Portrait of Debussy.

3: Debussy and Schoenberg

Robert Henderson
The Musical Times, Vol. 108, No. 1489. (Mar., 1967), pp. 222-226.
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Portrait of Debussy-3

by Robert Henderson

DEBUSSY AND SCHOENBERG

In this series of articles we attempt to build a composite portrait of Debussy the musician through
examination of the very different impressions he left
on the music of other composers: in general, and also
in particular by documentation of what works they
heard, and when, their statements, and the reflections
found in their own compositions.

T o try to bring about some permanent reconciliation

between Debussy and Schoenberg has become an
increasingly tempting proposition. Developments in
musical technique in recent years have made it
abundantly clear that both composers, starting out
from their own very individual responses to the
music of Wagner, or more specifically to the highly
contagious fever of Tristanism,' were moving
roughly in the same direction, even if along quite
different routes. And then too it would seem that
the human mind feels a n instinctive urge to draw
regular patterns of interlocking relationships, to
trace clean lines of descent and well-ordered spheres
of influence, to discover intimate connections where
perhaps none actually exists.
As yet, however, the direct confrontation of
Debussy and Schoenberg has almost invariably
resulted simply in a number of vague statements
about the emancipation of the dissonance, about the
suspension or 'liquidation' of tonality, in fact statements which could apply equally well to Skryabin or
Reger or many other composers working during the
crucial years which immediately preceded the first
world war. Rather than seek out what could well be
merely hypothetical links between the two, it would
seem then to be much more realistic to begin by just
accepting the opinion expressed by Edward Lockspeiser to the 1962 conference on Debussy's role in
the evolution of 20th-century music that 'the gulf
between Debussy and Schoenberg is indeed
terrifying'.'
In general Debussy appears to have regarded
Schoenberg with a certain amount of suspicion,
while Schoenberg's view of Debussy was one of
respect, tinged with a growing personal antagonism.
Just how far these opinions were based on actual
knowledge of each other's music is difficult to decide,
for there is relatively little factual documentation,
and what there is is at times contradictory. Did
Debussy, for example, have any really direct experience of Schoenberg's work?
It was apparently the young Edgar Varese who
introduced Debussy to the music of Schoenberg,
and to Debussy it was as shocking as the experi~
remembers
ments of the Italian F u t ~ r i s t s .Varese
having shown him t o t h the Three Piano Pieces op 11
'see Elliott Zuckerman: The First Hundred Years of Wagner's

'Trisran' (New York, 1964)

2Debussq. et i'd~.olurionde la ntusique au XXe si2r'le (Paris, 1965)

p.150

and the Five Orchestral Pieces op 16. Debussy's

friend Robert Godet adds to this that Debussy was
certainly familiar with the first two quartets, the
Gurrelieder, the Orchestral Pieces and, if he is not
mistaken, Pierrot lunaire. On another occasion
Godet gives a slightly less precise list-the f i ~ s t
quartet, several songs, the Orchestral Pieces and
perhaps also Pierrot lunaire. Debussy's biographer
Leon Vallas, on the other hand, insists that according to a statement made by Debussy himself in
December 1913, at that time he still 'knew nothing
of Schoenberg and intended only to read through
~ further
one of the quartets of that c o m p o ~ e r ' .One
piece of information, and one which has been
quoted on many occasions, completes all that we
know at present about Debussy's attitude towards
Schoenberg. In his Expositions and Developments
Stravinsky recalls that when he told Debussy of his
enthusiasm for Pierrot, which he had heard in Berlin
in 1912, Debussy merely stared at him and said
nothing, and Debussy may well have had this
particular occasion in mind when he wrote to Robert
Godet in October 1914:
Just now we may wonder into whose arms music
may fall. The young Russian school offers us
hers. But in my opinion they have become as unRussian as possible.
Stravinsky himself is
dangerously leaning in the direction of Schoenberg.
From this it is clear that Debussy profoundly distrusted all that Schoenberg represented, and it has
been suggested that his distrust was produced more
by his own nationalistic fervour than by any careful
examination of Schoenberg's music.6 Certainly his
feelings towards Schoenberg contrast sharply with
those expressed by Ravel at about the same time:
I am little concerned about the fact the Monsieur
Schoenberg is an Austrian. He remains a highly
significant composer whose interesting discoveries have had a beneficial influence on
certain composers from the allied countries and
among us as well.'
Curiously enough Schoenberg's own rather chauvinistic frame of mind has also been brought forward,
by H. H. Stuckenschmidt, as a partial explanation of
his lack of sympathy with Debussy's creative
positio~l.~
Schoenberg mentions Debussy for the first time in
the closing two chapters of his Harmonielehre (published in 1911) which deal respectively with the
whole-tone scale and chords built out of fourths
3Lockspeiser: Debussj~:his life arid niind, Vol 2 (London, 1965)
p.196
'Leon Vallas: Claude Debussy el son temps (Paris, 1932) p.351
5Lockspeiser Vol 11, p.185
Vean Barraque: Debussy (Paris, 1962) p.175
'Lockspeiser Voi 11, p.216
8Debusa, et I'dvolulion . . p.331

Schoenberg by Egon Schiele

(Quarten-Akkorde). And what he has to say there

makes quite explicit the essential nature of the
virtually unbridgeable gulf between their two modes
of thought. Fundamentally the division between
them was one of tradition, of the closed, selfgenerating, severely dialectical German tradition as
opposed to the open, much more eclectic tradition
of the French, who were willing to absorb new ideas
from many different sources, from the Russians, for
example, or the far east.
His discussion of his own use of the whole-tone
scale, which he believes was simply in the air at the
time, the natural outcome of all previous musical
events, is strictly formal, approached always from
the point of view of logical developments in harmony and counterpoint. And he says quite categorically: 'I have never known any exotic m ~ s i c ' . ~
Where the wholetone scale and the whole-tone
chord occur in his symphonic poem Pelleas und
Melisande, which was written in 1902, the same year
as Debussy's opera was first performed but 'at least
three or four years before I had heard any of his
music',1 they develop in a purely harmonic/
melodic way, out of the form, as a means of transition from one chord to another or as a natural
influence on the contour of the melody.ll
Debussy, however, uses 'his chords and scale, like
Strauss in Salome, more as an 'impressionistic'
means of expression, as a timbre'.12 The whole-tone
scale, he adds, has predominantly a 'colouristic'
effect, and 'Debussy is undoubtedly right to use it
in this way, for in his work it is always effective and
bea~tiful'.'~ But at the same time he is astonished
that Debussy should hope to discover nature
behind art, that he did not realize that to regain
nature one must go forward and not back. And
then wmes a comment very characteristic of German idealism, 'I believe that there is something much
higher than nature.''*
In the chapter devoted to the 'Quarten-Akkorde'
he again returns to the subject of Debussy, whose
imagination seems to him to be particularly sensitive
to the mysterious, very fine and tender nuances
suggested by this novel chord. What is striking in
Debussy is the extraordinary power with which he
expresses his impressionism through these chords.
Indeed they seem to be inseparable from his new
way of thought, so much so in fact that one can
consider them to be his 'intellectual property' .
'it really sounds as if nature itself would speak'.16
Although these scattered sentences from the
Harmonielehre suggest that by 1910 Schoenberg had
reached a clear understanding of the main features
of Debussy's creative character and of the main
differences between them as composers, he in fact
refers specifically to only one Debussy work, the

. .

'Schoenberg: Harmonielehre, 3rd ed (Vienna, 1922) p.467

leibid p.470
"bid p.471
"ibid p.471
laibid 9.475
%bid p 474
lSibidp.482-3

opera Pellkas et Mklisande. And this inevitably

raises the question of just how much of Debussy's
music Schoenberg actually knew, what other works
had he seen or heard. This problem has already
attracted the attention of the American scholar
William Austin who has carefully collected and
collated all the available information.16 In the
Harmonielehre Schoenberg insists that he first came
across Debussy's music in about the year 1906. And
he returns to this point in his obituary notice of
Alban Berg written in 1936: in the early years of the
century while he was his pupil, Berg, he says, 'had
occupied himself extraordinarily intensively with
contemporary music, with Mahler, Strauss, and
perhaps even Debussy whose work I did not know'.17
Although it is not known for certain, Schoenberg
could well have been at the concert which Debussy
himself conducted in Vienna in 1910 (it included
L'aprPs-midi d'un faune, Zbkria and the Petite Suite).
Mrs Helene Berg, however, recalls quite clearly that
she did not see Schoenberg at the first Vienna performance of Debussy's Pellkas in 191 1 ; she did see
Webern there. (It is perhaps of some interest too
that Melisande was sung in this performance by
Marie Gutheil-Schoder who was also the soloist in
the first performance of Schoenberg's second string
quartet of 1907-8.)
After examining all the relevant facts (which are
lucidly diagnosed in his article) Austin reaches the
unconfirmed but nevertheless persuasive conclusion
that Schoenberg wuld well have derived his notions
about 'Debussyisme' not so much from direct contact with Debussy's music as through his experience
of Puccini (La Bolrdme and Butterfly had been presented by Mahler at the Vienna Opera in 1903 and
I6Hisfull report appears in Debussy et I'Pvolurion p.317.
"Willi Reich: Albm Berg (London, 1965) p.29

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1907) and above all through Dukas's Ariane r t

Barbe-bleue which his brother-in-law Alexander
Zemlinsky had conducted in Vienna in 1908. Austin
also points out the strange and extremely intriguing
fact that after his initial contacts with Debussy, which
were roughly contemporary with his second quartet,
Schoenberg quickly abandoned any use in his own
music of the whole-tone scale.

*
In the years following the first world war a decisive
event in Viennese musical life was the formation by
Berg, Webern, Eduard Steuermann (a devoted
Schoenberg pupil who was also a notable Debussy
pianist) and Erwin Ratz (another young pupil who
in 1916 had bought a score of Debussy's Pellias on
Schoenberg's recommendation) of the famous
Society for Private Musical Performance. Within
two years the Society had already given 21 of
Debussy's works, including the violin sonata, which
was rehearsed by Webern, and a two-piano version
of the Nocturires, part of which Schoenberg quoted
some years later in his Structura/ Fui?ctions of'
Harmony as a n example of the 'combination of two
melody lines without the addition of complete
harmonies'.ls
Many of these pieces were performed in specially
prepared arrangements suitable for the Society's
limited resources, at least one of which was made by
Schoenberg himself (no one seems to remember
which work it actually was). But now, however.
with the formulation of the 12-note method, he had
moved even further beyond any possible identification with Debussy's world of ideas. He still acknowledges Debussy's importance as a pioneer, but shows
a growing lack of sympathy, a growing bitterness
and even misunderstanding.
H e mentions, for instance, 'the great development
in orchestration which took place through the
achievements of Mahler, Strauss, Debussy and their
successors',19 and in a note of the early twenties for
a projected manual of orchestration he includes
Debussy among a list of composers from whose
works examples would have to be chosen.?" In discussing post-Wagnerian harmony in his lecture on
12-note composition (1946) published in the
volume Style and Idea, he again refers in a general
way to Debussy's harmonic practice:
One no longer expected preparations of Wagner's
dissonances or resolutions of Strauss's chords;
one was not disturbed by Debussy's nonfunctional narmony.
But he is severely critical of that modification of
Wagnerian harmony which he describes as 'impressionistic', and of which he says Debussy was the
most notable exponent, harmonies which, without
having in themselves any structural significance, are
used principally to enrich the colour and to express
sensations and images, these images and sensations,
although basically extra-musical, becoming the
main constructive element^.^' He is too, in another
lBSchoenberg:Slrucfurai Functions of Harn~ony(London, 1954)
p.102
'ORufer: The Works o f Arnold Schoenberg (London, 1962) p. 72
%Oibidp. 138
E'Schoenberg: Sr.v/e and Iden (New York, 1950) p.103-4

224

essay in Style and Idea, strongly opposed to a

certain kind of harmonic repetition which he contrasts unfavourably with the technique of continuously developing variation. And he places Debussy
together with composers like Mendelssohn, Schumann and Gounod, who, although their originality
was rich and distinctive enough, had no ambition to
be revolutionarie~.~~
Here one encounters a basic misunderstanding of
Debussy's position which is given even more forceful, if still respectful expression in his bitter assessment of his own achievement compared to that of
the French composer in an important fragment on
nationalism in music:
While Debussy did succeed in rousing the
Romance and Slavic peoples to oppose Wagner,
he was unable to free himself from Wagner's
influence; his most interesting discoveries can be
used only within the framework of Wagnerian
form and organization. Also, it should not be
overlooked that much of the harmony used by him
was also discovered independently in Germany.
No wonder; for it was a logical sequence of
Wagnerian harmony, a further step along the
road pointed out by Wagner. . . no one has yet
noticed that, in my music, which originated on
German soil uninfluenced by foreign elements,
there is to be found a n art which, as it most
effectively opposes the fight for hegemony waged
by the Romance and Slavic nations, has stemmed
completely from the traditions of German
a$ih~d
p.191
P 3 R ~ t bp.24
r

Schoenberg, then sees himself as standing in direct

opposition to Debussy, as the upholder of the
authentic German tradition against that of the
French or Russians. And a personal confrontation
of the two would seem to support and even intensify
this point of view, disclosing few positive links but
rather revealing with a startling clarity their 'terrifying' separateness. In either case it is impossible to
speak of any reciprocal influence. Obviously in the
crucial years before the first world war both composers played important roles in the general revolutionary process whose character has not yet been
fully explained, but through which the main features
of the modern movement were finally established.
For even when working with similar material, in
their two compositions on the Pelleas theme, in
Schoenberg's first chamber symphony and the third
of his Five Orchestral Pieces and Debussy's Voiles,
the results are totally different. Only in the imagination of a later generation has any reconciliation
become possible, and it is in the music of a composer like Dallap~collaor (through Webern) Boulez
that the traditions represented by Debussy and
Schoenberg have eventually dissolved into one
another.
In order to fill out this somewhat sketchy portrait
of Debussy seen through the eyes of Schoenberg it
would perhaps be appropriate to look briefly at the
reactions of Berg and Webern.
In their letters and writings both were rather
reticent on the subject of Debussy (no doubt out of
loyalty to Schoenberg) but both, it seems, possessed

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a much more searching knowledge of his music than

did Schoenberg himself. To uncover traces of
Debussy's influence in the music of Webern would
require a completely new and extremely detailed
investigation of the sources. But we do know from
the researches of William Austin (the evidence can
be found in his indispensable article to which I have
already referred) that Webern listened to Debussy
with real pleasure, that he had made a careful
analysis of L'apres-midi and the violin sonata, and
that during the early 30's he had hoped to conduct a
performance of Le martyre de Saint-Sibastien.
With Berg we are on much more sure ground. He
became interested in Debussy very early in his life,
and we hardly need outside evidence of this interest
-the music itself is sufficient. His use of the wholetone scale, of parallel, unresolved dissonances in the
song Nacht from the Seven Early Songs, written in
1908 when he was 23, and the fluid 'impressionistic'
writing of the Three Orchestral Pieces (1914) stem
quite clearly from Debussy. He acknowledged too
that Wozzeck was a direct descendant of Debussy's
Pellias. This is perhaps most noticeable in the selfcontained structure of the individual scenes and the
connecting orchestral interludes; but it is just as
obvious in the more general atmospheric character
of the writing, both here and in the slightly later
cantata to poems of Baudelaire, Der Wein.
Particularly remarkable is the recent discovery
of identical passages, of the same chord progression

at the same pitch, stretching over two bars, in the

movement 'Pour la danseuse aux crotales' from
Debussy's Epigraphes antiques and the last of Berg's
songs Op 2.24 Berg's song was written in 1908 and
published for the first time in 1910 in the Blaue
Reiter volume together with music by Schoenberg
and Webern. Debussy's Epigraphes antiques date
from 1914, but were based on material which he had
used in 1900 to accompany a recitation of the
Chansons de Bilitis. The passage in question, however, does not occur in this earlier version; but seems
to have been a much later addition.
Is the similarity of these two bars in Debussy and
Berg simply coincidence, part of the general cultural
climate of the era? Or did Debussy know Berg's
song (with his interest in modern art, he could well
have seen the Blaue Reiter publication)? Was it a
matter of unconscious or even conscious memory?
These questions are for the moment insoluble. As
time passes many comparable inter-connections will
undoubtedly be brought to light, but for the present
so surprising a discovery as this serves to remind us
just how little we as yet know of a decade which
still retains its secret.
$&H.H. Stuckenschmidt: 'Debussy or Berg? The Mystery of a
Chord Progression', The AMusical Quarterly Vol 51, July 1962,
p.453
The next article will appear in May; previous ones are:
Debussy and Stravinsky by Jeremy Noble (Jan 1966)
Debussy and Bartok by Anthony Cross (Feb 1966)

'ATHALIA' COMES TO LONDON

by Winton Dean
Handel's Athalia will be given at the Elizabeth Hall
on March 8 at 7.45. Anthony Lewis conducts the
Ambrosian Singers, Jennifer Vyvyan is Athalia, as in
the performance at Oxford on 2 July 1964 during the
English Bach Festival.

The fate of Athalia is sadly symptomatic of the misapprehension that dogged Handel for generations.
The third of his English oratorios, and the only one
apart from Messiah not written for London, it was
composed in 1733 and performed in the Sheldonian
Theatre during Handel's visit to Oxford in July of
that year. Although it enjoyed a number of performances during the later 18th century, it has
seldom been heard since. The Novello vocal score,
published in 1878, took more than 50 years to clear
a meagre thousand copies, and has never been reprinted. There appears to have been no performance in London during the present century, or
perhaps for many years before that. This is a singular record for a country that used to pride itself on
its choral societies and its Handelian tradition.
The explanation would seem to be that Handel's
tremendous dramatic design failed to satisfy a

public eager for the processed meat of edification.

For Athalia is a major masterpiece, and the first
oratorio in which Handel threw off his fetters and
demonstrated the range and grandeur of the new
form. Like Esther it is based on a late play by Racine,
who found his inspiration in Greek tragedy with its
double role of the chorus as actor and commentator.
In this and other respects it established the pattern
for the later dramatic oratorios. The English text of
Samuel Humphreys is verbally maladroit, but it
preserves the main lines of the play.
The subject is the liberation of Judah from the
tyranny of Queen Athalia, daughter of Ahab and
Jezebel, who has usurped the throne, installed a
priest of Baal in her palace and sought to liquidate
the royal line. The High Priest Joad (Jehoiada) and
his wife Josabeth, supported by a patriotic group,
remain true to Jehovah; they have concealed the boy
Joas, the rightful heir, and brought him up secretly
without informing him of his identity. When
Athalia, suspicious and tortured by dreams of disaster, discovers Joas and plans to abduct him, they
frustrate her by proclaiming him King and winning
the army and people to their side. The action takes