Formulaic Openings in Debussy

Abstract

By now it comes as no surprise that much of what may at first strike us as innovative in Debussy's music was in fact carried out within the framework of historical precedent and established convention. Indeed, tracing the emergence of his personal style from the early works, with their explicit reliance on existing models, to the later works, where the models or conventions are more tacit, is an issue of fundamental musicological importance. Perhaps no composer of this fin-de-sikcle era exemplifies more clearly the expressive tension that results from the forging of a creative language that simultaneously works within a received tradition and strives for radical originality. The question of the composer's development is particularly complex, because his music grows from not merely one, but several syntactical conventions. On the one hand, Debussy perceived the language of Wagner as the most progressive available style, with its motivic organization and transformation, harmonic and formal freedom, aperiodic construction, and explicit seriousness of purpose.' On the other, he inherited by culture and education the set of languages of such French contemporaries and immediate predecessors as Gounod, SaintSains, Faur6, Duparc, Chabrier, Franck, and Massenet-languages not untouched by the example of Wagner (and Liszt), but ones more conservative in their melodic emphasis and periodicity, even while they admitted considerable harmonic experimentation, particularly in the area of modality. Debussy's early works blend in differing proportions the existing German and French late-nineteenth-century conventions: appropriate responses from a student and young composer searching for a distinctive Notes for this article begin on page 57.