Yet it is not in technical treatment of the piano that Ravel is most clearly to be differentiated from Debussy, but rather in the matter of structure. Most of his pieces are relatively long, and few of them are written in the fragmentary, suggestive way characteristic of Debussy, but are consistently sustained and developed. This in general. In particular one will notice not only a regularity in the structure of phrases but a frequent repetition of phrases in the well-balanced manner we associate with his predecessors, sequences that except in harmony are quite classical. TheJeux d’eauwill offer numerous examples; and the same regularity is noticeable in theOndineandLe Gibet. The phrases are long and smooth. They have not the epigrammatic terseness of Debussy, who, even in passages of melodious character, always avoids an obvious symmetry. Nor is Ravel’s music so parti-colored as Debussy’s. It does not touch upon such exotic or such foreign scales and harmonies. Ravel shows himself a lover of the Oriental in his string quartet, especially of the Oriental mannerism of repetition; but one does not find in his pianoforte music, as in Debussy’s, hints of ancient Greece, of Italy, of North America, of England. Even theAlborada del gracioso, for all its length and brilliance, is not Spanish as Debussy’sSoirée dans GrenadeorPuerta del Vino. The impressions one receives from hearing works of the two men performed one after the other are really not similar. Debussy’s music is subtle and instantaneous, so to speak; Ravel’s is rather deliberate and prolonged.
Yet it is not in technical treatment of the piano that Ravel is most clearly to be differentiated from Debussy, but rather in the matter of structure. Most of his pieces are relatively long, and few of them are written in the fragmentary, suggestive way characteristic of Debussy, but are consistently sustained and developed. This in general. In particular one will notice not only a regularity in the structure of phrases but a frequent repetition of phrases in the well-balanced manner we associate with his predecessors, sequences that except in harmony are quite classical. TheJeux d’eauwill offer numerous examples; and the same regularity is noticeable in theOndineandLe Gibet. The phrases are long and smooth. They have not the epigrammatic terseness of Debussy, who, even in passages of melodious character, always avoids an obvious symmetry. Nor is Ravel’s music so parti-colored as Debussy’s. It does not touch upon such exotic or such foreign scales and harmonies. Ravel shows himself a lover of the Oriental in his string quartet, especially of the Oriental mannerism of repetition; but one does not find in his pianoforte music, as in Debussy’s, hints of ancient Greece, of Italy, of North America, of England. Even theAlborada del gracioso, for all its length and brilliance, is not Spanish as Debussy’sSoirée dans GrenadeorPuerta del Vino. The impressions one receives from hearing works of the two men performed one after the other are really not similar. Debussy’s music is subtle and instantaneous, so to speak; Ravel’s is rather deliberate and prolonged.
Other French composers have hardly made themselves felt with such distinctness as these two men. The most prominent of them is Florent Schmitt whosePièces romantiques,Humoresques, andNuits romainesare worthy of study. Within the last year or two severalsets of pieces by Eric Satie have appeared which must give one pause. These are almost as simple as Mozart; indeed many of them are written in but two parts. They are not lacking in charm, whether or not one may take them seriously. Satie shows himself in many of them a parodist. He plays strains from the Funeral March in Chopin’s sonata, twisting them out of shape, and writes slyly over the music that they are from a well-known mazurka of Schubert’s. He parodies Chabrier’sEspañaand Puccini’s operas.
Finally he writes directions and indications over measures in the score which cannot but be a malicious though delightful mockery of modern music in general. Remembering Scriabin’sAvec une céleste volupté, orune volupté radieuse,extatiqueordouloureuse, one is not surprised to find Satie telling one to playsur du velours jaunie, sec comme un coucou, léger comme un œuf, though at this last one may well suspect a tongue in the cheek. But Satie goes much further than this. There is among theDescriptions automatiquesone on a lantern, in which we are here told to withhold from lighting it, there to light, there to blow it out, next to put our hands in our pockets. And throughout the absurd, unless they be wholly ironical, pieces inspired byEmbryons désechés, there is almost a running text which cannot but stir to hearty laughter. Think of being directed to play a certain passage like a nightingale with the toothache—comme un rossignol qui aurait mal aux dents; or of being reminded as you play that the sun has gone out in the rain and may not come back again, or that you have no tobacco but happily you do not smoke. Such are the remarks which Satie intends shall illumine your comprehension of his music; and his humor is the more delightful because as a matter of fact Mozart’s first minuet is hardly more simple than this music to dried-up sea-urchins. Such naughty playfulness may well offend the conservatories;but even if it is only nonsense, surely it is a felicitous sign in these days, when high foreheads and bald pates ponderously try to further the gestation of a new art of music.
If we leave our study of pianoforte music with a laugh it is only because we may be supremely happy in the possession of so much music that need not be hidden before the raillery of any wit, no matter how sacrilegious. Into the hands of Claude Debussy we give the art of writing for the pianoforte. His is the wisest and most sensitive touch to mold it since the day of Chopin. Whatever the music he writes may be, it has conferred upon the instrument once more the infinite blessing of a proper speech. He has once more saved it from a confusion of thumps and roars.
Bach, Chopin, Debussy: it is a strange trio, set apart from other composers because to them the pianoforte made audible its secret voice, a voice of fading after-sounds. Let us not take Bach from among them. It was after all the same voice that spoke to him from his clavichord, more faint perhaps yet even more sensitive. Music whispered to Mozart that she would sing sweetly for him through his light pianoforte. The powers of destiny made themselves music at the call of Beethoven, and they swept up the piano in their force. Through Schubert the hand of a spirit touched the keys. For Weber the keys danced together and made strange pantomimes of sound. Schumann, as it were, spoke to his pianoforte apart, and it opened a door for him into a fanciful world. To Brahms the keys were colleagues, not friends, and Liszt drove them in a chariot race, worthy of Rome and the emperors, or converted them like a magician into a thousand shapes with a thousand spells. But to Bach, Chopin and Debussy this instrument revealed itself and showed a secret beauty that is all its own.