Zach Watkins
Music 201 – Introduction to Graduate Studies
Dr. Chantal Frankenbach
“Debussy and Wagner In Color: Beyond Black and White Views”
In the chronicle of western music history, Achille-Claude Debussy comes immediately
after Richard Wagner. If we choose to examine music history in the traditional manner of slicing
up historical styles into eras, then we can look at the turn from late 19th-century to early 20thcentury, and to these two composers, as pivot points. The German composer’s success and
popularity had a profound effect on music and music composition (to say nothing of the arts as a
whole), and Debussy was not immune to this influence. A more nuanced examination of how the
latter was affected by the former is useful in understanding the French composer who helped
move western music from romanticism into modernism.
There is ongoing discussion among Debussy scholars as to the composer’s feelings
towards Wagner, as well as to what extent he was influenced by him. Debussy is known to have
had strong negative emotions for the German composer who precedes him in history, but filing
away Wagner’s influence on Debussy under a convenient label of the latter hating the former is
insufficient. Certainly Debussy possessed a healthy distaste for Wagnerism and the grip it held
on the Parisian public. But it is also true that Debussy himself spent his early years under the
spell of this fever-like fascination.
Wagner’s weighty impact can be seen in many of Debussy’s compositions. Even Prélude
à l'après-midi d'un faune, one of Debussy’s most important works, shows the German
composer’s influence. Debussy was not unashamed to use Wagnerian ideas where he felt it was
ZACH WATKINS / DEBUSSY AND WAGNER IN COLOR 2
appropriate. Wagner’s operas Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal are known to have been personal
favorites, and Debussy’s love of them influenced his own writing, as we will see later. Like most
composers, Debussy did not write free of outside influence, but neither are his works derivative.
By the same token, he did not simply hate the German composer’s music or his ideas about how
music should be written.
Seeing Debussy’s views toward Wagner as mere hatred or any other one-dimensional
negative emotion is simplistic at best. At worst, it reduces Debussy’s day-to-day struggles to a
black and white framing. To do so is a disservice to both Debussy and Wagner—two of music’s
more colorful composers—and is an unfortunate oversimplification. Many examples exist of
Wagner’s influence, both positive and negative, in not just Debussy’s compositions, but personal
correspondence and professional writings on music. The abundance of these examples
demonstrate the need for a more refined view regarding how he felt towards the German
composer whose shadow he spent his early life trying to escape.1
II.
The most direct route to Debussy’s opinion of Wagner is through his own words and,
more specifically, the music criticism he wrote. These criticisms often took on quite a biting
tone. The harshest criticism was voiced by a character Debussy created specifically for the task,
an alter-ego named Monsieur Croche. For a French public who knew Debussy through their
familiarity with works like the pastoral Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, the stinging words of
M. Croche stood in sharp contrast.
Debussy was not shy about his critical opinion of Richard Wagner, Wagner’s music, and
1
Mark Devoto, “Review of Rodrigue et Chimène by Claude Debussy,” Notes 61, no. 2 (2004): 539.
ZACH WATKINS / DEBUSSY AND WAGNER IN COLOR 3
Wagnerism. In 1901, his very first year as a critic, 2 he penned derogatory comments not once
but three times. In a May 1st article, he disparaged the whistling of Wagner’s themes by passersby.3 On May 15th he discussed the various techniques pioneered by Wagner in writing music for
theater and sardonically commented how useless they will all become in the future.4 And on June
1st, he referred to concertgoers celebrating Wagner’s birthday as “not such a good audience”—
clearly understating his condescending opinion. It’s a comment made all the more acrid due to
Debussy’s describing them only a few words earlier as “delirious” in their enjoyment.5
We need not confine ourselves to Debussy’s official criticism to find anti-Wagnerian
examples in his writing. One particularly cutting remark comes from a letter he wrote in 1910, in
which he describes the ideas of Richard Wagner as “bad for much music and many countries.”6
Most of the time, hatred and vitriol do not emerge without cause. There are several possibilities
to explore in considering the question from what could all this negativity originate.
The seeds of Debussy’s anti-Wagner attitude may have been planted during his time at
the Paris Conservatory, the Académie des Beaux-Arts where he attended after winning the Prix
De Rome competition in 1884. The announcement of the candidates for that prize had challenged
them with the unenviable task of becoming “the new musical genius” that would “rid our ears
forever of Richard Wagner, that German nightmare.”7 However, the music of Richard Wagner
did not come to France’s population at large until 1891. And when it did, it captured the public’s
2
The first appearances of both Debussy and M. Croche in print are in 1901, in the art and literary
magazine La Revue Blanche. This is a full eight years after an article, “On the Uselessness of Wagner,”
failed to appear in L’Idée libre, despite it’s having been advertised multiple times in 1893 and 1894.
3
Claude Debussy, Debussy on Music: The Critical Writings of the Great French Composer, ed. and trans.
by Lesure and Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 27.
4
Ibid., 35.
5
Ibid., 42.
6
Claude Debussy, Claude Debussy: Through His Letters, ed. and trans. by Jacqueline M. Charette (New
York: Vantage Press, 1990), 205.
7
Marcel Dietschy, A Portrait of Claude Debussy, ed. and trans. by Ashbrook and Cobb (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990), 27.
ZACH WATKINS / DEBUSSY AND WAGNER IN COLOR 4
imagination.
Wagner was a phenomenon in Paris. The 29-year-old pianist Claude Debussy, who had
yet to write Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune—the composition which ultimately awakened the
world to his more enduring talents—played piano reductions of Wagner’s scores to earn income
and gain notoriety.8 One can imagine the young composer, frustrated at his own lack of
recognition in the public eye, coming to despise these necessary performances much as any
modern day pianist grows weary of Beethoven’s Für Elise after it has been requested for the
hundredth time.
Even Debussy’s friends in the Symbolist movement shared the obsession with Wagner.
By the late nineteenth century, music had assumed a place of reverence in French culture. Poets
and painters looked to music as the ideal form of expression, holding the aural art form in highest
esteem. The Symbolists admired music to such a degree because they saw it as the only art form
“capable of suggesting and communicating to man what was inexpressible in any other
medium.”9 They saw it as the only ‘true’ art form—what could be expressed through music
could only be expressed through music. Wagner’s compositions were seen as having achieved
this to a degree heretofore unimaginable. Artists and poets were interested, too, in the technical
aspects of Wagner—his systems, his use of motives, his invocation of myths and legends, and his
marriage of text with music. No doubt it was a source of consternation for all French composers
to see a German held up as the prime example of what Parisians most prized.
Whether his anti-Wagner attitude stems from nationalist pride, his influential teachers at
the Académie des Beaux-Arts, his own frustration at having to play Wagner’s music and listen to
8
Claude Debussy, Claude Debussy: Through His Letters, ed. and trans. by Jacqueline M. Charette (New
York: Vantage Press, 1990), 139.
9
Stefan Jarociński, Debussy: Impressionism and Symbolism, trans. by Rollo Myers (London: Ernst
Eulenburg, 1976), 70-71.
ZACH WATKINS / DEBUSSY AND WAGNER IN COLOR 5
discussions of his ideas over and over again—all while his own composition efforts went
unnoticed—Debussy did not keep these feelings to himself. Indeed, he shared them in his
criticism and his letters often.
III.
The evidence we have shows Debussy’s clear and public distaste for the German
composer, but naturally that is not the whole story. We would do better to describe Debussy’s
feelings toward Wagner by following the lead of Déirdre Donnellon who, in her essay Debussy
as Musician and Critic, describes Debussy’s attitude toward the über-present Wagner as
“complicated.”10 She is not alone in this opinion; it is a perspective first held by one of
Debussy’s closest friends, the poet Pierre Louÿs. The two engaged in many discussions about
Wagner over the course of their long friendship. Due to these lengthy conversations, conducted
in person and through correspondence, Louÿs is most likely the man who understood Debussy’s
“complex” feelings the best.11
Debussy’s first exposure to Wagner’s music came during his time at the Paris
Conservatoire when he was a young man. In 1876, he and his music theory teacher came across a
score to Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser. The two become so engrossed in studying it that they lost
all track of time. Eventually, they discovered themselves locked inside the building and were
forced to stumble down stairs and through black passages to find a way out.12 Wagner’s operas
would continue to enthrall Debussy for many years. There were two in particular he loved:
10
Déirdre Donnellon, “Debussy as Musician and Critic,” in The Cambridge Companion to Debussy ed.
Simon Trezise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 46.
11
Edward Lockspeiser, Debussy: His Life and Mind (London: Cassell, 1962), 163.
12
Ibid., 31-32
ZACH WATKINS / DEBUSSY AND WAGNER IN COLOR 6
Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal. The composer remained a fan of these works his whole life.13
Tristan und Isolde held such a place in Debussy’s heart that he described it as “the most
beautiful thing I know.”14 After hearing it in Vienna, Austria for the first time in 1880—most
likely as a series of orchestral excerpts15—he quickly obtained a score and learned the entire
work. Privately, Debussy confided to his friend Louÿs how he feared no one could write a better
opera.16 This confidence was not betrayed. Instead, Louÿs was an advocate for his friend’s
prowess and knowledge of the German composer’s works, and has recorded in his own writing a
tale of Debussy making a bet that he could play Tristan on the piano from memory—and won.
The beauty of Parsifal, in both its harmony and its orchestration, is something Debussy also had
a great appreciation for.17 He attended at least two performances in Bayreuth, in 1886 and 1889,
and was deeply influenced by the opera—more so than even Tristan.18 Debussy would go on in
1903 to write an entire article on Parsifal in which he insists it is “one of the most beautiful
monuments ever raised to music.”19 Both Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde had an enduring effect
on Debussy, and not just personally, but on his composing as well, as will be explored later.
Debussy attended many performances of Wagner’s operas. In Debussy, His Life and
Mind, Edward Lockspeiser describes how the composer’s animosity towards Wagner grew over
the course of attending these performances, and he cites a letter from 1893 in which Debussy
13
Lesure and Howat, “Debussy, Claude,” Oxford University Press,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.csus.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/07353
14
David J. Code, “Hearing Debussy Reading Mallarmé: Music après Wagner in the Prélude à l'après-midi
d'un faune.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 54, no. 3 (2001): 506.
15
Marcel Dietschy, A Portrait of Claude Debussy, ed. and trans. by Ashbrook and Cobb (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990), 29.
16
Lesure and Howat, “Debussy, Claude,” Oxford University Press,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.csus.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/07353
17
Claude Debussy, Debussy on Music: The Critical Writings of the Great French Composer, ed. and
trans. by Lesure and Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 66.
18
Edward Lockspeiser, Debussy: His Life and Mind (London: Cassell, 1962), 95.
19
Ibid., 96.
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eviscerates Das Reingold, declaring “the performance … a terrible bore.”20 However, the author
goes on to suggest that Debussy’s severe opinion included at least some posturing, and this point
is worthy of consideration. At that time in his life and career, Debussy was still largely unknown;
the persistent fever left by Wagner on the public was undoubtedly an overwhelming burden. Is it
so difficult to believe a French composer living in Paris, who was struggling to establish himself
as separate and distinct from other composers, could be given to hyperbole in his criticism?
Perhaps Debussy felt it prudent, even necessary to condemn Wagner’s works; perhaps it served
to imbue in the public a perception of Debussy as a maverick. Any such status aided his desire to
establish himself as a composer in his own right, and served well his attempts to get out from
under the German composer’s persistent presence in the public’s mind. All of these possibilities
can be extrapolated from the postulate that Debussy held an official aversion to Wagner more
than so much a personal distaste. The question as to what degree Debussy’s public grudge was
personal versus professional is an area for further research.
Toward the end of his life, Debussy relaxed his anti-Wagnerian attitude. Even as he
bemoaned the effect Wagner’s music had had, he was still able to acknowledge its value and—
perhaps more importantly—was able to admit he no longer saw himself in opposition to the
Wagnerian tradition. “I am no longer an adversary of Wagner,” the composer stated to an
Austrian journalist in 1910. “Wagner is a genius, but geniuses can make mistakes.”21 Perhaps
this more nuanced opinion can even be seen as Debussy referring to himself and the intense
opinions toward the German composer, for and against, which he held in his younger years.
20
Edward Lockspeiser, Debussy: His Life and Mind (London: Cassell, 1962), 91.
Claude Debussy, Debussy on Music: The Critical Writings of the Great French Composer, ed. and
trans. by Lesure and Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 243.
21
ZACH WATKINS / DEBUSSY AND WAGNER IN COLOR 8
IV.
In his younger years, Debussy attended poetry readings by members of the Symbolist
movement, and endured many hours of listening to them dote on Wagner. The Symbolist poets
were as enamored with Wagner as the rest of the Parisian public. It’s even been postulated that
Wagner’s ideas, his concepts about art and his works’ mythical and mystical aspects, were the
true inspiration for the Symbolist movement.22 The movement’s leader, Stéphane Mallarmé, who
authored the original poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, was not nearly as enamored with
Wagner as were his followers.23 Nevertheless, Mallarmé wrote many poems in response to
Wagner’s his work. He talked often about Wagner—both his music and his ideas about art in
general.24 He held a “reluctant but profound admiration” for Wagner, a view Debussy is known
to have shared,25 and that is itself tacit recognition that the German composer’s importance could
not be denied.
With Wagnerian music and philosophy never far from their minds or social
conversations, a collaboration between Debussy and Mallarmé couldn’t help but take place in the
German composer’s shadow. The piece Debussy would come to title Prélude à l'après-midi d'un
faune was originally intended as not just a literary and musical collaboration, but one which also
had a dramatic element.26 Mallarmé’s original concept was to have his poem read in a theatrical
setting with incidental music by Debussy interspersed throughout. The influence of Wagner’s
Gesamtkunstwerk concept—a work of art combining multiple art forms such as music, poetry,
and dance into a larger dramatic work—is clear. Even though the dramatic element fell away by
22
Stefan Jarociński, Debussy: Impressionism and Symbolism, trans. by Rollo Myers (London: Ernst
Eulenburg, 1976), 72.
23
Ibid.
24
Lloyd, Rosemary, “Debussy, Mallarmé, and ‘Les Mardis,’” in Debussy and His World, ed. Jane Fulcher
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 262.
25
Ibid., 261.
26
Edward Lockspeiser, Debussy: His Life and Mind (London: Cassell, 1962), 152.
ZACH WATKINS / DEBUSSY AND WAGNER IN COLOR 9
the time it was completed in 1893, Debussy’s Prélude would go on to be choreographed into a
ballet by Vaslav Nijinsky in 1912.
Debussy wrote about being “madly Wagnerian” in his younger years.27 Multiple scholars
have written many thorough musical analyses showing Wagner’s influence on Debussy,28 but
there is an aspect in the Prélude where this influence remains underrated: the motif played by the
solo flute. This may be because the influence is a sociological one not a musical one, and
because the influence isn’t so much on Debussy as it was on the concert going public.
The Prélude’s opening theme, which returns a number of times throughout the piece, is a
literal musical rendering of the faun’s flute playing (as described in lines 45 and 51 of
Mallarmé’s poem). In his book Debussy Redux, Matthew Brown refers to this motif as “the sigh
figure”29 because of the way it so clearly represents the faun’s lazy exhalation. However, Brown
asserts that the motif represents far more than a mere lackadaisical attitude. He first
acknowledges the common practice for composers to use this type of figure to represent a sigh.
Then he goes on to assert that in Debussy’s Prélude, the motif is “explicitly associated with the
concept of sexual yearning,”30 and that this connotation is owed to Wagner who first used it in a
similar fashion in his opera Tristan und Isolde.
Given Debussy’s love of Tristan—and at that point in his career in particular—this is a
reasonable assertion. More importantly, the concert-going public was also familiar with
Wagner’s using the sigh figure in this way. To those familiar with Wagner’s work, the motif
would sound in their ears with this sexual connotation, something Debussy would had to have
27
Robin Holloway, Debussy and Wagner, (London: Ernst Eulenburg, 1979), 19.
It is interesting to note that in his book Debussy in Proportion: A Musical Analysis, author Roy Howat
doesn’t mention Wagner at all. More than likely, this is due to his examining the formal structure in
Debussy’s music and not the harmonic and dramatic aspects which scholars typically point to as having
been influenced by Wagner.
29
Matthew Brown, Debussy Redux: The Impact of His Music on Popular Culture (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2012), 122-3.
30
Ibid.
28
ZACH WATKINS / DEBUSSY AND WAGNER IN COLOR 10
taken into account in his own writing. His using the sigh motif in the Prélude this way is almost
certainly intentional. Brown also identifies other ways Debussy intensifies sexual tension in his
piece, most notably in how he stretches harmonic dissonances out over time. He posits that this,
too, was a technique first pioneered by Wagner.
Brown is not the only one to identify sexual undertones in Debussy’s Prélude and the
solo flute’s sigh figure. Julie McQuinn discusses it in her article “Exploring the Erotic in
Debussy’s Music.” She mentions similar musical figures in other compositions, such as the piece
Syrinx (La flûte de Pan). In this piece for solo flute—from the Gabriel Mourey play, Psyché—
the flute also represents a faun and his seductive attitude.31 However, neither McQuinn nor
Brown were first in identifying the sexual tension inherent in the Prélude’s flute motif. Vaslav
Nijinsky’s ballet fully recognized the sexual subtexts in the music and the poem on which it was
based. In his choreography, Nijinsky included this sexuality explicitly by ending his ballet with
the titular character simulating masturbation before the audience.
Debussy had no need for such an overt representation. The main solo flute theme itself
was understood by the concert-going public to be representative of sexual desire, a cultural
understanding Debussy owes to Wagner who first established it in Tristan und Isolde.
The premier of Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune in 1894 succeeded in endearing
Debussy to musicians, but not so much the general public. The work went largely ignored by
critics; the few who did mention it put forth ambivalent opinions at best. In one negative
review—that of Le Guide musical—Debussy’s piece was seen as having far too much
“Wagnerian influence.”32 This review and others like it were a humble beginning for a piece
31
Julie McQuinn, “Exploring the Erotic in Debussy’s Music,” in The Cambridge Companion to Debussy
ed. Simon Trezise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 125-6.
32
Marcel Dietschy, A Portrait of Claude Debussy, ed. and trans. by Ashbrook and Cobb (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990), 93.
ZACH WATKINS / DEBUSSY AND WAGNER IN COLOR 11
which would come to be considered not only one of the composer’s most important works, but
nothing less than modern music’s genesis. The oft-quoted composer and conductor Pierre Boulez
considered Debussy’s Prélude the birth of western music’s modern era,33 and, together with the
artist Cézanne and the poet Mallarmé, wrote of Debussy himself as “the root of all
modernism.”34
V.
During the three years he spent writing the Prélude, Debussy began intentionally
withdrawing from Wagner’s influence in his own compositions (even though it was still a
number of years before he succeeded). We know this from the composer’s own writing. In a
letter dated April 1902, he describes having “doubts” about Wagnerism.35 The title of this letter?
“Why I Wrote Pelléas.” This reads as an irony in hindsight for Debussy’s next work, his opera
Pelléas et Mélisande, owes a great deal to the German composer’s influence.
Current research and analysis of Debussy’s compositions is very much focused on
Pelléas et Mélisande,36 which Debussy began working on in earnest after Prélude à l'après-midi
d'un faune’s completion in 1893. The influence of Richard Wagner on this work is well
established. Robin Holloway’s book Debussy and Wagner, among many other sources, gives
excellent detail on the composers’ similarities.37 Holloway devotes no less than three entire
chapters to the myriad of ways Debussy’s opera shows the German composer’s influence. Her
33
Glenn Watkins, Soundings: Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: Schirmer, 1988), 75.
Pierre Boulez, Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, ed. Paule Thévenin, trans. Stephen Walsh (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 20.
35
Claude Debussy, Debussy on Music: The Critical Writings of the Great French Composer, ed. and
trans. by Lesure and Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 74.
36
Jann Pasler, “Debussy the Man, His Music, and His Legacy: An Overview of Current Research.” Music
Library Association 69, no. 2 (2012): 199, 204.
37
On page 251 in his own essay in the Cambridge Companion to Debussy, editor Simon Trezise points
out on that there is much of Wagner in Debussy’s works, referencing author Robin Holloway’s volume on
the subject.
34
ZACH WATKINS / DEBUSSY AND WAGNER IN COLOR 12
book’s fourth chapter compares and contrasts Pelléas with Tristan und Isolde.38 The fifth chapter
focuses on how the interludes in Pelléas are reminiscent of Parsifal—particularly in sections
Debussy is known to have composed quickly.39 And the sixth chapter further discusses other
assorted “Wagnerian minutiae.”40 The overarching idea through all these sections is not that
Debussy was copying Wagner, but that he was evoking favorite passages from works for which
he had a great love. When Holloway’s work is viewed in light of Debussy’s statements about
these two operas, this conclusion is difficult to argue with.
Pelléas is not so much Debussy’s only opera, as it is his only finished opera. The
composer made a number of attempts at such works, and the most completed of these is the
unfinished opera Rodrigue et Chimène. Debussy worked on this piece around the same time as
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and, not surprisingly, there are aspects bearing resemblance to
Wagner’s compositions. A large influence can be seen in the librettist himself, Catulle Mendès,
who was such an enormous fan of Wagner that he founded a magazine devoted to critical study
of the composer, Revue wagnérienne.41 More important is how Debussy (from what we can tell)
wrote for the orchestra in a very dramatic fashion, just as Wagner did in his operas.42
Researchers who have studied this unfinished work in detail have noted other similarities to the
German composer’s operas; most apparent are the echoes of Tristan in the first act, and of
Parsifal in the fourth.43
Other compositions by Debussy show Wagner’s influence as well, particularly those from
the period before he composed Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. His Cinq Poèmes de
38
Robin Holloway, Debussy and Wagner, (London: Ernst Eulenburg, 1979), 60-75.
Ibid., 76-95.
40
Ibid., 96-142.
41
Mark Devoto, “Review of Rodrigue et Chimène by Claude Debussy,” Notes 61, no. 2 (2004): 537.
42
Ibid., 538.
43
Ibid., 539.
39
ZACH WATKINS / DEBUSSY AND WAGNER IN COLOR 13
Baudelaire for piano and voice are an excellent example. Debussy took great care to craft the
songs’ vocal lines in such a way as to keep them audible. He made a valiant effort to maintain
the structure and flow of Baudelaire’s original text. However, the piano part stands in contrast
with the vocal lines, having an abundance of Wagnerian dissonances and chromatic chords.44 La
Damoiselle élue, a cantata from 1888, contains more lengthy Wagnerian melodies and leitmotifs
than any of Debussy’s other works up to that time.45 Holloway also mentions these examples in
her book, tying them specifically to Wagner’s Parsifal.46
VI.
In general, Debussy was accomplished at thematic and tonal composition, and was
perfectly capable of crafting and developing thematic material. He developed and honed this skill
during his years at the Paris Conservatoire, and was undoubtedly aided by his deep knowledge of
Wagner’s music and composition techniques.47 However, what sets Debussy apart in music
history—and especially from Wagner who prized motivic development—is how Debussy
introduces themes, then chooses to leave those themes undeveloped.48 This is particularly true in
the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune49 and is one of the main reasons why Debussy as a
composer is so noteworthy.
In 1902, a writer for Le Figaro made the mistake of mentioning Wagner during an
interview with Debussy. This provoked a strong reaction, resulting in a declaration from
44
Matthew Brown, Debussy Redux: The Impact of His Music on Popular Culture (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2012), 83.
45
John R. Clevenger, “Debussy’s Rome Cantatas,” in Debussy and His World, ed. Jane Fulcher
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 72.
46
Robin Holloway, Debussy and Wagner, (London: Ernst Eulenburg, 1979), 23.
47
Matthew Brown, Debussy Redux: The Impact of His Music on Popular Culture (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2012), 45.
48
Edward Lockspeiser, Debussy: His Life and Mind (London: Cassell, 1962), 158
49
Ibid.
ZACH WATKINS / DEBUSSY AND WAGNER IN COLOR 14
Debussy that his “method of composing—which consists above all of dispensing with ‘methods
of composing’—[owed] nothing to Wagner.”50 With all due deference to the composer’s
expressed comments, past and current scholarship disagrees. Debussy may have wanted to
convey the idea that his music was entirely independent of Wagner’s influence, and he may have
even thought it true himself; but that does not make it so. Neither can we, in looking back at the
two composers, dismiss the nature of Debussy’s feelings toward Wagner as mere hatred or
bitterness. As is often the case in so many subjects, a simplistic, black and white view of the
effect Wagner had on Debussy will not suffice.
In Debussy the Man, His Music, and His Legacy: An Overview of Current Research,
author Jann Pasler makes the argument that “what is most important … is to recognize that
Debussy’s music changed over time.”51 Even though Pasler was referring in her article to the
debate about whether it is more appropriate to classify Debussy as Impressionist or Symbolist,
the idea applies every bit as much to the questions at hand. The complex emotions Claude
Debussy held toward Richard Wagner should continue to be researched and debated. Regardless
of those feelings, a more important fact remains: the latter had an undeniable influence on the
former. Whether Debussy had a love/hate relationship with the German composer, or merely
detested him, those feelings did not prevent him from mirroring compositional passages he found
beautiful, or from utilizing Wagnerian ideas he felt worthwhile and appropriate. Like others who
came before him, Debussy did not compose in a vacuum. Rarely are new developments truly
original ideas. More often they are new variations on what already exists. Debussy’s music may
have Wagner’s influence, but by no stretch could it be called Wagnerian in the way the German
50
Claude Debussy, Debussy on Music: The Critical Writings of the Great French Composer, ed. and
trans. by Lesure and Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 80.
51
Jann Pasler, “Debussy the Man, His Music, and His Legacy: An Overview of Current Research.” Music
Library Association 69, no. 2 (2012): 210
ZACH WATKINS / DEBUSSY AND WAGNER IN COLOR 15
composer’s music was.
In the spring of 1902, in the same letter where he conveyed his need to move beyond the
tenets of Wagnerism, Debussy opined that composers shouldn’t write music in that style but
should instead “try to be ‘post-Wagner.’”52 To scholars looking back at Debussy’s place in music
history, it would seem the French composer succeeded in doing just that.
52
Claude Debussy, Debussy on Music: The Critical Writings of the Great French Composer, ed. and
trans. by Lesure and Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 74.