Portrait of Debussy.

8: Debussy and Messiaen

Roger Smalley
The Musical Times, Vol. 109, No. 1500. (Feb., 1968), pp. 128-131.
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Portrait of Debussy-8

Roger Smalley

DEBUSSY AND MESSIAEN

In this series of articles we attempt to build a composite portrait of Debussy the musician through
examination of the various 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.
After the war we moved to Nantes and it was
there that I met my first teacher, k h a n de Gibon,
who gave me as a present Debussy's PeNPas et
MPIisande (an inconceivable thing in 1918 for a
provincial teacher to give Pellias et MPlisande
to a 10-year-old boy!). It was this score that
decided my vocation.'
What, one wonders, were the qualities of this
score, and of Debussy's music in general, which
must have made such a profound impression on the
young Messiaen? Superficially they seem to have
littleincommon. The shimmering, intangible orchestral writingof Debussy, which is based on the mixing
and blending of timbres and the presentation of a
single idea in simultaneous multiple scorings (eg
Jeux, fig lo), finds little correlation with Messiaen's
orchestral technique, which is based on the powerful
opposition of orchestral groups-a
conception
which is Brucknerian in more senses than this one
only. The Debussyan orchestral ideal was developed
much more obviously by Schoenberg (Five Orchestral Pieces op 15, especially the third and fifth) and
by Berg (Altenberg Lieder op 4), both of whom
admired Debussy intensely.
The restraint of much of Debussy's musicperhaps most noticeable of all in PellPas et Milisande--can hardly be said to be a characteristic of
Messiaen either. His music possesses an uninhibited appetite for gargantuan emotional excess on
a Wagnerian scale. and it would seem that the inspiration of Messiaen's interpretation of the Tristan
legend (in three works-Hurawi, Cinq Rtchants, and
the Turangalila-Symphonic) owes as much to Wagner's (Tristan und Isolde) as to Debussy's (Pelleas et
Milisande). The emotional scope of Wagner is
wedded to a musical language derived from Debussy.
But the differences we have noted lie on the surface;
and music is neither made, nor should it be listened
to, for its surface alone. There must be a close link
between Debussy and Messiaen because we instinctively recognize them both (and Boulez too) as
belonging to the same, unmistakably French,
culture. Indeed Messiaen seems to indicate that his
links with Debussy are extraordinarily close. In his
book, The technique of my musical 1anguage"e
gives examples of how he has derived some of his
own musical ideas from Debussy, in both the realms
of melody and of harmony.
On p.31 he discusses which intervals to use in the
Ifrom 'Who are you, Olivier Messiaen?', an intsrliew between
Messiaen an3 Bernard Gavoty; see Tempo, summer 1961
lLeduc (Paris 1944)

construction of melodies, and decides to choose

(among others) the descending major sixth 'because
of the importance of the added sixth in the perfect
chord (ie triad), foreseen by Rameau and established
by Debussy, and because Mozart, that great melodist, often used the descending major sixth'. On p.32
we find this: 'The three notes written by Debussy at
the beginning of his Refiets duns I'eau (ex 1 ) will

serve to engender a great number of melodic contours' (eg exx 2 and 3). On p. 47 he writes about
added-note chords :
With the advent of Claude Debussy, one spoke
of appoggiaturas without resolution, of passing
notes with no issue, etc. In fact one found them
in his first works. In PeNPas et MPlisande,
Estampes, the Prdludes, the Images for piano, it
is a question of foreign notes, with neither preparation nor resolution, without particular
expressive accent, which tranquillity makes a
part of the chord, changing its colour, giving it a
spice, a new perfume.
He then quotes two chords from PellPas (ex 4).
'They will be the genesis of the following example'
(ex 5). He elaborates the same type of chord progression (the added notes are ringed), and then adds
different notes to each of the two chords (ex 6 ) ;

these four chords occur at the beginning of 'La

maison' from the Poemes pour Mi for soprano and
piano.
What an extraordinary way to compose! In The
technique of my musical language he also quotes
other examples of Debussy, of Mussorgsky, and of
Ravel, which he has used in this same way. The
extent to which he does it must, of course, remain
unknown, for reasons which will soon become
obvious. It would seem to be unique in the recent

history of music for a composer to base his music

so closely on that of another composer-indeed it
might almost seem to amount to plagiarism, were it
not for one important thing: Messiaen's results are
very different from the models, and bear the unmistakable stamp of his own musical personality. This
is because the fragments of Debussy have been, as he
puts it, 'filtered' through his own technical processes.
The most important of these transforming devices
is his series of seven 'modes of limited transposition'.
These are scalic arrangements of a selection of
all of the twelve notes in a number of cells having the
same intervallic content. Because of their symmetrical nature they have a limited number of
possible transpositions. Messiaen's 'first mode' is,
in fact, the whole-tone scale of Debussy, but he does
not use it often-because, as he says, 'Debussy in
PellPas et Milisande, and after him Paul Dukas,
have made such remarkable use of it that there is
nothing more to add'. The most pervasive of Messiaen's modes is the second (ex 7). Ex 2 belongs to
En

(qe x

2'

this mode. It will be seen that, starting on F, the

two intervals of the fragment of Debussy (ex I),
ascending fifth and descending fourth, are not
available. The nearest approximations within the
mode are ascending tritone and descending major
third, which Messiaen uses. Similarly with ex 3,
which belongs to mode 3, on C (ex 8). The modes

,-

can therefore be seen to act as musical prisms,

slightly but significantly changing the contours of the
basic melodic material which is passed through
them. The modes can modulate from one transposition to another, from one mode to another, or
be related to the major scale. Compare this with
Debussy: 'Music is neither major nor minor.
Minor thirds and major thirds should be combined [cf ex 7, notes 1, 3, 4, and 5, 7, 81, modulation
thus becoming more flexible. The mode is that which
one happens to choose at the moment. It is incon~tant.'~
A mode is a form of vertical serialism. It is to be
expected that, in contrast to the horizontally conceived serialism of Schoenberg, Debussy and
Messiaen should have used modes, because French
music has always been harmonically orientated
(Rameau, Berlioz, Franck). The use of a mode of
limited transpositions-and the whole-tone scale is
the most limited of all, having only two positionsproduces a n essentially static effect which is common to much of the music of both composers. This
static quality is also reflected in the similarity of the
formal processes shared by the two composers.
Both Debussy and Messiaen at first tended to
write mainly short pieces (if some of Messiaen's
short pieces turn out to be extremely long, this is
only because of their infinite slowness). Larger
pieces, when they came, did not fall back, as in the
3from 'Conversations with Ernest Giraud', c1889/90 (Appendix
B of Lockspeiser, Drbussy: hi\ life and mind,i)

case of so many other French composers, on

Germanic forms and developmental processes.
Rather the large form is an accumulation of smaller
units-but never a merely arbitrary juxtaposition of
unrelated ideas. There is, however, an intangible
quality about the forms of works such as Jeux, the
studies in fourths and in grace-notes (Debussy),
Cant&yodjaya, 'La rousserolle effarvate' (Messiaen). They are poetic music in the strict sense of
the word in that they are the product of a continuing thought process which produces a series of
images related, not by a background of musical
logic which can be precisely demonstrated as in
Beethoven or Schoenberg, but simply by the fact
that they were generated by that same thought
process.
Debussy was a friend and admirer of impressionist and symbolist poets such as MallarmC and
Pierre Louys. Messiaen says: '1 have been a great
reader and admirer of Pierre Reverdy and Paul
eluard. I am, therefore, some sort of surrealist in
the poems for my works, if not in my music. For I
myself have written the poems for all my work^'.^
MallarmC wrote about his new poetical process:
I have found an intimate and peculiar manner of
depicting and setting down very fugitive impressions. What is frightening is that all these
impressions are required to be woven together as
in a symphony, and that I often spend whole
days wondering whether one idea can be associated with another, what therelationship between
them may be, and what effect they will create.j
'op cif (note I)

6quoted in Lockspeiser, op cit, p.152

QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL

General Manager: John Denison, C.B.E.

SUNDAY 25th FEBRUARY

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MESSIA EN

60th ANNIVERSARY

CONCERT

Visions de I'Amen
Cycle (First complete
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Couleurs de la Cite Celeste
(First London performance)

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Gilbert Amy
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for all the music of these

composers and their French
contemporaries, apply to any good
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A few copies of the
DEBUSSY catalogue and
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This statement could be applied very closely to

Debussy's music. And through and beyond Debussy
to Boulez, the 'Constellation-Miroir' of whose third
piano sonata can be seen as an attempt to multiply
the number of associations, relationships and effects
as Mallarme himself eventually did in 'Un coup de
des' and 'Le livre'.
Another quotation from Mallarme connects very
nleaningfully with Debussy. 'To name an object is
to destroy three-quarters of the enjoyment of a
poem, which is made up of the pleasure of guessing
little by little; to suggest if-that is the ideal.'6 It is
significant, for instance, that Debussy placed the
titles of his PrPludes at the ends,and not, conventionally, at the beginnings of the pieces. I t is as if he did
not want to name the object, but to let us do a little
guessing-not to pin down the object for us from
the start, but to leave it in a suggestive state. And
the best of the PrPludes are those in which the relationship of the subject to the object is at its most
evanescent-'Brouillards',
or 'Les sons et les parfums', for instance-and
the weakest are those
whose musical material seems more precisely delineated by the title, such as 'Hommage a M. S.
Pickwick Esq PPMPC', and 'Minstrels'.
Which
came first, the title or the piece?
Messiaen's music exhibits similar features-a
'programme' music which is indefinite in relation to
its programme, which 'takes off' from the basic idea
and does not follow it in any specific way but which
nevertheless illumines the whole piece. Consider,
for example, the second Piece en Trio from the
Livre d'orgue, a piece dedicated to the Trinity-'de
Lui, par Lui, pour Lui sont toutes choses'. The
relationship is one of mystical numerology, of a type
not common since medieval and renaissance
music. The idea of the Trinity is expressed through
the three contrapuntal parts, and within each part
the sequence of events is determined by rational
processes which make sure that everything comes
from its basic rhythm and note pattern. In the
Trois petites liturgies everything, the number of
movements and of divisions within movements, of
instruments and types of instruments, is determined
by the number three. The very word 'Turangalila'
has so many meanings (both 'love' and 'death', for
instance) that it is impossible to rationalize it. Its
meaning must be a subjective one, and ideally it
remains so. The weakest moments of the Turangalila-Sj~inphoi~ie
are those where the relationship of
vision to realization becomes over-obvious, the best
when it remains secret and mysterious. Needless to
say the latter are far in excess of the former.
The elegant japonaiserie of the 'Gagaku' movement of Sept Haikai'must be accounted an aesthetic
failure in these terms because the subjective intention (actually to produce an imitation of the sound
of Gagaku music) has not been sufficiently sublimated. The very fact that we can say what the
music is expressing (as opposed to what we feel it
expresses) renders it less rich than Debussy's Jeu.~,
where one cannot possibly verbalize what the
music is expressing (certainly not its own scenario!).
Perhaps this difference is bound up again with the
formal procedures of the two composers. Mes6 q ~ o t e din Geoffrey Brereton, AII Inrroduction t o the French
Poets, p.204

130

siaen's passion for categorizing is reflected in his

essentially static forms. True development comes to
him only with difficulty--the 'Developpement de
I'amour' promised in the eighth movement of the
T~rrangalila-Sj3mnphonieconsists at first only of
repetitious juxtapositions of material, and any actual
deve!opnient and combination of themes takes a
terribly long time to arrive.
On the other hand Debussy, although also contrasting and juxtaposing blocks of differing types of
musical material, is arriving at this result not from
the a priori decisions which one tends to think
Messiaen makes, but by wa) of the continuous
morphology of the musical material. Debussy was
the first composer (antedating of course the early
works of \Vebern and the atonal period of Schoenberg) to use a concept of morphological form. This
is a form based solely on the demands of its material
-a form in \4 hich nothing is fixed but which evolves
itself by the continual rnorphology of its own self,
constantly dissolving and re-creating its own being.
Messiaen's forms are unable to develop in this way.
They are essentially stat~c.the music of Gothic
cathedrals, of mountains and glaciers. The first
piece of the Livrc d'orgue. for example. consists of

three Hindu rhythms, one of which is augmented on

each appearance, one of which is diminished, and
one of which remains unchanged. Their juxtaposition is also altered on each appearance. This is
change within a circumscribed area. The musical
material does not gather itself together and the
possible relationships are not sparked off one
against the other to produce new growths. The
serial mirrors of Webern, although static in a sense,
like the non-retrogradable rhythms of Messiaen,
actually are not, because the dialectical complexities
of the serial language create an internal morphology
even when all else is still and symmetrical.
Most of this article has been concerned with harmony, form, and feeling in the music of Debussy
and Messiaen. This is because they seem to me to
represent the most significant points of contact
between the two composers.
The possibilities
inherent in these connections have not been exhausted, nor have such important elements as
melody and orchestral writing been more than
touched upon. But even within these limits, and
notwithstanding thc differences, it seems to me that
an investigation of this type can only lead to a
deeper understanding of both composers.

Stephen Llialsh

ROGER SMALLEY

Those who regularly attend concerts of avant-garde

music have for some tinie been familiar with the
performing side of Roger Smalley's activities. He is
certainly one of the two or three best pianists of
contemporarq music at present working in this
country, and far and anay the most active, with
first English performances of all the Stockhausen
piano pieces that have so far been heard in this
country, of Kontakte, of Boulez's third sonata. of
the piano part in Ives's fourth symphony, and of
countless smaller works, already to his credit. He
came fourth in the International Competition for
Interpreters of Contemporary Music held at
Utrecht in 1966, and it ~bouldprobably be true to
say that without his evangelistic energy as a performer British audiences would not yet have encountered more than a half of the important new
piano music which has come their way in the last
two years.
Nevertheless Smalley I S primarily a composer.
and his playing is therefore a subsidiary activity
which casts light upon but does not determine the
nature of his own c r e a t i ~ ework. The fact that he
plays Stockhausen or Boulez more frequently and
brilliantly than any of his compatriots is not to be
taken as evidence that hi\ own music is in thrall to
either of these composers -though it would certainly
be strange if it did not show their influence (he in
fact studied with Stockhausen in Cologne in 1965-6,
and with Boulez in Darmstadt for a fortnight in
1965). His output is so far quite small. hut his music
is remarkable for its ~ndependence of obvious

models. And in the most recent pieces there has

begun to emerge a positive individuality which may
previously have been obstructed by a lack of the
performances on which every composer depends if
he is to check his ideas against their musical effectiveness and the response they induce in an audience.
Smalley was born at Swinton, near Manchester.
in 1943, and went to Leigh Grammar School. From
1961 to 1965 he was at the RCM, and it was there
that he received his first formalized training in composition, studying initially with Racine Fricker and
then with John White. As so often happens (think
of Haydn teaching Beethoven) the more distinguished composer proved the less effective teacher
and it was only in his work with John White that
Smalley began really to develop his creative gift. He
and White shared a flat, with the result that their
tutorials were informal and free-ranging, and went
on-as
Smalley points out-more
or less continuously. Those who have heard any of White's
music will confirm that his seems a lively and sensitive artistic personality rather than a specifically
original one: but revolutionaries make poor instructors. and White's unusual breadth of taste must
have been ideally suited to draw out Smalley's
personality. He introduced his pupil to music
which we can now see as seminal: to the symphonies
of Liszt and Mahler, to Berlioz's Faust and Romeo,
to Messiaen's Turangnlila-Syrtrphonie, to early
Schoenberg, and to Busoni. The two men will have
discussed this and other music often, so that although White was not strictly teaching Smalley to