Anti-Debussyism and the Formation of French Neoclassicism

Abstract

Much of the literature on neoclassicism in music focuses on Stravinsky or on the Stravinsky-Schoenberg polemic that emerged in the mid-1920s. Yet both approaches to neoclassicism bypass a crucial moment in its early formation: the former neglects Stravinsky's engagement with the musical priorities of postwar Paris, while the latter ignores the fact that many of the themes that would later crystallize under the banner of neoclassicism were first developed in opposition not to Schoenberg's music but to Debussy's. As described by Jacques Rivière in a letter to Stravinsky of 1919, the postwar musical climate was “anti-impressionist, anti-symbolist, and anti-Debussyist.” This article revisits the debates that appeared in the Parisian musical press between 1919 and 1923, a period in which the term “neoclassicism” had not yet been coined but in which a new, anti-Debussyist aesthetic was nevertheless emerging. Recognizing the role of anti-Debussyism in the formation of neoclassicism is necessary if we are to understand the motivation behind the movement, a motivation that was responsible for establishing its compositional priorities, instrumentation, and aesthetic. Regardless of what neoclassicism later came to represent—be it a return to counterpoint, to Bach, or to the eighteenth century—its initial impetus was much more straightforward. Rather than looking to pre-Romantic traditions, its beginnings were to be found closer to home, going no further back than the reaction against Debussy, Debussyism, and the prewar generation.