741965

Musical Impressionism: The Early History of the TermAuthor(s): Ronald L. ByrnsideSource: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Oct., 1980), pp. 522-537Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/741965 .

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Musical Impressionism: The Early History of the Term

RONALD L. BYRNSIDE

I

ON December 27, 1873, a group of artists affixed their signatures to the founding charter of Le Soci~td anonyme des artistes,

peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs, and, on April 15 of the following year, the new society offered a public show. One of the works dis- played was Claude Monet's Impression: Sunrise (painted in 1872). There is some evidence to suggest that a few critics and painters in this group had used the term "impression" or "impressions" in their private discussions of painting for several years prior to this show; indeed the title of Monet's painting supports such a thesis. Nevertheless, it was almost by the whim of a Parisian art critic, Jules Antoine Castagnary, that the Monet painting was to give a name to the collective works of this group of artists. In an article in Le Sihcle, on April 29, 1874, "Exposition du boulevard des Ca- pucines - les impressionnistes" he wrote: "... if one wants to characterize them with a single word that explains their efforts, one would have to create the new term impressionists."1

It appears that the only earlier use of the term "impressionism" was in connection with the philosophical system of David Hume (1711-1776), but there it had no association with painting or any of the other arts.

This term, so casually and somewhat pejoratively introduced to painting, eventually found its way into the field of music, but there its history has been troubled and confused, and its elucidatory value has been questionable. Precisely what it means and to what music

1 John Rewald, The History of Impressionism (New York, 1961), I, 330.

522



Musical Impressionism 523

(if any) it should be applied are complicated matters, and an ex- amination of the literature dealing with musical Impressionism re- veals that there is no consensus on these issues. An inquiry into these matters will form the basis of a future study, but the present essay is concerned only with the emergence of this problematical term in musical discussions.

It is probably true that for most people the first name (and for some, the only name) associated with musical Impressionism is Claude Debussy. There is only one documented use of it in a musical context before its use in discussions of Debussy's music. Edward Lockspeiser calls attention to a letter written by Renoir in 1882, in which he describes his meeting with Richard Wagner. He says: "We spoke of the Impressionists of music."2 Lockspeiser speculates that Renoir may have been attempting to describe to Wagner the works of Faur&, Duparc, Chabrier, and Chausson. In any case, Renoir was speaking of more than one composer, and Debussy cannot have been one of them, since he was not known to Renoir and had written little and published nothing at that early date. Intriguing as it is, this remains an isolated use of the term, for with this exception documented linkings of Impressionism with music did not appear until it was applied to Debussy's music some years later.

The first mention of Impressionism in connection with Debussy's music is, of course, well known. It was used by members of the Acad~mie des Beaux-Arts to whom the composer had sent the score of Printemps, dated February, 1887.3 The reaction of the committee was not entirely unfavorable, but their report contained the following:

His feeling for musical color is so strong that he is apt to forget the importance of accuracy of line and form. He should beware this vague impressionism which is one of the most dangerous enemies of artistic truth.4

In January, 1889, the committee deliberated over Debussy's La Damoiselle glue: ". . . it bears the mark of that systematic tendency

2 Debussy: His Life and Mind (London, 1962-65), I, 92n. 3 Not to be confused with the choral works Printemps (1882), text by Comte de

Sdgur, and Printemps, sometimes called Salut Printemps (1884), text by Jules Barbier. The work in question was originally scored for chorus and orchestra; the original score appears to have been destroyed in a fire. The present version for orchestra without chorus was orchestrated by Henri Biisser in 1913.

4 Leon Vallas, Claude Debussy: His Life and Works, trans. M. and G. O'Brien (London, 1933), pp. 42-43.



524 The Musical Quarterly

towards vagueness of expression and form of which the Academy has already complained."5

In the late 1880s, Debussy was singled out from among his fellow students for association with the term. It was not used in official discussions of the music of other Prix de Rome contenders in the years 1883-89, when Debussy was either a contender for or a holder of the prize. Composers in this group include Paul Vidal, Charles Rena, Xavier Leroux, Edmond Missa, Gabriel Piernd, Augustin Savard, Andre G~dalge, Georges-Eugene Marty, Gustave Charpen- tier, Alfred Bachelet, and Camille Erlanger.0

In the years 1889-90, several of Debussy's short piano works and songs were published. Shortly after, he began to emerge as a public figure. La Damoiselle dlue was performed on April 7, 1893; the String Quartet on December 29, 1893; and the Prdlude & l'aprts- midi d'un faune, on December 22, 1894. In the ensuing decade, his music increasingly attracted the attention of musicians, critics, and historians, and it was during these years that the term Impressionism first began to appear in musical discussions. It seems clear that something about the nature of at least some of Debussy's compositions prompted a number of musical commentators to use the word, though, as we shall see, it was used neither uniformly, systematically, nor consistently. In any case, discussions of Impressionism in music emerged not before but with Debussy's music. His unique association with it is reflected in the fact that the term had been current in art circles since the 1870s, yet musical scholars and critics avoided it until his emergence as a composer of musical force at the turn of the century.

Debussy's name did not begin to appear in music encyclopedias and dictionaries until after 1900. He is mentioned briefly in A. Piter's La Musique et les musiciens (1902) and in the second edition of Grove's (1904); in neither of these is the term Impressionism used. But in Irving Squire's The American History and Encyclo- pedia of Music (1908), Debussy is referred to as an Impressionist and a "great harmonic inventor and an unsurpassed poet in

5 Ibid., p. 48. 6 Debussy first entered the Prix de Rome competition in 1883 and was awarded

the Second Prix for his cantata Le Gladiateur (unpublished). The following year he was awarded the Grand Prix for his cantata L'Enfant prodigue. Neither of these works prompted the jurors to use the term Impressionism, though the latter was reviewed by Charles Darcourt in Le Figaro, July 1, 1884, and by Johannes Weber, Le Temps, July 11, 1884.




mysticism."'7 The same source contains an entry for modern French music which states that Debussy "is the most typical of the musical impressionists of the day" and that

of the ultra-modern living (French) composers d'Indy, Debussy, Dubois, and Faurd have all distinguished themselves in the orchestral field. The tendency of these men is toward a vague, impressionistic style.8

Although it extends beyond the chronological limits of the early history of the term musical Impressionism, it seems appropriate to review the following at this point. Beginning around 1910 and extending through the second decade of the twentieth century, music dictionaries and encyclopedias tended to include a separate entry for "Impressionism." Debussy is consistently and prominently mentioned, but other contemporary composers are called Impressionists as well. In Robert Eitner's Miscellanea musicae bio-bibliographica (1912-16) and in other contemporaneous sources, Debussy is never divorced from Impressionism, but the field of Impressionist composers is expanded.

In the 1920s and 30s this tendency was further expanded, and two factors about the attitude of certain scholars toward Impressionism became evident. First, they felt the need to offer a systematic definition of the term; thus several of the longest and most carefully conceived articles about the nature of musical Impressionism emerged during that period.

Second, many scholars began to use the term retroactively. Ernst Kurth9 and Hans Mersmann,'o having determined for themselves what the properties of Impressionism are, found these properties not only in the music of Debussy and some of his contemporaries, but also in some earlier music. Edward J. Dent's article on Impres- sionism in A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians is an example, even though his skepticism about the usefulness of the term is obvious.

Impressionism. A term which has been borrowed from the criticism of painting and recently applied in a not very clearly defined sense to music. The chief modern exponent of musical "impressionism" was Debussy, and the term seems generally to be applied to music intended to convey some suggestion of land-

7 (London, 1908), V, 173-74. 8 Ibid., III, 134-35. 9 Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners "Tristan" (Berlin 1923). to Die Moderne Musik seit der Romantik, Vol. IX of Handbuch der Musik Wissen-

schaft, ed. Ernst Bicken, (New York, 1927).




scape, or of a picture in which colour is more important than outline, the melodic line in such cases being ill-defined and fragmentary, while subsidiary figures of accompaniment are much developed, often in rapid movement, the object of which is to produce a general effect of timbre rather than a clearly intelligible succession of notes. Similar effects are also obtained by slow harmonies based on chords which an older generation would have regarded as discords, but which the present day regards as agreeable consonances. The germs of "impressionism" can be traced far back; they may be found in the madrigals of Luca Marenzio and others; Torrefranca finds them in the harpsichord sonatas of Galuppi and Platti; Edward Carpenter has pointed out similar tendencies in the pianoforte sonatas of Beethoven. Liszt shows frequent examples; among the living composers Delius is one of the most successful "impressionists.""

Toward the end of the earliest phase of this history, we occasion- ally find a writer who attaches Impressionist to composers other than Debussy. Significantly, most of these writers were not French. To some British and American authors, Impressionism seems to have been more or less synonymous with "new music," that is it was not conceived of as a designation for a particular musical style, but was used in a much broader and more general way.

Ultimately, Debussy became not only the central but, for all practical purposes, the only composer who figures in the early history of the term musical Impressionism. Let us consider some of the early literature on Debussy.

In the period from 1887 (when the term was first used in connection with his music) to 1910 (about when Impressionism became a term in general use), over 125 authors wrote books, articles, reviews, and studies of Debussy and his music, producing more than 200 items.12 Among the most prolific were Louis Laloy, music historian and friend of Debussy; Jean Marnold, founder of Le Mercure musical (in 1905), principal music critic of Mercure de France, and regarded by some of his contemporaries as an expert in the field of functional harmony; Paul Dukas; Camille Mauclair, primarily an art historian, but also a prolific and highly regarded music critic; Pierre Lalo; M. D. Calvocoressi; and Lbon Vallas.

Some of their contributions to Debussian scholarship remain

11 A. Eaglefield Hull, ed., A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians (London, 1924).

12 The most complete bibliography is Claude Abravanel's "Claude Debussy: A Bibliography," Detroit Studies in Music Bibliography (Detroit, 1974). Even this ex- cellent bibliography is not complete, lacking a number of early reviews of certain compositions by Debussy.




valuable to the present day. Most of them approached the term Impressionism cautiously, often apologetically, and rather late in the period 1887-1910. A few of them - and a majority of authors from the period - never used Impressionism in their discussions of Debussy's music.

II

In the earliest biography of Debussy, Claude Achille Debussy, Louise Liebich in a rather sentimental way describes Debussy's aesthetics and several of his compositions, but does not have any firm understanding of either. It is not known how she acquired the term Impressionism, but it is fair to assume that she adopted it as a convenience in attempting to assess certain of Debussy's works with which she was infatuated. She stated: "If in the right mood he will treat his hearers to a wonderful display of tonal impressionism, weaving iridescent chords and harmonies into a fantastic web of color and beauty."'" And further:

By inclination and temperament Debussy is in close sympathy with the school of painters called Impressionists and with the class of poets styled Symbolists .. It is indisputable that there are points of resemblance between their work and his, but at the same time, like his personality, his individual art is affranchised from precedent and category, cliques or coteries.14

Louis Laloy met Debussy in 1902. There developed between them a cordial friendship and on Laloy's part a sympathetic understanding of Debussy's music and aims. This is reflected in Laloy's important early biography Claude Debussy,'5 a book which, accord- ing to Lockspeiser and others, expressed views that Debussy approved of. Laloy stated that "Debussyism is the equivalent in music of Im- pressionism in painting and Symbolism in poetry." Debussy may well have agreed in a general way with such views but it is difficult to believe that he would have countenanced the use of the word "Debussyism" in this or any context, for on numerous occasions he expressed his disgust with it. In this same work, Laloy related the nature of Impressionism as he understood it:

Sounds used in music have no meaning nor can they represent an object. Music, therefore, among all the arts must originally have been the one which is essen- tially symbolist and impressionist. Non-European musicians, like the Chinese, the

13 (London, 1908), pp. 12-13. 14 Ibid., pp. 24-25. 15 (Paris, 1909).




Indians and the Sengalese are Impressionists and Symbolists without being aware of it.16

The music critic Henri Gauthier-Villars (Willy) was among the earliest chroniclers to mention Debussy. He was not a musician, but an author and a kind of factotum in the artistic circles of Paris in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and was ac- quainted with many artistic, literary, and musical luminaries of the day. In such collections as Voyage autour de la musique (1890) and La Colle aux Quintes (1898), Gauthier-Villars mentioned De- bussy several times and spoke of some of his compositions, but in these early works he never applied the term Impressionist to the composer.

In Lawrence Gilman's Phases of Modern Music, Debussy is not referred to as an Impressionist, but Gilman did apply the label to another composer: "Both in theory and in practice Mr. (Edward) MacDowell stands uncompromisingly for music that is, of intention, persistently pictorial and impressionistic.""'7

But three years later, in The Music of Tomorrow, Gilman stated:

It has been made evident enough in the foregoing pages, I think, that he [Debussy] is, in the purest sense of that outworn and misdirected term, an inm- pressionist - a sensitive recorder, to use his own apt phrase, of "impressions and special lights."'8

Two years later, in Aspects of Modern Opera (1909), Gilman offered a lengthy discussion of Pellias et Milisande, but nowhere used the term Impressionism.

A substantial number of early writers and reporters on Debussy's music who did not call him an Impressionist had recourse to one or another label for him, an indication that he seemed to them a unique composer, one calling for some kind of descriptive or stylistic banner which would separate his music from that of all other composers. In his book Etude sur Victor Hugo, Fernand Gregh included a brief appendix entitled "Sur Claude Debussy," in which Debussy was not referred to as an Impressionist. Gregh stated, however: "If Vincent d'Indy is a symbolist, if Charpentier is a naturist, Claude Debussy seems to me a great humanist composer.""

16 Ibid., p. 89. 17 (London, 1904), p. 30. 18 (London, 1907), p. 36. 19 (Paris, 1904).




In 1905, LUon Vallas, in attempting to differentiate Debussy from other composers, referred to him as a "paganiste."20 In 1910, Edwin Evans called him "un vrai primitif,"21 and in that same year Ernest Newman suggested that Debussy was affected and a snob, and the "prince of mannerists."22 Also in that year Etienne Des- tranges referred to him as a "pointilliste."23 Two years earlier, an anonymous author suggested that Debussy was a "pseudo-Orien- tal."24

In these middle years of the first decade of the twentieth century, a pattern began to emerge, or, perhaps more accurately, a habit began to develop which consisted of applying some extra- musical label to Debussy's music. Impressionism was only the most prominent one; but within a very short time, it not only superseded the others, it permanently attached itself to Debussy's music. This "creeping Impressionism" is no less evident in the periodical literature of the time.

III

Tristan Klingsor (pen name of Leon Leclbre) was one of several authors who, at the turn of the century, wrote articles dealing with analogies between the arts. In November, 1900, Klingsor, who was himself a poet, painter, and composer, as well as a critic, dealt with this subject at some length. He did not, however, refer to Debussy as an Impressionist.25 The anonymous author of an article on De- bussy's Nocturnes, I and II, made an oblique analogy between them and the Nocturnes of the painter James Whistler, stating that "Debussy seems to wish to express passinig impressions of a dream,"26 but he stopped short of calling him an Impressionist. A month later, in January, 1901, Pierre de Br~ville discussed the same works and said that most of the critics who heard Nocturnes had recourse to analogies saying: "It is some musical Whistler . . . this can be turned

20 "Apropos Debussy," La Revue musicale de Lyon, October 15, 1905, p. 7. 21 "Une opinion anglaise sur Pelldas et Milisande," La Revue musicale de Lyon,

January 1, 1910, p. 345. 22 "A Note on Debussy," Musical Times, May 1, 1910, p. 293. 23 "Pelldas et Milisande," La Revue musicale de Lyon, November 13, 1910, p. 137. 24 "Pellias et Mdlisande," Journal of Incorporated Society of Musicians (June,

1908), p. 151. 25s"Les Musiciens et les Pobtes," Mercure de France (January, 1901), p. 17. 26 "Les Nocturnes de Debussy," Le Figaro, December 10, 1900.




around and permit one to affirm that Whistler is Debussy in painting."27

In June, 1902, Jean Marnold wrote an article devoted in part to a discussion of Nocturnes. In it he spoke of the nature of Im- pressionist painting; then, turning to a discussion of Nocturnes, he said: "But this is an Impressionist musician."'''s Hugues Imbert suggested that Debussy attempts "to realize in music what Impres- sionists such as Monet and Sisley have executed in painting." Later in the same article he said of the Nocturnes: "These are pages of pure Impressionism." He also offered a warning, stating that Im- pressionism in music . . is charming for pieces of small dimensions, but perhaps dangerous for large- scale pieces which require a solid architecture: example, his String Quartet. It is difficult to go farther in vagueness without falling into incoherence.29

It is difficult to reconcile this idea with the fact that the author, in this same article, designated Pellhas et Milisande - hardly a work of small dimensions - as Impressionist.

Pellhas et Milisande was first performed on April 30, 1902. More than two dozen critics reviewed the work, and by the end of 1910 more than seventy reviews, articles, and special studies of the opera had been published.

Only a few reviewers used the term Impressionism. About two- thirds of the reviews and articles in 1902 made no mention of it, including those by Paul Dukas, Louis Laloy, and Julien Benda. Camille Mauclair claimed that Impressionism used in connection with Debussy's music is often "vague, inexact, and hazardous." But he did draw a comparison between Monet and Debussy, suggesting that Monet's beautiful landscapes are nothing but

symphonies with.luminous waves: and the music of Debussy, founded not on the stringing together of motives, but on the compared power of the sounds in themselves, draws singularly close to these paintings. It is an Impressionism of sonorous strokes.3o

Pelldas was the subject of three separate articles in La Revue blanche during 1902. None of the authors, Frederich Spigl, Julien Benda, Paul Flat, used the term Impressionism. Neither did Louis

27 Mercure de France (January, 1901), p. 214. 28 Mercure de France (June, 1902), p. 805. 29 "M. Claude Debussy," La Revue bleue, April 19, 1902, p. 112. 30 "La Peinture musicienne et la fusion des arts," La Revue bleue, September 6,

1902, p. 300.




Schneider,3' Camille Bellaigue,32 Gaston Serpette,33 nor Andre Hallays34 in their discussions of Pelldas. But on June 4, 1902, Max Rikoff reported:

In the orchestra his leitmotives -- one harmonization - Impressionistic painting of the mood. Is Mr. Debussy ahead of his time as founder of a new art movement or has time, forever moving on, passed by his contribution? . . . We demand above all that intellect (head) and heart be unified in art which should not find itself on the same level with the crafts. Impressionistic and sessionistic music cannot be listened to for long without an incurable shattering of nerves.35

Some reviewers did not like the work at all. S. Marchesi reported:

An important event, another step downward in the evolution of the musical theories and musical taste of our age, happened on April 30 last. Pelldas et Mdlisande ... was produced on that evening at the Opdra-comique.30

The flurry of scholarly and journalistic activity created by Pellhas et Mdlisande in 1902 was followed by a quiet period. The years 1903 and 1904 produced little writing on Debussy perhaps because they were not Debussy's most productive in terms of completed compositions.

The most noteworthy writing on Debussy during the two im- mediate post-Pellias years centered mainly on older works. In January, 1903, Laloy wrote an article on La Damoiselle dlue.37 In discussing this work from 1887-88, he did not use the term Im- pressionism, nor did Pierre Lalo employ it in his discussion of a per- formance of Chansons de Bilitis (1897).38 In 1904, Laloy discussed Pellias and several older works without using the term,39 and Marnold also failed to use it in his review of Proses lyriques (1892- 93).40 In 1904, Paul Landormy quoted from a letter from Arnold Schering, in which the latter gave an account of the German attitude

31"Pellas et Mdlisande," Revue d'historique de critique musicale, II/5 (May, 1902), p. 122.

32 "Pellias et Milisande," Revue des deux mondes, May 15, 1902, p. 450. 33 "Pellias et Milisande," Gil bias, May 10, 1902. 34 "Pelldas et Milisande," Revue de Paris, May 15, 1902, p. 173. 35 "Pelldas und Milisande," Neue Zeitschrift fiir Musik, June 4, 1902, p. 325. 36 "Pelldas et Milisande," Monthly Musical Record, XXXII/6 (June, 1902). 37"La Damoiselle dlue," La Revue musicale. Histoire et Critique (January, 1903)

p. 81. 38 Le Temps, March 31, 1903. 39 "La SimplicitC en musique," La Revue musicale. Histoire et Critique, February

15, 1904, p. 111. 40 "La musique," Mercure de France (July, 1904), p. 241.




toward recent French music. Impressionism was not mentioned, and neither was Debussy!41

The first performances of La Mer in 1905 created another flurry of activity and interest in Debussy's music and produced more state- ments about Impressionism in his work. Reviewers like Pierre Lalo4' did not mention Impressionism; others, such as Raymond Bouyer,43 and especially Mauclair, did. Mauclair asked. "Qu'est-ce que l'impressionnisme?" and then reported that

it is at the same time a promise and a result of the future. The result I have analyzed many times here: it is the logical outcome of the pictorial eighteenth century, the heritage of Fragonard, of Boucher, and of the sketches which are completed by the characterism, the modernism, of the Renoirs and the Manets.44

He further suggested about the word Impressionism: "It should no longer be used in historical criticism as a designation for a movement that has disappeared."

Jean Marnold suggested that La Mer represented something new in Debussy's style, a more organic kind of music, a style different from PellE~as.45 Probably for that reason he did not use the term Impressionism, though he had in discussions of earlier works by Debussy. L0on Vallas mentioned La Mer in 1905;46 he did not use the term Impressionism, but it is in this article that Vallas referred to Debussy as a "paganiste."

After La Mer, Impressionsm appeared in print with much great- er frequency. It was still not universally applied to Debussy's music, but the number of authors who began to use it increased sharply. Some recognized La Mer as a stylistic turning point in Debussy's career and asserted that it was in one way or another different from his earlier works. Thus confronted with a "new" Debussy, some authors, perhaps in an attempt to separate La Mer from the earlier works, put aside their reluctance to use the term Impressionism and began to apply it to certain compositions. Some

41 "L'Etat actuel de la musique frangaise," La Revue bleue, March 26, p. 394, and April 2, 1904, p. 421.

42 Le Temps, October 24, 1905. 43 "L'Impressionnisme en musique et le culte de Beethoven," La Revue bleue,

May 13, 1905, p. 603. 44 "La fin de l'impressionnisme," La Revue bleue, January 14, 1905, p. 49. 45 Mercure de France, November 1, 1905, p. 540. 46 "Apropos Debussy," La Revue musicale de Lyon, October 15, 1905, p. 7.




came to the conclusion that many of the earlier works should be labeled Impressionist. Paul de Lestrang suggested that

the Five Poems of Baudelaire neatly affirm the descriptive and Impressionistic character which are found henceforth in all the works of Debussy. .. . The Chan-

sons de Bilitis is pure Impressionism.47

At about that time Vallas also began to use the term Impres- sionism, though in a more guarded and restricted manner. In discussing Faune on February 4, 1906,48 he did not use the term, but on October 14 and 21, 1906, he listed all the piano works by Debussy up to Images, first series, and called none of them Impressionist ex- cept Estampes, which he said contained a "delicious and original Impressionism indicated by their divers titles.""49 One can only assume that for Vallas the Impressionism in Estampes derived from its rather special titles. But that is a little peculiar, for there are other provocative titles among the other piano works listed by Vallas, such as Reflets dans l'eau, and one might place Reverie and Clair de lune in that category. Perhaps at this time Vallas was beginning to formulate his own conception of the nature of musical Impression- ism, and the use of the term in connection with Estampes marked a first, provisional manifestation of that conception. He was to use it consistently in later years, devoting considerable space to a con- sideration of it in his biography of Debussy.

M. D. Calvocoressi also discussed Debussy's piano music in 1906. He did not use the term Impressionism, but suggested that Debussy's music is "markedly picturesque, even descriptive."'5 Henry Hadow took much the same attitude, stating that Debussy is "a master of half-lights and delicate shadows,"51 while Edward Burlingame Hill referred to Debussy as an "unsurpassed poet in mysticism."52

In 1907, Vallas momentarily retreated from his use of the term Impressionism.53 He was one of the several authors who were drawn

47"Les Chansons de Bilitis," La Revue musicale de Lyon, December 2, 1906, p. 235.

48 La Revue musicale de Lyon, February 4, 1906, p. 481. 49 "Le Nouveau style pianistique," La Revue musicale de Lyon, October 14, p. 6,

and October 21, 1906, p. 33. 50"A Few Remarks on Modern French Pianoforte Music," Monthly Musical

Record, June 6, 1906, p. 123. 51 "Some Tendencies in Modern Music," Edinburg Review (October, 1906), p. 381. 52 "Claude Debussy's Piano Music," The Musician (August, 1906), p. 192. 53 "Encore l'affaire Ravel," La Revue musicale de Lyon, May 1, 1907, p. 772.




into the unfortunate and rather silly debate on the subject of influences and even plagiarism alleged to have existed between Debussy and Ravel. This musical warfare, unwanted by both composers, was waged in Parisian newspapers and periodicals in the closing years of the first decade of this century, and it reached a climax in Le Cas Debussy (1910) by Charles Francis Caillard and Jose de B6rys.54 Vallas's failure to use the term Impressionism may have been because he did not want to associate Debussy and Ravel with a common stylistic label, for he quite rightly recognized substantial dif- ferences in their music. In any case, Vallas suggested that perhaps the best label for Debussy's music is not Impressionism, but De- bussyism.

Marnold also entered the affair. In an article in 1907,55 he juxta- posed aspects of the styles of Ravel and Debussy without, however, applying the term Impressionism to the music of either composer. He had used the term in earlier discussions of Debussy's music, but in this argument, perhaps for the same reason as Vallas, he

shunmed it. Laloy also avoided the term in an article related to the controversy,56 but he maintained that Debussy is the model which other French composers ought to admire. Calvocoressi also entered the controversy and introduced a third party:

The study of the artistic origins common to Mr. Debussy and to his contemporaries proves therefore irrefutably, I believe, the independence of the inspirations of certain young musicians that they try to present to us as pure plagiarists. . . . A French composer, very little known to the public, Mr. Erik Satil [sic], who is about the same age as Debussy, produced fifteen, or perhaps twenty years ago, some strange, incomplete works but whose entirely new language, in spite of the manifest influence of Chabrier, offers striking examples of pre-Debussyism which, coming today, would seem correctly to be very clumsy copies of the music of Debussy.57

In 1908, Laloy finally employed the term Impressionism in connection with Debussy's music. Like Vallas, he found an "impressionnisme dbliceux" in Estampes and in Nocturnes, though in an earlier discussion of the latter work he had not used the term. With La Mer he saw a new phase emerging in Debussy's music:

54 (Paris, 1910). 55 "L'Affaire Ravel," La Revue musicale de Lyon, May 1, 1907, p. 793. 56 "Le partis musicaux en France," La Grande Revue, December 25, 1907, p. 608. 57 "Les Histoires naturelles de M. Ravel et L'imitation Debussyste," La Grande

Revue, May 10, 1907, p. 394.




The happy change has come about in the art of Claude Debussy, which completely Impressionistic at first, adopts more ample forms today, more precise ideas, more solid constructions, more vigorous rhythms, and that without losing anything of its finesse or its freshness. It is a concise style, determined, affirmative, full; in a word classic.58

Laloy did not use the term in his brief review of Trois Chansons de Charles d'Orlians,59 but the brevity of the article and perhaps the quality of this particular work did not suggest its usage to him. In any case, Laloy's biography of Debussy, mentioned earlier, appeared in 1909; it made liberal use of the term and left no doubt regarding Laloy's enthusiasm for it.

G. Allix, in contrast to Laloy, found in La Mer a "very studied kind of Impressionism."'6 He further stated that "certain seascapes of that other Claude who is Monet caress the eyes a little bit as the ears are delighted here."

Marnold discussed Images, Series II, and other works in a two- part article in 1908, but none of the works discussed was labeled Impressionist,61 and Calvocoressi also failed to use the term in his article in 1908, an article that was a kind of general report on Debussy's work up to that time.62

In an article in 1909, Georges Jean-Aubry made the following observation:

However Impressionistic the music of Debussy may be, it concerns itself suffi- ciently with literature, is it not true, so that the knowledge and the love of the themes on which it floats lead to knowing it and loving it; and if one has already compared the music of La Mer so many times to the pictorial Impressionism of Monet, one will remember that this Impressionism owes a great deal to one of the English glories, T. M. W. Turner.3

Raymond Bouyer, who had been using the term Impressionism in discussions of Debussy's music for at least five years, continued

58"La nouvelle manibre de Claude Debussy," La Grande Revue, February 10, 1908, p. 206.

59 "Trois Chansons de Charles d'Orlians," La Grande Revue, April 15, 1909, p. 203.

so0"Le Mois-Concerts et ThCAtres," La Revue musicale S.I.M., February 15, 1908, p. 166.

61 "M. Debussy," Mercure de France, April 1, 1908, p. 184. 62 "Claude Debussy," Musical Times, February 1, 1908, p. 179. 63 "Claude Debussy et la musique frangaise moderne en Angleterre," Bulletin

frangais de la S.I.M., March 15, 1909, p. 109.




to do so in an article in 1909,04 in which he not only referred to Debussy as an Impressionist, but related several of his works to paintings by Monet.

Laloy continued to use the term in 1910. In an article in that year, he stated that "Debussyism corresponds to symbolism in poetry, and Impressionism in painting. The analogy is not fortuitous."6'5

Edwin Evans wrote (in "Une opinion anglaise sur Pellias et Mdelisande"):

Debussy is often considered an Impressionist. Whether he be considered an Impressionist or not depends on the definition of the word Impressionism which is so often abused. Realism in music is the real imitation of nonmusical sounds; it is in its true nature restricted to auditive phenomena. Impressionism, on the other hand, tries to create an impression analogous to the one produced by a nonmusical phenomenon or by any phenomenon of the senses; it is not restricted to auditive phenomena. It is in this sense that Debussy is an Impressionist and not a realist. As an example of Impressionism one is able to cite the music ac- companying the words "there are innumerable stars" [page 106 of the piano-vocal score of Pellias]. Since one cannot hear the sparkling of the stars, one would not be able to reproduce this nonexistent sound, but one can try to create an impression analogous to the one that vision experiences on a starry night.66

Later, Evans pointed to some influences on Debussy's Impression- ism:

First, the evident influence of Mussorgsky, prototype of the musical Impressionists. Vocal Impressionism is considered a new thing, but the volume of the melodies of Mussorgsky in The Nursery was published forty years ago, and it is as Im- pressionistic as any melody of Debussy.67

Within the span of scarcely two decades Impressionism became a generally accepted term in the field of musicology. The evidence suggests that it was hastily and carelessly brought forward in an attempt to account for the newness and strangeness of Debussy's music.

The resistance with which the term met in its early history, the looseness with which it was so often applied to Debussy's music, and the failure of most of those who used it to define precisely its

64 "La Musique," La Revue bleue, July 10, 1909, p. 59. 65 "Claude Debussy et le Debussysme," S.IM. Revue musicale mensuelle (August-

September, 1910), p. 200. 66 "Une opinion anglaise sur Pellias et Mdlisande," Revue musicale de Lyon,

January 1, 1910, p. 345. 67 Ibid.




meaning or its attributes should greatly concern us today, for much is at stake.

The point that should be emphasized is this: that even three-quar- ters of a century after its introduction to the field of music, Impres- sionism seems inevitably to create a frame of reference at whose center is painting, not music, and just as inevitably we may be coaxed into dealing with Debussy's music first in terms of visual images and visually evocative titles. It is rare in the history of music for a composer of Debussy's stature to be subjected to such a peculiar kind of prejudice. It is not too much to suggest that this prejudice, which fil- ters his music through painting, gives rise to the practice of reading things into Debussy's music which may not be there at all and of obscuring other things which are there and which are crucial to a true understanding of his uniqueness and individuality as a composer. Operating under such a cloud of prejudice, the significance of Debussy's works and his contribution to the course of twentieth- century music have frequently been, and will likely continue to be, underestimated or misunderstood.



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