Debussy in the Transition to Our Modernity

            Out of the transitional composers listed in the Morgan text, ("Twentieth-Century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America") the two that have been featured the most in concert halls and NPR play would probably be Mahler and Debussy. Out of these two, it seems that Debussy is still the most popular especially for works such as Clare De Lune and many of the other tonal piano pieces. While reading the opening chapters of the textbook, I found it interesting that so many composers left their native home and found refuge in distant countries (Rachmaninoff, Schoenberg and Stravinsky to name a few). These composers seemed to always think back to (and draw inspiration from) native music of their homeland, in contrast to Claude Debussy, who lived his life in France, seemed to look everywhere but his home (although it should be noted that the nuances of Gregorian chant do have history in the all of the countries of Europe, including France, also the influence of older contemporaries such as Faure and others should also be included).  The most popular pieces of Debussy seem mostly to be tonal modern interpretations of either ancient or some kind of “exotic” music.

            In a way, I get the impression that Robert Morgan seems to make an association between dissonance and modernity (I write this while keeping in mind the statement made by many theorists about the 12 tone system of music not being dissonant because dissonance ceases to exist). In truth, there is a great history in music with close and chromatic intervals, the world over, only the perception of “pleasing” versus “unpleasing” sounds seems to change. If we examine the Japanese court traditional music Gagaku, what we hear is a cacophony of piercing flutes reed tone clusters and slow pulsating rhythms of seemingly un-tuned drums; this is music that goes back hundreds of years. I mention this because we know from the Morgan text that Debussy had an interest in eastern music, both Gamelan and Japanese sounds had a profound influence on his compositions (and indeed the greater artistic community such as Van Gogh pulled a great deal of inspiration for his painting from traditional Japanese artwork and writings on “the floating world.”) This fact is corroborated in the book Rediscovering the Orient by Andrew Gerstle, which goes into great detail about eastern influences in European arts. Gerstle states that Debussy’s interpretation of Japanese music was very a misunderstood one.

Either Debussy’s interpretation of Japanese music was misunderstood or the composer was putting an individual “take” on the music, either way it is too hard to tell. The fact still remains that innovations in travel, opening of trade and Europe’s prominence in the world was leading to increased communication with other cultures which by itself is a symptom of modernity.  History shows us that art and cultures tend to be very pliable things and interaction of any kind often results in some new hybrid not belonging immediately to either. This is the case with the “eastern” influences in Debussy’s music, the pieces bear influences of pentatonic scales and eastern melodies but they are not themselves renditions of music from those cultures. It is much more the case, as Morgan puts it, that “Debussy favored a more generalized poetic evocation of moods, impressions, and atmospheric landscapes.” And it is fair to say that some of those landscapes included exotic places.