Portrait of Debussy.

I: Debussy and Stravinsky

Jeremy Noble
The Musical Times, Vol. 108, No. 1487. (Jan., 1967), pp. 22-25.
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Portrait of Debussy-I

Jeremy Noble

DEBUSSY A N D STRAVINSKY

'Today Debussy is n o longer considered a revolutionary o r a n iconoclast . . . t h e present generation

revere h i m as Mozart revered Philipp Emanuel Bach: "He is the father of us all" ' (Edward Lockspeiser in Debussy, 1951). I n this series of articles we attempt t o build a composite portrait of
Debussy the musician through examination of the very different impressions h e left o n the music of
other composers: in general, a n d also in particular by documentation of what works they heard,
a n d when, their statements, a n d the reflections f o u n d in their o w n compositions.
The inusicians of my generation and I inys e r owe the most to Debussy.-Stravinsky

Debussy's acquaintance with Stravinsky was not of

long duration, but its course is unusually fully documented by references in the former's correspondence
(such of it as has yet been published) and in the
latter's several memoirs.' The information derived
from these and other sources has been ably presented by Edward Lockspeiser in the second volume
of his Debussy: his life and mind (London and New
York, 1965), p.176-88, but since Lockspeiser's
interpretation of this evidence tends to favour the
subject of his book, and since he concentrates on the
personal aspects of the relationship between the two
composers rather than on their mutual musical
influence, it will perhaps be worthwhile to recapitulate what we know as well as to speculate on what
we d o not.
Debussy first met Stravinsky after the first performance of The Firebird (25 June 1910), when
Diaghilev took him backstage to offer his congratulations to the young composer.' He was nearly 48,
Stravinsky just 28, and it seems fairly certain that
this was the first music by the young Russian that he
had yet heard. Nor had Stravinsky heard a great
deal more of his. On his own testimony3 there were
few opportunities of hearing the modern French
composers in St Petersburg in the first decade of this
century. The quartets and songs of Debussy and
Ravel were included in the programmes of the
Evenings of Contemporary Music founded by
Stravinsky's friends Ivan Pokrorsky and Walter
Nouvel, but for orchestral concerts he could rely
only on the concerts organized by Liszt's pupil
Alexander Siloti, who was conducting in St Petersburg from 1903 onwards. 'Siloti's performances of
the Debussy Nocturnes and of L'aprds-midi d'un
faune were among the major events of my early
years'. says Stravinsky, but adds that he did not
hear La nzer (first performed in 1905) until Debussy
took him to a performance in 1911 or 1912.
'Clironicle of my lifir (London, 1936)-the English translation of
the original French edition1 n two volumes
Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft: Com'rrsations with Igor
S l r a v i n ~ k(London
j
and New York. 1959)
Stravinsky and Craft: .%fenrorir.s and Commentaries (London
and New York, 1960)
Stravinsky and Craft: Erpositions and Developments (London
and Nem York, 1962)
Page references are t o the London, not New York, editions.
T h r o n i c l e p.55; E&D p.130-31
3Chronicle p.36; M & C p.28-9; E & D p.59-60

In view of this, it is not surprising to find that in

the St Petersburg works, written before their first
meeting, the 'Debussyisms' amount to little more
than an awareness of current Paris fashions, above
all for melodic and harmonic formations derived
from the whole-tone scale such as those which
worried Rimsky-Korsakov in Faun and Shepherdess
when it was first given a t a Belayev concert in 1907.4
Stravinsky's handling of the orchestra in the Scherzo
fantastique and in the orchestral fantasy Fireworks
(1907-8) may owe something to the French school
(though still more to Rimsky-Korsakov), but the
most obvious borrowing in the latter piece is not
from Debussy but from Dukas: the phrase at
figure 9 is inescapably reminiscent of L'apprenti
sorcier, composed ten years before.
The only comparably strong reminiscence of
Debussy occurs a t the very beginning of The
Nightingale (1909). whose alternating fifths and
thirds are very similar to those which open Debussy's
Nuages. But it was pointed out long ago that both
passages might have a common origin in the third
song of Mussorgsky's cycle Smlless. At any rate it is
quite certain that both composers shared a high
regard for Mussorgsky. Stravinsky recalls that on
his very first visit to Debussy, after the Firebird
premiere, 'we talked about Mussorgsky's songs and
agreed that they contained the best music of the
whole Russian school'. What both of them recognized in Mussorgsky was the genuineness, the truth
of his imagination; and this was the quality in the
French composer's own music that enabled Stravinsky to write, years later, the words5 at the head of
this article.
So although Stravinsky's acquaintance with
Debussy's music may have been slight at the time of
their first meeting, he can have been in little doubt as
to the French composer's artistic stature. In
Russia as elsewhere, Debussy's deliberate jettisoning
of academic formalism had made a n immediate
appeal to the young and provoked a n equally intense
reaction among their elders. Even so comparatively
broadminded a man as Rimsky-Korsakov mistrusted Debussy's influence profoundly. Stravinsky
twice tells us how, when he asked his teacher
whether he were going to attend some performance
of a piece by Debussy, the great man replied: 'I had

Pbussy and Stravinsky, photographed by Satie (see

Expositions and Developments' p.138)

better not go: I shall start to get accustomed to it,

and end by liking it.'6
But if the musical establishment was alarmed by
Debussy's music, Stravinsky and his friends were
excited by its freedom and freshness. So when
Debussy not only congratulated the young composer of The Firebird, but followed this up with a
cordial invitation to dinner and the presentation of
an inscribed photograph ('A Igor Strawinsky en
toute sympathie artistique'), it must have set the
seal on his triumph. Nor is the sincerity of Debussy's
admiration impugned by the faint reservation
implicit in a letter written to his publisher Jacques
Durand a fortnight later, in which he says of
Stravinsky's score: 'It is not perfect, but in many
ways it is nevertheless very fine because the music is
not subservient to the dancing.. .'. It is hard to
believe that the offhand witticism quoted by
Stravinsky in his later account of these events7
('Que voulez-vous, il fallait bien commencer par
quelque chose') represents Debussy's considered
judgment, although it does give Stravinsky the
opportunity of a retaliatory dig at Pellias. Whatever
faint criticisms are implicit in the letter to Durand,
there is every reason to believe that Debussy recognized Stravinsky's genius and admired it from the
first.
This admiration was only increased by Petrushka,
first performed on 13 June 1911. In the following
December Debussy wrote to his old friend Robert
Godet, who was staying in Savoy, warmly recommending h i to meet Stravinsky, then in his winter
retreat at Clarens. He praises Stravinsky's 'instinctive genius for colour and rhythm', his ability to
create directly in terms of the orchestra. 'I1 n'y a ni
prhutions, ni prktentions. C'est enfantin et
sauvage. Pourtant la mise en place en est extrgmement dkli~ate.'~
In a rather later letters to Stravinsky
in which he appears to be acknowledging an inscribed copy of the full score of Petrushka, Debussy
singles out the 'tour de passepasse' section, and goes
on to say that 'there is an orchestral infallibility that
I have found only in Parsifal'. High praise, if a
rather unexpected comparison. Much of Debussy's
own musical imagination seems to have been bound
up with his phenomenal powers as a pianist, and it
was no doubt his heartfelt admiration (even envy)
of Stravinsky's ability to think orchestrally which led
him to consult the younger man over certain problems of orchestration in Jeux, on which he was
working during the summer of 1912. All the same,
it would be a rash critic who could claim to detect
how much of the 'mise en place dklicate' of that
score was due to Stravinsky's advice.
The Russian Ballet's Paris season of 1913, during
'Chronicle 1.35; Conversations p.39
' E m p.131
BDebussy:Lettres d deux amis (Paris, 1942) p.129-30
sConversations p.49

which both Jeux and The Rite of Spring received

their first performances, marks the climax and the
watershed-of the Debussy-Stravinsky relationship.
Debussy. as we have seen. consulted Stravinskv over
the sco;&g of his ballet. I n the same way, ~travinsky tried out his four-hand piano arrangement of
The Rite with Debussy some time before the orchestral rehearsals began. (Just when is uncertain.
Louis Laloy, in whose house the play-through took
place, gave spring 1913 as the date, and this seems
plausible. Stravinsky, on the other hand, assigns a
letter from Debussy, which refers to this playthrough as having already happened, to 8 November
1912.)1 Stravinsky's contemporary reaction to Jeux
does not seem to be preserved, but more recently he
has gone on record as still regarding it 'as an
orchestral masterpiece, though I think some of the
music is "trop Lalique" '?I Debussy's reaction to
The Rite was from the first marked by a certain
ambivalence. In the above-mentioned letter to
Stravinsky he writes: 'It haunts me like a beautiful
nightmare and I try, in vain, to reinvoke the terrific
imuression.' The first stage ~erformance(28 Mav
19i3) hardened Debussy's resistance to the music-or was it perhaps the contrast between the succ2s de
scandale provoked by Stravinsky's score and the
rather tepid reception of his own ballet a fortnight
earlier? At any rate, when writing to Caplet on the
date of the first performance (he had attended
rehearsals) he describes The Rite in a characteristically barbed mot as being 'primitive with every
l0Conversations p.50. The letter is here dated 8 November 1913,
but this is corrected in E&D p.162 (New York edition only).
The 'correction' does not solve the problem, however, slnce the
same passage states that the play-through with Debussy took
place after 17 November.
12Conversations,p.50

Stravinsky
The composer and his works
I

ERIC WALTER WHITE

A major study of Stravinsky, opening with a sketch
of his life and career as composer, executant
and conductor. It includes a register of his
compositions and arrangements, together with reprints
of his less accessible occasional writings,
and the text of the Catalogue of Manuscripts compiled
by Robert Craft, now printed for the first time.
This thoroughly documented work is illustrated with
16 photographs and 200 music examples. 6 gns.

Faber & Faber 24 Russell Square London WCI

modern convenience', while according to Stravinsky
he referred to it disparagingly as 'une musique
negre'.I2 T o the composer himself he was more
tactful. The letter with which he acknowledges
Stravinsky's gift of the score is almost embarrassing
in its mixture of veiled self-pity and grudging
recognition :
For me, who descend the other slope of the hill
but keep, however, a n intense passion for music,
for me it is a special satisfaction to tell you how
much you have enlarged the boundaries of the
permissible in the empire of sound.13
Already palpably puzzled by the music of the brief
cantata Zvezdoliki (The King of the Stars), which
Stravinsky had dedicated to him shortly before,"
Debussy must have been quite aware that he was in
the presence of an imagination more vigorous than
his own, capable of carrying his methods and discoveries to far greater lengths than he himself any
longer had the strength to do. And this consciousness of his relative impotence can only have been
exacerbated by the painful and humiliating progress
of the cancer which was eventually to kill him.
After the implicit trial of strength of 1913 a veil
descends over the relations between the two composers during the following year, but it says a great
deal for the genuineness of Debussy's continuing
admiration for his young rival that he should dedi'=M&C, p.81
"Conversations, p.52
''Conversations, p.51

cate to him the last movement of his two-piano suite

En blanc et noir, completed in the summer of 1915.
Was this a deliberate reciprocation for Zvezdoliki?
The rather Debussyan closing bars of that work
seem to refer back to the Nocturnes, rather than to
anything more recent, while the nearest Debussy
comes to quoting Stravinsky in the En blanc et noir
piece is the phrase first heard at figure 1, which
closely resembles the horn melody that opens the
final section of The Firebird. In these two mutually
dedicated works it is as though Debussy and
Stravinsky were concerned, consciously or unconsciously, to recapture one another's images a t the
time of their first meeting rather than those they had
since come to know.
A brief exchange of letters from October 1915
provides a clear example of how Debussy, ill in
Paris, had lost touch with the way in which Stravinsky had been developing since he had taken up
residence in Switzerland. In a letter to Godet he
writes, with reference to the alleged un-Russianness
of the young Russian composers, 'Stravinsky himself is leaning dangerously in the direction of
Schoenberg'.15 And a few days later he is urging
Stravinsky to be true to his national heritage:
Dear Stravinsky, you are a great artist. Be with
all your strength a great Russian artist. It is so
wonderful to be of one's country, to be attached
to one's soil like the humblest of peasants!16
'jLettres B deux amis, p.145; E & D p.68
"Conversations, p.54

It is ironical to think of the hyperaesthetic Debussy

lecturing Stravinsky, at the very moment when he
was working at Les noces, on the need for roots in
the soil. His opinion must have been based on such
pre-war compositions as the Japarzese Lyrics and the
completion of The Nightingale, of which the former,
at any rate, could be said to lean (though not far) in
the direction of Pierrot lunaire. Debussy could
hardly know that Stravinsky had already sensed any
dangers there might be in that path, and had taken a
different turning.
About the end of the year Stravinsky came to
Paris to conduct The Firebird at a gala for the
Diaghilev company before it left for America. On
this occasion he seems to have succeeded in irritating
Debussy beyond measure. In a letter to Godet dated
4 January 1916 the ailing composer gives vent with
all the considerable malice at his command to his
mistrust and annoyance.
I1 dit : Mon Oiseau de Feu, mon Sacre, comme un
enfant dit: ma toupie, mon cerceau. Et, c'est
exactement: un enfant g i t e qui, parfois, met les
doigts dans le nez de la musique. C'est aussi un
jeune sauvage qui porte des cravates tumultueuses, baise la main des femmes en leur marchant sur les pieds. Vieux, il sera insupportable,
c'est a dire qu'il ne supportera aucune musique;
mais, pour le moment, il est inouI! I1 fait profession d'amitie pour moi, parceque je l'ai aide a
gravir un echelon de cette echelle du haut de
laquelle il lance des grenades qui n'explosent pas
toutes. Mais encore une fois, il est inoui.li
There can be little doubt that in these words we hear
the voice of Debussy's illness: within a few days of

writing them he was to undergo a painful, and useless, operation. All the same, before dismissing
them as merely spiteful it is worth noting that the
two key words-enfant and sauvage-are echoes of
that first laudatory impression sent to Godet more
than four years before. It is not so much that
Debussy is describing a different object as that he is
now describing the same object from a different
viewpoint-the viewpoint of one who has, through
n o fault of his own, fallen behind in the race for selfrenewal and feels himself outstripped in vitality and
imaginative power.
Stravinsky and Debussy did meet again before the
latter's death on 25 March 1918, but we know little
of what passed, beyond the fact that Debussy
looked ghastly and had, understandably, lost touch
with recent musical events.ls If he still felt any of
the rancour expressed in the letter to Godet, he gave
no sign of it, though according to Stravinsky he
made n o mention of the En blanc et noir piece, so
that its dedication came as a pleasant surprise to
him after the composer's death. When Stravinsky
was approached by the Revue tnusicale for a contribution to the collective Tombeau de Debussj, to be
published as a supplement, he responded with the
chorale that we now know as the closing section of
the great Sj,tnphotzies of Wind Instruments. It is
significant that this work, dedicated to Debussy's
memory, should be at once so profoundly inspired
and so completely independent of Debussy's style.
It is the homage of one great composer to another,
not that of a pupil to a master.

l7Lettres a d e u x amis, p.148

THE DISPLACED PRIMA DONNA

Mrs Oldmixon in America

by Donald W. Krummel
Correspondence in this journal (Nov 1965, p.864)
growing out of Frank Dawes's article, 'William, or
The Adventures of a Sonata' (Oct 1965) prompts
this brief report on the career of Miss George, later
known in the United States as Mrs Oldmixon.
Among several dozen English and continental
musicians in early America, she stands out as the
most celebrated and the most colourful. Hopefully
her account u~illencourage a greater study of the
transatlantic musical ties during the years between
1793 and 1825, when these ties were especially
strong.
Miss George, who began her career at the Haymarket on 2 June 1783, was in fact named Georgina
Sidus, the daughter of an Oxford clergyman. 'Previous to her debut,' one writer tells us, this 15-yearold girl 'had never seen a play and had received no
theatrical education'. She very soon became a
r e g ~ ~ l performer,
ar
also in time appearing at Drury
Lane: one night there, according to a contemporary

report, an unidentified man in clerical garb, suspected to be her father, stood up and hissed at her.
Undismayed, and probably even encouraged, by
such criticism, she soon continued her career, singing at such concerts as those at the Freen~asons'Hall
in November 1786. Thomas Billington, it will be
remembered, was the conductor at these events, and
Mrs Elizabeth Billington, his sister-in-law, was at
this time the most celebrated singer in London. No
doubt she strongly influenced Miss George, her
exact contemporary. These two ladies appeared together in 1788 in Dublin, precipitating events which
were recalled some 48 years later by Parke:
A curious musical contest took place. . . between Mrs. Billington and Miss George, who had
a voice of such extent, that she sang up to B in
alto perfectly clear, and in tune . . . Mrs. Rillington, who was engaged on very high terms for a
limited number of nights, made her first appearance on the Dublin stage in !he character of
Polly, in the 'Beggar's Opera, surrounded by