Mirages: distinguishing Ravel and Debussy.
Ravel is NOT a second-rate Debussy.
photograph by PICRYL.
To those who had only heard of him by his name, and to many critics in the first decade of the 20th century, Maurice Ravel was nothing more than a second-rate Claude Debussy (the latter a brand name for impressionistic music) because of the apparent stylistic similarity in the composers’ compositions. However, as with other statements that would later be proven wrong, this one was constructed from false truths. Being lured into such convictions was easy and only natural.
Debussy indeed was an inspiration to generations of young musicians after him, a revolutionary who set the weathercock for contemporary French music to be distinctively different from the dense, brassy, fanfaric orchestral soundscape of Wagnerian style. His chords moved in parallel motion, abandoning the conventional tonal rules that arranged chords according to their chromatic stability instead of their proximity, an approach that had governed the course of classical music. Debussy detached the chords from their tonal function, and in his music, a lack of sense or direction was prevalent. The system of tension and release, which the audience had grown up with and accepted without question, failed in Debussy's music, preventing them from subconsciously anticipating how a piece would end. All the audience could do was marvel at the brilliant colors induced by inventive chords that juxtaposed each other in thoroughly irregular and enticing ways.
Thirteen years younger than Debussy, Ravel spent his teenage years in opera houses with his fellow schoolmates at the Paris Conservatoire, ardently supporting and defending Debussy’s avant-garde opera Pelléas et Mélisande, attending innumerable recitals of contemporary music. (There were a total of 14 concerts for the premiering Pelléas et Mélisande; the Conservatoire forbade its students from attending, but Ravel faithfully went to all 14.) They called themselves the Apaches, which referred to “underworld hooligans,” a group of young people who fervently embraced the new and stave away from the stale academic confinement of fugues and cantatas.
Early in his compositional career, Ravel made personal acquaintances with Debussy and was believed to have received Debussy’s guidance and support, but a lack of further correspondences or recounts made it hard to pin down the exact extent of Debussy’s personal, direct influence on Ravel, aside from the illuminations he gleaned from his music. A notable anecdote to demonstrate their cordial correspondence was in 1905, when Debussy wrote to Ravel on the latter’s controversial String Quartet, “In the name of the gods of music and in my own, do not touch a single note of what you have written in your Quartet.” The missive demonstrates the seasoned composer’s appreciation for the budding talent. His affirmation was contrary to the public’s reception: the String Quartet was subjected to scrutiny as soon as it was published.
Like many of Ravel’s early works, the String Quartet was a playful experimentation of novel harmonies and refreshing youthfulness structured inside an archaic academic form. A later trademark of his style, these qualities, which remained tentative experiments at this point, were heavily criticized for their lack of respect for Common Era compositional rules that had guided the Western European music scene for around 300 years. The discordance in the inherently classical framework and the audacious chord colors combined is something indisputably Ravel, not a product of external influence, and should be located as the center of early criticism surrounding him—it seemed an awkward combination, and the limbo state between headstrong new music that rebelled in every sense and classical and romantic expressivity was perhaps discomforting.
Consider his Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911), in which he intended to compose a series of waltzes following Schubert’s example. Or Le Tombeau de Couperin (1914–1917), a set of six pieces each commemorating a lost friend in the front of the Great War. Each piece was a recapitulation of Baroque musical forms, from Fugue to Minuet to Toccata, a tribute to the French Baroque composer François Couperin. These classical frameworks were self-imposed, merely premises for Ravel to express his musical language, distinctive from maestros of the past. It would be improbable to misattribute his piece to, say, that of Schubert or Couperin because Ravel spoke his own compositional voice under the guise of classical forms. Ravel submitted the first movement of the String Quartet as an entry to the prestigious Prix de Rome, an annual compositional competition that heralds academic fugues and cantatas. [1] Head of the committee formed by Paris Conservatoire faculties Théodore Dubois rejected the String Quartet’s bold new materials under the familiar frame. Here the contrast to Debussy is evident, whose compositions displayed strikingly open structure, a breakaway from traditions that moved beyond experimentation with aspects of tonality.
The two composers influenced each other stylistically, especially in 1900-1910, when Ravel was in the process of establishing himself as an exceptional talent and Debussy had already achieved great heights, despite grudging disagreements from stale academic circles that centered the Paris Conservatoire and major musical commentaries in news. Heated discussions arose whenever a piece from either composer was published. If it was Ravel’s, traces of Debussian techniques would affirm to some that Ravel was but a disciple of Debussy. If it was Debussy’s, recognizable Ravel influences in the most extreme case would initiate doubts about the composer’s originality. The extreme case happened at least once; La soirée dans Grenade from Estampes (1903) by Debussy was alarmingly similar in its salience to Ravel’s Habanera, which underwent revisions and appeared orchestrated in later works but premiered in Sites auticulaires (1895/1897). The two piano pieces were indeed both habanera, so a stylistic resemblance in syncopated rhythms and surging movements would be expected. However, they shared an almost identical introduction, swappable melodic contours, and rhythm tapped out by a continuous single C-sharp note in left hand. The fact that on the night of the premiere of Sites auticulaires in 1898, Debussy went backstage to borrow Ravel’s manuscript does not help either.
Ravel and Debussy already had a delicate relationship by 1903, fanned by boisterous public opinions in their surroundings. They avoided each other, be it in public or in private soirees. The tension between them could be seen in an acerbic remark from Debussy two months after the premiere of Ravel’s Hisoires naturelles in 1908. He wrote in a letter to music critic Louis Laloy, “I agree with you in acknowledging that Ravel is exceptionally gifted, but what irritates me is his posture as a ‘faiseur de tours,’ (performer of tricks), or better yet, as an enchanting fakir, who can make flowers spring up around a chair. Unfortunately, a trick is always prepared, and it can only astonish once!" Nevertheless, the two composers had their roads crossed once more while demonstrating an amusing camaraderie of their artistic tastes. In 1913, the first complete edition of Stephen Mallarmé’s poems was published, and Ravel and Debussy decided individually to set three of these poems into music. They both chose, rather curiously, Soupir and Placet futile.
The two composers were both “exceptionally talented”, resembling each other in style and musical taste so closely that discussions comparing them might never cease. But a closer look, and the relationship complicates. We instead see two starkly different compositional styles, and the illusion of their sameness whiffs away like a mirage.
Notes:
[1]: The winner of Prix de Rome would be granted further educational opportunities in Rome for a year. Ravel competed in the competition for a consecutive 4 years from 1899-1903. A student in Paris Conservatoire composition class, he was required to win a First Prize to maintain such status after repeated failed attempts. The best he got was Third Prize in 1900. In 1903, he submitted the first movement of the String Quartet, was rejected, and was again (!) dismissed from the institution. He did not compete in 1904. During these 4 years, he began to establish a solid name for himself with publications, especially like Jeax d’eau, an excavation of the potential for keyboard instruments to mimic various sounds of water. In 1905, he competed in the Prix de Rome for the fifth time and was eliminated in the preliminary round, which caused a huge public scandal. Romain Rolland wrote a public letter defending Ravel. The Director of Paris Conservatoire Dubois resigned, and Fauré was assigned in this position, who initiated modernization in its curriculum.
Bibliography:
Fillerup, Jessie. 2021. Magician of Sound: Ravel and the Aesthetics of Illusion. University of California Press.
Orenstein, Arbie. 1990. A Ravel Reader: Correspondence, Articles, Interviews. Columbia University Press.
Zank, Stephen. 2013. Maurice Ravel: A Guide to Research. Routledge Music Bibliographies Series. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.
edited by Celeste Alcalay.
photograph by PICRYL.