Eric's thread on Pelléas et Mélisande

[aquablob]

I never thought I'd say this, but I feel compelled to defend Eric regarding one (and only one) point: many (including Debussy himself, as I understand it) have contended that "Symbolism"—not "Impressionism"—is the most appropriate "ism" term to characterize the Frenchman's musical aesthetic and philosophy.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Hi,

I never thought I'd say this, but I feel compelled to defend Eric regarding one (and only one) point: many (including Debussy himself, as I understand it) have contended that "Symbolism"—not "Impressionism"—is the most appropriate "ism" term to characterize the Frenchman's musical aesthetic and philosophy.

On which points relating to P&M do you disagree with me ?

[aquablob]

Hi,

On which points relating to P&M do you disagree with me ?

You claim that it is in no way a "modern" work. Things are not black and white, as you make them out to be. I don't see anybody else denying that P&M is, in many ways, a work of late Romanticism, but why would you deny that it was, in other ways, quite progressive and "modern" in its time?

[Homo Aestheticus]

Hi,

You claim that it is  in no way a "modern" work.

That is correct, I do not believe there is anything 'modern' about  the music... the harmonic, melodic and rhythmic structure. But never am I referring to any interpretations of the Maeterlinck libretto. That's a separate issue.

but why would you deny that it was, in other ways, quite progressive and "modern" in its time?

O.k. so the vocal writing is closely tied to particular speech rhythms and inflexions but Monteverdi did something very similar centuries before... HOWEVER, it must be said that in no other opera is this almost unbroken recitative as expressive as it is here.

Is that what makes it somewhat modern ?

Next, the harmonies. Much of them are ultra-refined. And there is barely a trace of astringency throughout its 2 hours and 45 minutes...

What in your opinion are its progressive features. I'm curious...

[aquablob]

O.k. so the vocal writing is closely tied to particular speech rhythms and inflexions but Monteverdi did something very similar centuries before...

To say that something is "modern" or "progressive" doesn't necessarily mean that nothing like it has ever been attempted. I think you're thinking more of Caccini and Peri, by the way, rather than Monteverdi so much (Caccini's and Peri's overuse of recitative is presumably part of why their early attempts at opera were not very successful; compared to theirs, Monteverdi's operas were chock-full of aria!). But either way, when we talk about something being cutting-edge or "modern" or "progressive," we mean innovation and/or departure from current trends (although I guess "modern" is a bit more ambiguous). Sure, early 17th century attempts at opera had an awful lot of recitative, but Debussy's insistence on giving the main melodies to the orchestra is in an altogether different time and place and musical tradition, with a totally different harmonic, orchestral, and textural language. P&M is not a "throw-back" (even if its instrumentation kind of is).

I've seen you quote and praise Lawrence Gilman before. Why don't you take his word for it? Forgive the length of this quote, but I think it addresses precisely the issue at hand. In bold are some of his particularly pertinent phrases—Gilman's thoughts on the matter are anything but ambiguous.

In calling this a "revolutionary" score one is being simply and baldly literal. To realize the justness of the epithet, one has only to speculate upon what Wagner would have said, or what Richard Strauss may think, of an opera (let us adhere, for convenience, to an accommodating if inaccurate term) written for the voices, from beginning to end, in a kind of recitative which is virtually a chant; an opera in which there is no vocal melody whatsoever, and comparatively little symphonie development of themes in the orchestra; in which an enigmatic and wholly eccentric system of harmony is exploited; in which there are scarcely more than a dozen fortissimo passages in the course of five acts; in which, for the greater part of the time, the orchestra employed is the orchestra of Mozart,—surely, this is something new in modern musico-dramatic art; surely, it requires some courage, or an indifference amounting to courage, to write thus in a day when the plangent and complex orchestra of the Ring is considered inadequate, and the 113 instrumentalists of Salome, like the trumpeters of an elder time, are storming the operatic ramparts of two continents.

The radicalism of the music was fully appreciated at the time of the first performances in Paris. To the dissenters, Debussy's musical personages were mere "stammering phantoms," and he was regaled with the age-worn charge of having "ignored melody altogether." Debussy has defended his methods with point and directness. "I have been reproached," he says, "because in my score the melodic phrase is always in the orchestra, never in the voice. I tried, with all my strength and all my sincerity, to identify my music with the poetical essence of the drama. Before all things, I respected the characters, the lives of my personages; I wished them to express themselves independently of me, of themselves. I let them sing in me. I tried to listen to them and to interpret them faithfully. I wished—intended, in fact—that the action should never be arrested; that it should be continuous, uninterrupted. I wished to dispense with parasitic musical phrases. When listening to a work, the spectator is wont to experience two kinds of emotions which are quite distinct: the musical emotion, on the one hand; the emotion of the character [in the drama], on the other; generally they are felt successively. I have tried to blend these two emotions, and make them simultaneous. Melody is, if I may say so, almost anti-lyric, and powerless to express the constant change of emotion or life. Melody is suitable only for the song (chanson), which confirms a fixed sentiment. I have never been willing that my music should hinder, through technical exigencies, the changes of sentiment and passion felt by my characters. It is effaced as soon as it is necessary that these should have perfect liberty in their gestures as in their cries, in their joy as in their sorrow." However much one may hesitate to subscribe to Debussy's generalities, the final justification for his procedure is in the fact that it is ideally suited to its especial purpose,—the tonal utterance of Maeterlinck's rhymeless, metreless, and broken phrases. To have set them in the sustained arioso style of Tristan und Isolde would have been as impossible as it would have been inept. As it is, the writing for the voices in Pelléas never, as one might reasonably suppose, becomes monotonous. The achievement—an astonishing tour de force, at the least—is as artistically successful as it is unprecedented in modern music.

In his treatment of the orchestra, Debussy makes a scarcely less resolute departure from tradition. There is little symphonic development in the Wagnerian sense. His orchestra reflects the emotional implications of the text and action with absolute and scrupulous fidelity, but suggestively rather than with detailed emphasis. The drama is far less heavily underscored than with Wagner; the note of passion or of conflict or of tragedy is never forced. His personages love and desire, exult and hate and die, with a surprising economy of vehemence and insistence. Yet, unrhetorical as the music is, it is never pallid; and in such truly climacteric moments as that of Golaud's agonized outbreak in the scene with Mélisande, in the fourth act, and the ecstatic culmination of the final love-scene, the music supports the dramatic and emotional crisis with superb competency and vigor.

He follows Wagner to the extent of using the inescapable device of representative themes, though he has, with his usual airy inconsistency, characterized the Wagnerian Leitmotiv system as "rather coarse." It is true, however, that his typical phrases are employed far more sparingly and subtly than modern precedent would have led one to expect. They are seldom set in sharp and vividly dramatic contrast, as with Wagner; nor are they polyphonically deployed. Often they are mere sound-wraiths, intended to denote moods and nuances of emotion so impalpable and evanescent, so vague and interior, that it is more than a little difficult to mark their precise significance. Often they are mere fragments of themes, mere patches of harmonic color, evasive and intangible, designed almost wholly to translate phases of that psychic penumbra in which the characters and the action of the drama are enwrapped. They have a common kinship in their dim and muted loveliness, their grave reticence, the deep and immitigable sadness with which, even at their most rapturous, they are penetrated. This is a score rich in beauty and strangeness, yet the music has often a deceptive naïveté, a naïveté that is so extreme that it reveals itself, finally, as the quintessence of subtlety and reticence—in which respect, again, we are reminded of its perfect, its well-nigh uncanny, correspondence with the quality of Maeterlinck's drama.

As it has been remarked, Debussy's orchestra is here, with few exceptions, the orchestra of Mozart's day. On page after page he writes for strings alone, or for strings with wood-wind and horns. He uses the full modern orchestra only upon the rarest occasions, and then more often for color than for volume. He has an especial affection for the strings, particularly in the lower registers; and he is exceedingly fond of subdividing and muting them. It is rare to find him using the wood-wind choir alone, or the wood and brass without the strings. His orchestra contains the usual modern equipment—3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, an English horn, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, glockenspiel, cymbals, 2 harps, and strings; yet one may count on but little more than the fingers of both hands the pages in which this apparatus is employed in its full strength. And in spite of this curious and unpopular reticence, we listen here, as M. Bruneau has observed, to "a magic orchestra"—an orchestra of indescribable richness, delicacy, and suppleness—an orchestra that melts and shimmers with opalescent hues—an orchestra that has substance without density, sonority without blatancy, refinement without thinness.

The music, as a whole, is as insinuating as it is unparalleled. Many passages are of an hypnotic and abiding fascination. There is something necromantic in the art which can so swiftly and so surely cast an ineluctable spell upon the heart and the imagination: such a spell as is cast in the scene at the Fontaine des Aveugles, in the second act; or when, from the window in the castle tower, Mélisande's unbound hair falls and envelops Pelléas—an unforgettable page; or when the lovers meet for the last time at the Fountain of the Blind; or in the scene of Mélisande's death—one of the most pathetic and affecting pages in all music. One must wonder at the elasticity and richness of the harmonic texture—which, while it is incurably "irregular," is never crude or inchoate; at the distinction of the melodic line; at the rhythmical variety; at the masterly and individual orchestration. No faculty of trained perception is required justly to value the excellences of Debussy's score. There is great beauty, great eloquence, in this music. It has sincerity, dignity, and reserve, yet it is both deeply impassioned and enamoringly tender; and it is as absolutely personal, as underived, as was Tristan forty years ago.

[aquablob]

Generally speaking, by the way, if one wishes to be taken seriously when making a claim that goes directly against the grain of virtually all scholarship on a subject—surely a brave thing to do!—the usual process is to acknowledge said scholarship and carefully make one's case using the available evidence, showing specifically how the others "have it wrong." For a convincing argument, the evidence would typically have to be something more substantial than one's emotional response (although that may be part of the evidence, in certain cases).

[Homo Aestheticus]

Yes Mr. Gilman does put it in better perspective now...  

What I don't understand are those who wish to place it firmly within the scope of Modernism. They want to see it as a modernist drama par excellence that should be linked closely to Bartok's 'Bluebeard's Castle' and Berg's 'Wozzeck'

Now, strip away the librettos and what do they have in common ? Nothing.... They are radically different in aesthetic and technique (i.e. musical vocabulary)

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Re Debussy and Symbolism - I must disagree with Karl on this point. Just as literary Symbolism was heavily involved with music (Wagner's in particular), so Debussy was heavily involved with literary Symbolism (Mallarmé, Maeterlinck et al)). Boulez, too, stands in that tradition. For one excellent study of this subject - Stefan Jarocinski, Debussy - Impressionism & Symbolism.

And by the way - the whole literary Modernist movement was imbued by (Wagnerian) music (and this has influenced even my own writing). To mention only a few authors: Proust wanted his novel to be printed without any chapters, as a flood of prose, an equivalent of Wagner's unending melody; Thomas Mann and James Joyce use leitmotifs, and so does the Russian Symbolist/Modernist Andrey Bely. And these are only the major instances.

[aquablob]

Yes Mr. Gilman does put it in better perspective now...  

What I don't understand are those who wish to place it firmly within the scope of Modernism. They want to see it as a modernist drama par excellence that should be linked closely to Bartok's 'Bluebeard's Castle' and Berg's 'Wozzeck'

Now, strip away the librettos and what do they have in common ? Nothing.... They are radically different in aesthetic and technique (i.e. musical vocabulary)

Yes, they are radically different, but don't you see how Debussy's departure from Wagnerism (and flirtations with atonality) influenced virtually a whole new generation (or two or three) of composers?

[Homo Aestheticus]

Hi,

Yes, they are radically different, but don't you see how Debussy's departure from Wagnerism influenced virtually a whole new generation (or two or three) of composers?

That is true but what would have happened if  P&M  had been his last work ?

I do wonder how many composers truly revered it since I can't think of another opera that  sounds  like it.

[aquablob]

I do wonder how many composers truly revered it since I can't think of another opera that  sounds  like it.

Must reverence come in the form of imitation?

[haydnguy]

I want to ask Eric if the CD below is the Karajan that he is referring to as a recommendation. Also, I was wondering about what recordings others might prefer of this...  (my trigger fingers' itchy!!) 

Thanks.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Hi Bax,   

No, it's this one:



which was then re-issued:



*********

By the way, stay far away from Karajan's earlier one: it's light and fleet, similar to those French wartime recordings.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Know it. Love it.

[aquablob]

Also, I was wondering about what recordings others might prefer of this...  (my trigger fingers' itchy!!) 

I have only Boulez, 1970, and like it just fine.

[Homo Aestheticus]

I have only Boulez, 1970, and like it just fine.

Yes...       What I love about Boulez (EMI 1970) are the vocalists: I've ALWAYS greatly preferred Donald Mcintyre (Golaud), Elisabeth Soderstrom (Melisande) and George Shirley (Pelleas) over  Jose van Dam, Frederica von Stade and Richard Stillwell.

The major problem is that for me the orchestra comes first and Boulez' reading is just way too brisk, often dry and not 'contemplative' enough. There are exceptions though:  The Fountain (Act II, scene 1) and a few passages in The Tower (Act III, scene 1)

Overall, I would say that Karajan excels in Acts 1, 4 and 5. There is still room for improvement in Act 2 and 3 in my book. But since his is generally the most lush and relaxed, I recommend it first.

 

[aquablob]

Overall, I would say that Karajan excels in Acts 1, 4 and 5. There is still room for improvement in Act 2 and 3 in my book. But since his is generally the most lush and relaxed, I recommend it first.

I will keep that in mind!

[haydnguy]

Thanks for the info, Mr. Pelleastrian. 

I will stick my toe in the water with your recommendation. 

[Homo Aestheticus]

On a separate note, here is a little story from when it was released in 1979:

"Pélleas was a personal passion of Karajan, and because of this he agreed to make a very rare personal appearance to promote the release of the recording when he was in London in 1979 on a Berlin Philharmonic tour..."

http://www.overgrownpath.com/search?q=pelleas

****

[karlhenning]

This is unbelievable..... They've shelved  Pelleas et Melisande....

Why unbelievable?  There's less demand for it, I expect.

The tradition has been to produce it every 5 years and now..... nothing.

Well, were you going to buy a ticket?  Opera is for audiences.