Eric's thread on Pelléas et Mélisande

[Homo Aestheticus]

Donwyn,

Many of the early French recordings (Desormière, Fournet, Cluytens, on into Inghelbrecht, Baudo, and even Dutoit's 1993 recording) reflect fervently the modernistic tendencies in the work. Not so much "impressionistic" (a term Debussy hated) but modernistic.

There you go again with the modernistic...   

Aren't you aware that P&M was actually a comparatively early work ?  Wagner was the single most significant influence on Debussy here... (along with Chopin and Mussorgsky)

The best way to put it is that the harmonic language of P&M is a late nineteenth-century French language  inflected  by Debussy's experience of Wagner.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Hi Wilhelm,

If I haven't been convinced of anything else in my brief time at this forum, it is that I must sit down and listen to this Pelléas et Mélisande and find out what all the fuss is about  ...the library only has it "highlighted" so my judgment will come after some saving and time.
Is there any recording that has somewhat of a general consensus?   

Please do not worry so much about a general consensus, o.k. ?    

Besides, don't you think that anyone who loves this music as much as I do has the right (and authority) to silence dissenters....   

My ears tell me that 'Pelleas et Melisande' only works when its taken at a glaciously slow pace while drawing  every last drop  of nuance from the orchestra. This is the absolutely essential quality. It comes first.

Like I said before there is no single ideal recording of it.  All of them have their flaws but Karajan (EMI 1978) Ansermet (SRO and George London as Golaud) Boulez (EMI 1970, for a couple scenes and the superb vocalist, George Shirley) and Haitink (EMI 2002) do the best overall jobs.

Good luck.

[Wilhelm Richard]

Besides, don't you think that anyone who loves this music as much as I do has the right (and authority) to silence dissenters....   

Oh, but of course!


A friend of mine has offered to make me a copy of a radio broadcast he recorded from Theater an der Wien last month with Dessay and Degout...I will start with that.

[knight66]

Excellent idea, Que.
Dm has his own Economic doom thread where he gets to post as much as he wants without starting separate threads. I should probably make my own Mahler 9th thread or something.

One further Maher thread and I shall remove your fingers greg, in an extremely painful way.

Mike

[greg]

Greg,

Yes, actually the best term would be 'symbolist', the French literary movement Debussy admired and which Maeterlinck represented. Symbolism was basically Wagnerism disguised by refined Frenchmen who wanted to do what Wagner did but less hyperbolically and more subtly.... That's it in a nutshell.

Ok, fine, it's Symbolist, then. End of story.

One further Maher thread and I shall remove your fingers greg, in an extremely painful way.

Mike

I didn't know we had Maher threads on this forum.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Aren't you aware that P&M was actually a comparatively early work ?  Wagner was the single most significant influence on Debussy here... (along with Chopin and Mussorgsky)

The best way to put it is that the harmonic language of P&M is a late nineteenth-century French language  inflected  by Debussy's experience of Wagner.

I can't think of anything more disrespectful to Debussy's legacy than to make such arrogant, misguided, and utterly fraudulent claims.

One last point and I'm out.

Once again - for your edification, Pink - I quote DEBUSSY'S OWN WORDS specifically relating to P&M and its mission:

"I have tried to beat out a path where others can follow by adding their own discoveries and by ridding dramatic music of the heavy constraint from which it has suffered for so long a time".

"The characters of [P&M] endeavor to sing like real persons, and not in an arbitrary language built on antiquated traditions".

[Homo Aestheticus]

Donwyn,

I can't think of anything more disrespectful to Debussy's legacy than to make such arrogant, misguided, and utterly fraudulent claims.

Why is it so difficult for you to acknowledge the romantic side of  'P&M' ? 

"I have tried to beat out a path where others can follow by adding their own discoveries and by ridding dramatic music of the heavy constraint from which it has suffered for so long a time. The characters of [P&M] endeavor to sing like real persons, and not in an arbitrary language built on antiquated traditions.."

I'm familiar with those remarks by Debussy and I agree completely. However the word 'heavy constraint' is NOT a reference to how  P&M  should be interpreted (i.e tempi, phrasing).  He is expressing his opinion that the huge, complicated and often plangent orchestral apparatuses of his time were antithetical to his musical philosophy. (i.e. much of Wagner, Bruckner, etc)

[Homo Aestheticus]

O.k. everyone, let's switch gears for a moment...   

This review always makes me chuckle:

"The opera was hardly in rehearsal before one professor of the Paris Conservatory denounced it as a "filthy score" perverted by "errors of harmony." Members of the press rejected the score, and it's often delicate nature, by branding Debussy's followers "Pelleastres" -- and describing them in highly-effeminate terms. Their implication was clear: anyone who actually liked this "unnatural" music must also be living an "unnatural" life..."

****

[karlhenning]

Ok, fine, it's Symbolist, then. End of story.

Eric the revisionist invents a 'musical symbolism'.

Symbolism is a literary movement, and the term applies to Maeterlinck's play.

Don said it best Quoted for truth:

I can't think of anything more disrespectful to Debussy's legacy than to make such arrogant, misguided, and utterly fraudulent claims.

[karlhenning]

Seminal ABSOLUTELY, but not modernist. Yes, it has a some 'forward-looking' elements but one can't simply label it that way.

Well, but that's funny, Eric.  You capriciously decide that you can adopt the literary term Symbolist, and (to borrow your phrase) 'simply label' the opera with it.  What is at work here, of course, is a very basic conflict involving, not the piece, but your own baggage.  You have too much time invested in hand-wringing over the modern, and because of your "love" for the opera, you cannot bear that this hated, hated adjective should apply to the piece you "love"!!!

It isn't merely a matter of "some 'forward-looking' elements";  Debussy designed the piece as a sort of repudiation of opera tradition (viz. his famous remark to the singers at an early rehearsal, enjoining them to forget what they've learnt about singing opera).  Only the most obvious way in which he turned his back on centuries of opera tradition, was in skipping the idea of adapting the drama into an 'intermediate' libretto, and instead leaving the stage-play largely intact.

Jeux  or  La Mer  or  'Etudes'  are obvious modernist works... P&M, no.  Its overall sound is still very much 'exquisite, romantic, late 19th century'.

We've said this a hundred time before, and no doubt you'll ignore it again;  but Jeux and La mer are every bit as exquisite as Pelléas.  And all three works are of a piece in Debussy's sound-world;  you make yourself comic with pretending that there's this yawning gulf between the opera and La mer, and that on one side Debussy wrote 'exquisite, romanticism', but on the other he was a modernist.

[Wilhelm Richard]

(I will preface this by pointing out that I am NOT an expert (or even that informed) when it comes to Pelleas et Melisande or Debussy at this time, but am very curious).

Why does it seem as though we/some can't accept that a composer can/did write both Romantic and Modern works (and works influenced by both movements)?  Richard Strauss is an example that leaps to my mind...the romanticism of his early tone poems versus the gnashing of teeth of Salome (beautiful in its own way) are quite different from each other.  Composers like Strauss (and, I believe, Debussy) lived in a time a friend of mine (who speaks much more poetically than I) described as the "twilight" between Romantic (day in this metaphor) and Modern (night) music...who is to say EXACTLY when day ends and night begins?  It is difficult/impossible to place all of these composers' works in one or the other camp, but there is definitely some on either side, and some that is defined by the overlap.  (I will admit that I prefer my "twilight" performed a little closer to the "day" side...enter passionate readings a la Karajan  )

Another thought:  I also do not believe a piece's subject matter can define whether or not it is Modern.  If Richard Wagner himself came down (or up, if you like) and wrote an opera in the same style as Lohengrin but with a text by Arthur Miller, it would still be a Romantic piece of music (in my opinion).  I do not believe we can turn to the source of Debussy's text to confirm or deny the music's Romanticism or Modernity (if that is what we are debating).

But in the end, if somebody hears a piece of music and feels it is Romantic, how can that be disputed?  How can something that can only be defined emotionally be fought with words and pseudo-scientific analysis?
Now, if somebody comes up to me and declares that some white noise with a beat to it is Romantic, I would question their sanity, but I do not believe that is the case in this case.

(Pardon any typing slip ups -- this was written pressed for time)

[karlhenning]

(Pardon any typing slip ups -- this was written pressed for time)

Very enjoyable post, thank you.

[Homo Aestheticus]

You cannot bear that this hated, hated adjective should apply to the piece you "love"!!!

The word 'modern' cannot in any way, shape or form be applied to it... True, it is on the cusp of the concerns of two centuries but the most that one can say is that it merely  looks  both backwards and forwards.

Designed the piece as a sort of repudiation of opera tradition (viz. his famous remark to the singers at an early rehearsal, enjoining them to forget what they've learnt about singing opera)

Yes, his exact words to the vocalists before the premiere was... "I beg you, I implore you to forget that you are singers".  But that is a part of its Monteverdian roots.   

We've said this a hundred time before, and no doubt you'll ignore it again;  but Jeux and La mer are every bit as exquisite as Pelléas. 

Yes, La Mer is exquisite and breathtaking but Jeux is most definitely NOT. It is, as, we've discussed before, austere, rigorously formed and hard-edged.

(A very nice contribution by Wilhelm Richard, yes) 



 

[karlhenning]

The word 'modern' cannot in any way, shape or form be applied to it.

Yes, La Mer is exquisite and breathtaking but Jeux is most definitely NOT.

Utter nonsense.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Karl said it best Quoted for truth:

We've said this a hundred time before, and no doubt you'll ignore it again;  but Jeux and La mer are every bit as exquisite as Pelléas.  And all three works are of a piece in Debussy's sound-world;

[Homo Aestheticus]

Paul Henry Lang, a great musicologist of the 20th century made one of the oddest comments on P&M I've come across. 

On page  1023  in his book  Music in Western Civilization  he writes:

"Pelleas et Melisande belongs among those rare works of art in which music dissolves in a synthesis of poetic and plastic beauty, always sought and seldom attained by poets and composers. But it also belongs to those works which show most clearly the fragility of such any art. Pre-Raphaelitism couls create a perfect illusion -- for the moment; today it is dated. Maeterlinck's dramas will be dated soon, if they are not already. Music which is so faithfully adapted to a poetic work of essentially transitory character may perish in the adventure..."

****

Is he saying that because Maeterlinck's plays were close to becoming dated (Lang wrote this circa 1941) that it almost guarantees that Debussy's music would as well ?

This is puzzling to me since most people would acknowledge that in many beloved operas the music often is superior to the libretto. Why should the weakened status of the symbolist literary movement make the music of  P&M  more vulnerable to 'perish' ?

Any thoughts on what he was saying here ?

[ChamberNut]

With your passion for P&M Eric, have you ever thought of working for PETPAM (People for the Ethical Treatment of Pelleas and Melisande)?   

[Homo Aestheticus]

With your passion for P&M Eric, have you ever thought of working for PETPAM (People for the Ethical Treatment of Pelleas and Melisande)?   

[Alejandro C.]

I'm still waiting for Eric's reaction to this review on Lafolia.com:

http://www.lafolia.com/archive/silverton/silverton199808archdig.html

Langen Mandra Wanara, a Javanese gamelan dance-opera, was written by Prince Danuredjo VII in the 1890s.  A 1975 recording, performed by elderly musicians who had last staged the work in the 1920s, was made for the Ocora label.  Ethnomusicologist Jacques Brunet supervised the recording and also wrote the liner notes.  Mike Silverton reviewed it for La Folia. 

Money quote:  "As Jacques Brunet observes, Langen Mandra Wanara's conception parallels that of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, in what sounds, as does Debussy's great masterpiece, like music from another, dreamier world."

As someone who has listened with pleasure to recordings of both works, I can offer this:  An ardent/unrepentant Pelleastre might well come to treasure Langen Mandra Wanara.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Hola Alejandro,

Thank you for bringing it to my attention... Looks most interesting.