dans la plaine,Bruyères. They are mood-pictures in which the
composer has tried to imprison certain elusive states of mind—
or the impressions made on his susceptible imagination by the
phenomena of Nature: the subtly blended hues of a sunset, the
changing rhythm of drifting clouds, the indefinite murmur of the
sea, the dripping of rain. For Debussy, like Beethoven before
him, is a passionate lover of Nature. To quote his own words,
he finds his great object lessons of artistic liberty in “the unfold-
ing of the leaves in Spring, in the wavering winds and changing
clouds.” Again, “It benefits me more to watch a sunrise than
to listen to a symphony. Go not to others for advice, but take
counsel from the passing breezes, which relate the history of the
world to those who listen.” Thus we see that Debussy submits
himself to the spells of Nature and tries to transmute them into
sound. The only analogies to use in a verbal description of his
music must be drawn from nature, for in each are the same
shadowy pictures, the same melting outlines.[295] Debussy has
a close affinity with that school of painters known as impres-
sionists or symbolists—Manet, Monet, Dégas, Whistler—and is
doing with novel combinations of sound, with delicate effects of
light and shade, what they have done for modern freedom in
color. His music has been called a “sonorous impressionism.”
It might equally well be phrased “rhythmic sound.” To those
conservatives who find it difficult to think in terms of musical
color, and wishtheirimagination rather than that of genius to
be the standard, the retort of the artist Whistler is applicable:
To a lady who viewing one of his sunsets remarked, “But, Mr.
Whistler, I have never seen a sunset like that” came the reply
“Yes, Madam, but don’t you wish you had?” In his songs De-
bussy has been most fastidious as to choice of texts, his favorite
poets being Verlaine, Baudelaire and Mallarmé, called “sym-
bolists,” since the aim of their art is to resemble music and to
leave for the reader a wide margin for symbolic interpretation.
His songs throughout are imaginative and fanciful in the high-
est degree, and the instrumental part a beautiful background
of color. Of Debussy’s compositions for orchestra the one to
win—and possibly to deserve—the most lasting popularity is
L’après-midi d’un Faune, which is an extraordinary translation
into music of the veiled visions and the shadowy beings of an
eclogue of Mallarmé in which, as Edmund Gosse says, “Words
are used in harmonious combinations merely to suggest moods
or conditions, never to state them definitely."[296] By perfect
ann
(Ann)
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