on
Schoenberg's recommendation) of the famous
Society for Private Musical Perform ance. Within
two years the Society had already given 21 of
Debussy's works, including the violin son ata, which
was rehearsed by Webern, and a two-piano version
of the Nocturires part of which Schoenberg quoted
some years later in his Structura/ Fui?ctions of
Harmony as an example of the 'combination of two
melody lines without the addition of complete
harmonies'.ls
Many of these pieces were performed in specially
prepared arrangements suitable for the Society's
limited resources, at least one of which was made by
Schoenberg himself (no on e seems to remember
which work it actually was). Bu t now , however.
with the formulation of the 12-note method, he had
moved even further beyond any possible identifica-
tion with Debussy's world of ideas. H e still ackno w-
ledges Debussy's importan ce as a pioneer, but sh ows
a growing lack of sympathy, a growing bitterness
an d even misunderstanding.
H e mentions, fo r instance, 'the great development
in orchestration which took place through the
achievements of M ahler, Strauss, Debussy and their
successors',19 and in a note of the early twenties for
a projected manual of orchestration he includes
Debussy among a l ist of composers from whose
works examples would have to be chosen .? In dis-
cussing post-Wagnerian harmony in his lecture on
12-note composition (1946) published in the
volume Style nd Idea he again refers in a general
way to Debussy's harmonic practice:
On e no longer expected preparations of W agner's
dissonances or resolutions of Strauss's chords;
one was not disturbed by Debussy's non-
functional narmony.
But he is severely critical of that modification of
Wagnerian harmony which he describes as 'impres-
sionistic', and of which he says Debussy was the
most notable exponent , harmonies which, without
having in themselves any structural significance, are
used principally to enrich the colour and to express
sensations a nd images, these images and sensations,
although basically extra-musical, becoming the
main constructive
element^.^'
H e is too, in another
lBSchoenberg:Slrucfurai Functions of Har n~ony L o n d o n , 1954)
p 102
'ORufer:
he Wor ks o f Arnold Schoenberg
(London, 1962)
p . 72
Oibidp. 138
E'Schoenberg: Sr.v/e and Iden (New York , 1950) p .103-4
224
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essay in Style and Idea strongly opposed to a
certain kind of harmonic repetition which he con-
trasts unfavourably with the technique of contin-
uously developing variation. And he places Debussy
together with composers like Mendelssohn, Schu-
mann and Gounod, who, al though their original i ty
was rich and dist inct ive enough, had n o ambit ion to
b e r e v o l u t i o n a r i e ~ . ~ ~
Here on e encou nters a basic misunderstanding of
Debussy s position which is given even m ore force-
ful, if still respectful expression in his bitter assess-
ment of his own achievement compared to that of
the French composer in an important fragment on
nationalism in music:
While Debussy did succeed in rousing the
Romance and Slavic peoples to oppose Wagner,
he was u nable t o free himself fro m Wagner s
influence; his most interesting discoveries can be
used only within the framework of Wagnerian
form and organization . Also, it shou ld not be
overlooked that much of the harmony used by him
was also discovered independently in Germany.
No wonder; for it was a logical sequence of
Wagnerian harmony, a further step along the
road pointed out by W agn er. no one has yet
noticed that, in my music, which originated on
German soil uninfluenced by foreign elements,
there is to be foun d a n art which, as it most
effectively oppo ses the fight for hegemony waged
by the Rom anc e and Slavic nations, has stemmed
completely from the tradi t ions of German
i h~d 191
P 3 R ~ t b r
. 2 4
Schoenberg, then sees himself as standing in direct
opposi t ion to Debussy, as the upholder of the
authentic German tradit ion against that of the
French or Russians.
And a personal confrontation
of the two would seem to su pp ort and even intensify
this point of view, disclosing few positive links but
rathe r revealing with a startling clarity their terri-
fying separateness. In either case it is impossible to
speak of any reciprocal influence. Obviously in the
crucial years before the first world war both com-
posers played imp orta nt roles in the general revolu-
tionary process whose character has not yet been
fully explained, but th rough which the main features
of the modern movement were finally established.
For even when working with similar material, in
their two composit ions on the
Pelleas theme, in
Schoenberg s first chamber symphony and the third
of his Five O rchestral Pieces and Debussy s Voiles
the results are totally different. On ly in the imagi-
nation of a later generation has any reconciliation
become possible, and it is in the music of a com-
poser l ike Dallap~ colla r (through Webern) Boulez
that the traditions represented by Debussy and
Schoenberg have eventually dissolved into one
another.
In order to fi ll out this somewh at sketchy portrai t
of Debussy seen through the eyes of Schoenberg it
would perhaps be ap prop riate to look briefly at the
reactions of Berg and Webern.
In their letters and writings both were rather
reticent o n the subject of Debussy (no doub t ou t of
loyalty to Schoenb erg) but both, it seems, possessed
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8/18/2019 Portrait of Debussy 3, Debussy and Schoenberg
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a much more searching knowledge of his music than
did Schoenberg himself. To uncover traces of
Debussy s influence in the music of Webern would
require a completely new and extremely detailed
investigation of the sources. But we do know from
the researches of William Austin (the evidence can
be found in his indispensable article to which
I
have
already referred) that Webern listened to Debussy
with real pleasure, that he had made a careful
analysis of L apres-midi and the violin sonata, and
tha t during the early 30 s he had hoped to conduct a
performance of Le martyre de Saint-Sibast ien.
With Berg we are on much more sure ground. He
became interested in Debussy very early in his life,
and we hardly need outside evidence of this interest
-the music itself is sufficient. His use of the whole-
tone scale, of parallel, unresolved dissonances in the
song Nacht from the Seven Early Songs, written in
1908 when he was 23, and the fluid impressionistic
writing of the Three Orchestral Pieces (1914) stem
quite clearly from Debussy. He acknowledged too
that
W o z z eck
was a direct descendant of Debussy s
Pell ias . This is perhaps most noticeable in the self-
contained structure of the individual scenes and the
connecting orchestral interludes; but it is just as
obvious in the more general atmospheric character
of the writing, both here and in the slightly later
cantata to poems of Baudelaire, Der Wein.
Particularly remarkable is the recent discovery
of identical passages, of the same chord progression
at the same pitch, stretching over two bars, in the
movement Pour la danseuse aux crotales from
Debussy s
Epigraphes antiques
and the last of Berg s
songs Op
4
Berg s song was written in 1908 and
published for the first time in 1910 in the
Blaue
Reiter volume together with music by Schoenberg
and Webern. Debussy s
Epigraphes antiques
date
from 1914, but were based on material which he had
used in 1900 to accompany a recitation of the
Chansons de Bilitis. The passage in question, how-
ever, does not occur in this earlier version; but seems
to have been a much later addition.
Is the similarity of these two bars in Debussy and
Berg simply coincidence, part of the general cultural
climate of the era? Or did Debussy know Berg s
song (with his interest in modern art, he could well
have seen the Blaue Reiter publication)? Was it a
matter of unconscious or even conscious memory?
These questions are for the moment insoluble. As
time passes many comparable inter-connections will
undoubtedly be brought to light, but for the present
so surprising a discovery as this serves to remind us
just how little we as yet know of a decade which
still retains its secret.
H .
H. Stuckenschmidt: Debussy or Berg? The Mystery of a
Chord Progression ,
The
Musical uarterly Vol
51,
July 1962,
p.453
The next article will appear in May; previous ones are:
Debussy and Stravinsky by Jeremy Noble (Jan 1966)
Debussy and Bartok by Anthony Cross (Feb 1966)
'ATHALIA'
COMES
TO
LONDON
by
Winton Dean
Handel s Athalia will be given at the Elizabeth Hall
on March
8
a t
7.45.
Anthony Lewis conducts the
Ambrosian Singers, Jennifer Vyvy an is Athalia , as in
the performance at Oxf ord on
2
July
1964
during the
English Bach Festival.
The fate of Athalia is sadly symptomatic of the mis-
apprehension that dogged Handel for generations.
The third of his English oratorios, and the only one
apart from
Messiah
not written for London, it was
composed in 1733 and performed in the Sheldonian
Theatre during Handel s visit to Oxford in July of
that year. Although it enjoyed a number of per-
formances during the later 18th century, it has
seldom been heard since. The Novello vocal score,
published in 1878, took more than 50 years to clear
a meagre thousand copies, and has never been re-
printed. There appears to have been no perform-
ance in London during the present century, or
perhaps for many years before that. This is a singu-
lar record for a country that used to pride itself on
its choral societies and its Handelian tradition.
The explanation would seem to be that Handel s
tremendous dramatic design failed to satisfy
a
public eager for the processed meat of edification.
For
Athalia
is a major masterpiece, and the first
oratorio in which Handel threw off his fetters and
demonstrated the range and grandeur of the new
form. Like Esther it is based on a late play by Racine,
who found his inspiration in Greek tragedy with its
double role of the chorus as actor and commentator.
In this and other respects it established the pattern
for the later dramatic oratorios. The English text of
Samuel Humphreys is verbally maladroit, but it
preserves the main lines of the play.
The subject is the liberation of Judah from the
tyranny of Queen Athalia, daughter of Ahab and
Jezebel, who has usurped the throne, installed a
priest of Baal in her palace and sought to liquidate
the royal line. The High Priest Joad (Jehoiada) and
his wife Josabeth, supported by a patriotic group,
remain true to Jehovah; they have concealed the boy
Joas, the rightful heir, and brought him up secretly
without informing him of his identity. When
Athalia, suspicious and tortured by dreams of dis-
aster, discovers Joas and plans to abduct him, they
frustrate her by proclaiming him King and winning
the army and people to their side. The action takes