Aspects of Modern Opera: Estimates and Inquiries

The nature of Debussy's harmony, and the emphasis which is laid upon its remarkable quality by his appreciators, have provoked the assertion that the score of "Pelléas" is devoid of melody, or at least that it is weak in melodic invention. Of course the whole matter rests upon what one means by "melody." The comment is a perfect exemplification of that critical method which consists in measuring new forms of expression by the standards of the past, instead of seeking to learn whether they do not themselves establish new standards by which alone they are to be appraised. The method has been applied to every innovator in the records of art, and it is probably futile to cry out against it, or to assert its stupidity. The music of "Pelléas" is rich in melody. It does not, as we have seen, reside in the voice-parts, for there Debussy, for reasons which have already been discussed, has deliberately and wisely avoided formal melodic contours. It is to be found in the orchestra – an orchestra which, while it depends in an unexampled degree upon a predominantly harmonic mode of expression, is at the same time very far from being devoid of melodic effect. But the melody is Debussy's melody – it is fatuous to expect to find in this score the melodic forms which have been made familiar to us by the practice of his predecessors, – men who themselves were made to bear the primeval accusation of melodic barrenness. Debussy's melodic idiom is his own, and it often baffles impatient or inhospitable ears by reason of its seeming indefiniteness, its apparently wayward movement, and because of the shifting and mercurial basis of harmony upon which it is imposed. It would be easy to instance page after page in the score where the melodic expression is, for those who are open to its address, of instant and irresistible effect: as the greater part of the scene by the fountain, in the second act; the whole of the tower scene – an outpouring of rapturous lyric beauty which, again, sends one to the loveliest pages of "Tristan" for a comparison; the affecting interview between Mélisande and the benign and infinitely wise Arkël, in the fourth act; the calamitous love scene in the park; and almost the whole of the last act. If Debussy had written nothing else than the entrancing music to which he has set the ecstatic apostrophe of Pelléas to his beloved's hair, he would have established an indisputable claim to a melodic gift of an exquisite and original kind. It has been said that he is "incapable of writing sustained melody"; and though just how extended a melodic line must be in order to merit the epithet "sustained" is not quite clear, it would seem that in this particular scene, at all events, Debussy may be said to have compassed even "sustained" melody; for the melodic line – varied, sensitive, and plastic though it is – is here of almost unbroken continuity.

In its total aspect as a dramatic commentary the score provokes wonder at its precision and flexibility. The manner in which each scene is individualised, differentiated and set apart from every other scene, is of a vividness and fidelity beyond praise. For every changing aspect of the play, for its every emotional phase, the composer has discovered the exact and illuminating equivalent. The eloquence of this music is seldom abated; it is as pervasive as it is extreme. One would not be far wrong, probably, in finding this music-drama's chief and final claim to the highest excellence in its triumphant character as an expressional achievement; in this it ranks with the supreme things in music. There are in the score innumerable passages which one is tempted to adduce as particular instances of ideally fit and beautiful expression. It is probably unnecessary to allege the quality of such examples as the scene by the fountain, the perilous encounter at the tower window, the final tryst in the park, or the interlude which accompanies the change of scene from the castle vaults to the sunlit terrace above the sea – music that has an entrancing radiance and perfume, through which blows "all the air of all the sea" – these things will be rightly valued by every observer of liberal comprehension and sensitive discernment: to name them is to praise them. But there are other triumphs of expression in the score whose quality is not so immediately to be perceived. I do not speak of the countless felicities of structural and external detail: felicities which will repay close and protracted study. I am thinking of remoter, less obvious felicities: of the grave beauty of the passage in which Geneviève reads to the King the letter of Golaud to his brother Pelléas1; of the extraordinary final measures of the first act, after Mélisande's question: "Oh! … pourquoi partez-vous?"; of the delicious effect which is heard in the orchestra at Pelléas' words, in the scene at the fountain, "… le soleil n'entre jamais"; of the exquisite setting of Golaud's exclamation of delight over the beauty of Mélisande's hands; of the entire grotto scene, – a passage of superb imaginative fervour, – with its indescribably poetic ending (the fragment of a descending scale given out in imitation by two flutes and a harp); of the passage in the tower scene where the two solo violins in octaves sing the ravishing phrase that accompanies the "Regarde, regarde, j'embrasse tes cheveux …" of the enraptured Pelléas; of the piercing effect of the Mélisande theme where it is combined with that of Pelléas in the interlude which follows the scene at the tower window; of the passage preceding the entrance of Mélisande and Arkël in the fourth act, where Mélisande's theme is heard in augmentation; of the passage in the transitional music following the misusing of Mélisande by Golaud where her theme is played by the oboe above an interchanging phrase in the horns – a diminuendo of inexpressible poignancy; of the impassioned soliloquy of Pelléas preparatory to the nocturnal meeting in the park; of the theme which is played by the horns and 'cellos as he invites Mélisande to come out of the moonlight into the shadow of the trees; of the exquisite phrase given out by the strings and a solo horn as he asks her if she knows why he wished her to meet him; of the interplay of "ninth" chords which is heard, in the final act, when Arkël asks Mélisande if she is cold, and the mysterious majesty of the passage which immediately follows, as Mélisande says that she wishes the window to remain open until the sun has sunk into the sea; of, indeed, the whole of the incomparable music of Mélisande's death; and finally, of that scene wherein the genius of the musician and musical dramatist is, as I think, most characteristically exerted: the curiously potent and haunting scene in which Pelléas and Mélisande, with Geneviève, watch the departure of the ship from the port and speak of the approaching storm. Here Debussy, in setting the simple yet elliptical speeches of the two tragedians, has written music which is of marvellously subtle eloquence in its suggestion of the atmosphere of impending disaster, of vague foreboding and oppressive mystery, which rests upon the scene. The penetrating "On s'embarquerait sans le savoir et l'on ne reviendrait plus" of Pelléas, sung over a lingering series of descending chords of the ninth; the strange, receding song of the departing sailors; the passage in triplets which is heard when Pelléas speaks of the beacon light shining dimly through the mist; the veiled and sinister phrase in thirds on the muted horns which follows the dying-away of the sailors' call: these are salient moments in a masterly piece of psychological and (there is no other word for it) subliminal delineation.

Whatever Debussy may in the future accomplish – and it is not unlikely that he may transcend this score in adventurousness and novelty of style – will not imperil the unique distinction, the unique value, of "Pelléas et Mélisande." It has had, it has been truly said, no predecessor, no forerunner; and there is nothing in the musical art that is now contemporary with it which in the remotest degree resembles it in impulse or character. That, as an example of the ideal welding of drama and music, it will exert a formative or suggestive influence, it is not now possible to say; but that its extraordinary importance as a work of art will compel an ever-widening appreciation, seems, to many, certain and indisputable. Thinking of this score, Debussy might justly say, with Coventry Patmore: "I have respected posterity."

1

As one out of many instances of similarly striking detail, observe the remarkable and moving progression in the voice-part from the D in the ninth chord on B-flat to the B-natural in the chord of G-sharp minor, at Geneviève's words "… tour qui regarde la mer."