Wheeldon, Debussy's Soupir (PNM 2000)

Debussy's "Soupir": An Experiment in Permutational Analysis Author(s): Marianne Wheeldon Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 38, No.
2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 134-160 Published by: Perspectives of New Music Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/833662 . Accessed: 21/06/2013 02:18
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DEBUSSY'S"SOUPIR":
AN EXPERIMENT IN PERMUTATIONALANALYSIS
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MARIANNE WHEELDON
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What attracted me in Mallarme, at the stage I had reached at that time, was the extraordinary formal density of his poems. Not only was the content truly extraordinary . . . but never has the French language been taken so far in the matter of syntax.... What interested me was the idea of finding a musical equivalent, both poetic and formal, to Mallarme's poetry ... this enabled me to transcribe into musical terms forms that I had never thought of and which are derived from the literary forms he himself used.1
THE LITERARY OF influential was FORMS that inspired Boulez, perhaps the most the one used by Mallarme in his last published work,
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135
Un coup de des (A throw of the dice). The most innovative aspect of Un coup de des-and the one that provided a point of reference for Boulez's creation of variable forms and the composition of his Piano Sonata Number 3 in particular-was its experiments with permutation and chance. While the title and content of the poem overtly address notions of chance, reading and interpreting the poem also involve chance as a result of typographical eccentricities, which vary the placement, type-face, size, and amount of text on each of the twenty-one pages of the poem. Some pages present several configurations of text, while others present only a single word. Certain words and phrases attract the reader's attention with capital letters, bold face, larger fonts, or any of these in combination (Example 1). Because of its unorthodox presentation, Un coup de despermits several reading possibilities: as there is no single linear route through the poem, each reading varies depending on the path the eye traces across the page. It is this availability of multiple readings in Mallarme's poem that inspired Boulez to find a musical equivalent. Yet Mallarme was not Boulez's sole point of departure; he also cited Debussy's influence in the development of new musical forms: Varese and Webern were the first to learn the lesson of Debussy's last works and to "think forms," not-in Debussy's words-as "sonata boxes" but as arising from a process that is primarily spatial and rhythmic, linking "a succession of alternative, contrasting or correlated states"-that is to say, intrinsic to the object but at the same time in complete control of it.2 This article examines Debussy's late work "Soupir" (the first song of Debussy's Trois Poemes de Stephane Mallarme, 1913) from a Boulezian perspective, drawing specifically on Boulez's preoccupation with the permutational possibilities of Un coup de des. In fact, Mallarme's Un coup de des presents visually what was already inherent in much of his earlier poetry, including "Soupir" (1864). Despite their traditional appearance, Mallarme's earlier poems often introduce such fragmented syntax that an understanding of the text is predicated upon a comparable nonlinear reading. In moments of syntactic ambiguity the reader must cast forward and back for possible associations in meaning and syntax, which often requires rereading previous material in light of these newly acquired associations. Whereas the nonlinear presentation of the text in Un coup de des makes explicit the nonlinear reading, in the more traditional forms of Mallarme's earlier poems the same result is achieved by studiously fragmented syntax. In
136
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"Soupir," for example, the poem's syntax disrupts its metrical organization.
Soupir Mon ame vers ton front ou reve, 6 calme soeur, Un automne jonche de taches de rousseur, Et vers le ciel errant de ton oeil angelique Monte, comme dans un jardin melancolique, Fidele, un blanc jet d' eau soupire vers 1' Azur! -Vers 1' Azur attendri d' Octobre pale et pur Qui mire aux grand bassins sa langueur infinie Et laisse, sur l'eau morte ou la fauve agonie Des feuilles erre au vent et creuse un froid sillon, Se trainer le soleil jaune d' un long rayon.
Sigh My soul toward your brow where dreams, o calm sister, An autumn strewn with freckles, And toward the wandering sky of your angelic eye Rises, as in a melancholy garden, Faithful, a white jet of water sighs toward the Azure! -Toward the tender Azure of pale and pure October Which mirrors in great pools its infinite languor And lets, on the dead water where the tawny agony Of leaves wanders in the wind and hollows a cold furrow, The yellow sun drag itself out in a long ray.3 The metrical pattern of "Soupir" is very regular: ten Alexandrines (a line of twelve syllables) are grouped in five rhyming couplets that alternate accented and unaccented rhyme. Yet the syllabic regularity of the Alexandrine and the aural unity of the rhyme are obscured by the fact that "Soupir" is a single sentence, which proceeds with minimal punctuation and run-on lines. That is, the enjambment of lines 3, 6, 7, and 8 directs the reader's focus away from the end of the line and into the beginning of the next, thereby concealing the regular pacing of the Alexandrines and the aural stability usually provided by end-rhyme. Instances of verb displacement in "Soupir" produce the nonlinear reading strategies outlined above. By placing verbs in positions contrary
138
to the ones dictated by normal syntax, the reader is forced to consider "Soupir" in sequences other than the one given. One example occurs with the interpolation of lines 8 and 9, which separates the verb "laisse" from its reflexive infinitive complement "se trainer."Without these lines, the conclusion of "Soupir" would read: -Toward the tender Azure of pale and pure October Which mirrors in great pools its infinite languor And lets the yellow sun drag itself out in a long ray. The interpolation-"on the dead water where the tawny agony of leaves wanders in the wind and hollows a cold furrow"-twice interrupts the flow of "Soupir"'s conclusion: the first interruption occurs after "laisse" with the beginning of the interpolated clause, and the second with the resumption of the original sentence after its two line delay. The displacement of "se trainer" from "laisse" frames the interpolation, which embeds a smaller complete sentence within the larger sentence. Another-and more dramatic-example of verb displacement creates the incomplete syntactic patterns of the opening lines. "Soupir" begins with a subject "My soul," accumulates prepositional phrases beginning with "toward" (toward your brow, toward the wandering sky of your angelic eye, toward the Azure), yet does not immediately present a verb of motion to join the two together. By delaying a verb, which should follow the poem's opening subject, Mallarme immediately creates syntactic confusion. As John Porter Houston writes, with reference to Mallarme's Herodiade: . . the reader's grasp of the syntax is momentarily enfeebled owing to the complexity of the language, and one almost has the feeling of reading sentence fragments....4 The experience of reading the first five lines of "Soupir" is similar.The displacement of the verb "monte" ("rises") creates a succession of sentence fragments that could be arranged as follows: My soul toward your brow where dreams o calm sister an autumn strewn with freckles And toward the wandering sky of your angelic eye Rises as in a melancholy garden
Debussy's "Soupir"
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faithful a white jet of water sighs toward the Azure. Considered individually, the sentence fragments of "Soupir" make sense, but these fragments run one after the other with little to connect them syntactically. Even when the verb "rises" appears, it does not connect immediately with the surrounding syntax but is isolated in its context: as shown above, "rises" is itself a fragment unconnected to the preceding prepositional phrase or the following adverbialphrase. The displacement and isolation of the word "rises" necessitates moving among the fragments and images of the first five lines to find possible syntactic and semantic connections. Yet jumping back and forth among these images presents a network of possible connections: the first sentence could read as "My soul rises toward your brow," but other constructions beginning with the preposition "toward" offer other connections, such as "My soul rises toward the wandering sky of your angelic eye" and "My soul rises toward the Azure." Despite these ambiguities, Hugh Kenner, in his reading of "Soupir," argues that there is a central image-or what he terms "kernel sentence"-to which everything is related and subordinate.5 Kenner views the statement "My soul rises toward the Azure" ("Mon ame monte vers 1' Azur") to be the kernel sentence. This reading, Kenner states, is substantiated by the fact that each word of the kernel sentence "occupies a rhetorical strong point where a line commences, while the previous constructions in 'toward' have expended themselves in less prominent niches" (386). But even if one finds Kenner's thesis tenable, the fragmented syntax of "Soupir" allows different interpretations of what constitutes its kernel sentence. For example, Arthur Wenk-who similarly advocates a central image in "Soupir"-interprets the ambiguous syntax to mean "My soul rises toward your brow like a white jet of water sighing toward the Azure" ("Mon ame monte vers ton front comme un blanc jet d' eau soupire vers 1' Azur").6 Both Kenner and Wenk produce their kernel sentences by casting about the first five lines of "Soupir" to gather together the necessary syntactic units. As Wenk states, "to understand this poem more than superficially requires considerable movement back and forth among the images to sort out their relationship" (246). Wenk's statement implies that one overall relationship exists between the images of "Soupir." Perhaps, however, these images are not meant to be "sorted out," as Wenk hypothesizes; rather, the fragmented syntax and their potential interpretations are intended to remain in a state of flux. As Malcolm Bowie states, both the surfeit of possible readings and
140
the moving back and forth among images that these readings entail create an important part of Mallarme's poetic substance: Syntactic ambiguity gives each member of improbable wordchains ... an unusual independence and immediacy: each word is a gravitational centre around which possible meanings of the entire section gather. These virtualities will of course become fewer as we move towards a relatively stable syntactic armature for the poem. But the meanings we relinquish do not simply disappear:the atmosphere of multiple potentiality which they create is part of Mallarme's poetic substance.7 This "atmosphere of multiple potentiality" provides the focus for the following musical analysis. It is not the purpose here to align the discontinuities of "Soupir" with those of Debussy's setting, but rather to show that similar principles of formal flexibility and potential multiple readings motivate both the poem and its musical setting. Unlike Wenk, who believes that Debussy's musical setting is "an attempt to sort out the various phrases and clauses that complicates ["Soupir"'s] grammaticalstructure" (249), I believe that Debussy's setting tries to imitate the permutability of Mallarme's syntax. II In his setting of "Soupir," Debussy presents a succession of musical ideas that bears little resemblance to traditional tonal forms. As shown by the annotated score (Example 2), changes of tempo and texture and, in the vocal writing, changes of tessitura and contour clearly articulate each idea on the musical surface. These musical ideas do not repeat, develop, or aim toward a climax or resolution, but they proceed with no one idea hierarchicallymore significant than another. Each section of "Soupir" is equally intensive, musically autonomous, and nonteleological, so that the sections do not contribute to an overall contour or dynamic shape, but are more modular in their arrangement. This is especially noticeable in the vocal line where each new melodic idea is initiated, completed, and then relinquished, resulting in a succession of minute arabesques rather than one over-arching motion. Consequently, the vocal line rarely runs smoothly between consecutive sections, since each section produces a breakwith its predecessor with a shift of tessitura and a new melodic contour. Since these sections do not connect smoothly or contribute to a larger dynamic shape, it would appear that melodic continuity or
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teleology is not of paramount importance in the construction of the vocal line. If the five sections of the vocal line were separated, scrambled, and the text removed, there would be few clues in their internal organization to reassemble them in the original order. This hypothesis reveals a potential for permutation in the vocal line. For, if it proves difficult to ascertain the original ordering of sections, then these sections may have alternate orderings. Like Mallarme's poetic fragments and their possible permutations in the first five lines of "Soupir," the vocal line's individual arabesques-although presented in a specific order-inherently possess little to recommend that order over any other. The harmonic stasis of the piano accompaniment compounds this potential for permutation in the vocal line. By transposing the piano accompaniment to a single register and omitting all repetitions, the reduction of Example 3 highlights the harmonic stasis and close counterpoint of "Soupir" that the wide spacing and changing registers of the piano accompaniment otherwise disguise. The harmonic motion never strays far from the bass Al pedal and the descant F of the opening measures. Only in section 5 do the outer voices move from their focus on Ab and F and, instead, circle an inner voice C. In the final section, however, the outer voices return in contrary motion to the Al bass and soprano F of the opening. Example 3 also demonstrates that, with the exception of section 4, each section can be reduced to two or three pivotal harmonies. These harmonies are prolonged either by simple reiteration, as with the single sonority of section 1 and the final sonority of section 5, or by repetition with a neighboring harmony, shown in Example 3 by square brackets. Each bracketed harmonic motion repeats, so that the progressions of "Soupir" move gradually in two-sonority units that oscillate before proceeding to the next harmonic unit. In general, the harmonic motion undulates in a nondramatic, nondirected fashion, thereby weakening the already tenuous sense of causality between "Soupir"'s sections. Moreover, many of these alternating harmonies are nonfunctional, that is, they are not oriented toward a tonic. In "Soupir," the predominant harmonic collections are a pentatonic collection on Al, octatonic collections I and III, and the even whole-tone collection (Example 4).8 All these collections include Ab, with the exception of octatonic collection III, which is always presented in conjunction with another collection (as in section 2) or superimposed over an Ab pedal (as in section 3).9 As shown below Example 3, the Al pentatonic collection governs section 1; section 2 alternates octatonic harmonies from collections I and III; octatonic collection III superimposed over the Al bass-pedal governs section 3; section 5 alternates harmonies from the even whole-tone collection
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and octatonic collection I; and the final section moves from a harmony drawn from octatonic collection III, through two sonorities foreign to the octatonic harmony, which introduce AL and F respectively, to return to the opening pentatonic configuration with its prominent Al and F outer voices. With harmonies that are slow-moving, repetitious, and nonteleological, the piano accompaniment of "Soupir" also presents opportunities for permutation, though for entirely different reasons. The lack of an overall linear coherence between sections permits a potential reordering of the vocal line, whereas potential permutability between the sections of the piano accompaniment is due, in large part, to the fact that none of the harmonies are goal-oriented and each nonfunctional harmony merely alternates with its neighbor before moving to the next harmonic unit. Paradoxically,it is the harmonic stasis of the accompaniment that lends itself to the mobility of permutation. The song's repetitive and nonteleological harmonies perhaps imitate the freely associating, nonlinear strategies of Mallarme's "Soupir." In fact, this suggests that one might treat the form of "Soupir" in a manner analogous to Boulez's Piano Sonata Number 3, which exploits the more overt permutational practices of Un coup de des. To this end, Example 5 presents an experiment in permutational analysis, with the sections of "Soupir" arranged in constellation to imitate Boulez's Piano Sonata Number 3 (Example 5a). The six sections of "Soupir," when presented
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without specifying ordering, as in Example 5b, can be performed in a number of different sequences. The confined ambitus of harmonic movement in "Soupir," the close relation between prominent pitch-centers, and the lack of harmonic progression between sections allow Example 5b to be performed in many permutations.
EXAMPLE 5A: PERMUTATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN BOULEZ'S PIANO SONATA NUMBER 3
Unlike Boulez's constellation arrangement, which presents only eight possible permutations, the static, nonteleological, and nonfunctional harmonies of "Soupir" permit a large number of virtual reorderings. In this respect, the permutability of Example 5 perhaps aligns more closely with Mallarme's final experiments with chance in Le Livre (The Book), unfinished at the time of his death in 1898. In this work, Mallarme extends the elements of chance found within pages of Un coup de des to encompass the ordering of pages. The projected Livre comprised a collection of loose pages that could be read in any order, and Mallarme calculated the overall structure so that any permutation would be viable. As a result, there would be a free association of ideas and ever-new possibilities of interpreting the work. As Jacques Scherer states in his essay on Mallarme's Livre: Here we find, in opposition to the concept of history as enslaved to succession in irreversibletime, an intelligence capable of mastering a
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subject by reconstructing it in all directions, including the reverse of temporal succession.10 The use of permutation and chance in Un coup de des and Le Livre is perhaps prefigured in the permutable syntax of Mallarme's "Soupir," where interpretation similarlyinvolves-albeit on a much smaller scale"reconstructing [the poem] in all directions." Thus, Boulez's musical response to Mallarme's Un coup de des-with the permutational possibilities of the Piano Sonata Number 3-suggests an analogous analytic approach to Debussy's setting of Mallarme's "Soupir." The juxtaposition of autonomous musical fragments, their lack of causal connection, and the consequent attenuation of musical sequence leads to the permutational approach of Example 5, which eliminates musical sequence altogether and allows "Soupir"'s musical fragments to be placed in orders other than their temporal order.
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III
Both the elimination of sequence and the juxtaposition of poetic fragments underpin the thesis presented in Joseph Frank'scollection of essays The Idea of Spatial Form, which identifies a common trait of modern literature: modern literary works are often designed so as to encourage a spatial approach to their reading rather than a consecutive one.1l Significantly, Mallarme enters the discussion of spatial form in modern poetry as an example of one who radically"dislocated the temporality of language" (p. 15). He, along with T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, attempted to: undermine the inherent consecutiveness of language, frustrating the reader's normal expectation of a sequence and forcing him [or her] to perceive the elements of the poem as juxtaposed in space rather than unfolding in time. (p. 12) Indeed, the idea of juxtaposition in space is especially pertinent to the series of poetic fragments that open Mallarme's "Soupir." As discussed above, the opening lines disintegrate into sentence fragments as a result of displacing the verb "monte." Without the hierarchization of a larger syntactic pattern, the poetic fragments of "Soupir" are thrown into confusion since each fragment assumes-at least temporarily-equal weight and significance. Thus, any distinction between a single main preposition and subordinate material disappears and instead these fragments appear "juxtaposed in space" rather than part of an unfolding structured narrative. Though "Soupir" proceeds line by line, it cannot be understood in this sequence, and it is only when these fragments are considered spatially that possible interpretations begin to emerge. Frank's discussion ofT. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" is equally applicable to Mallarme's "Soupir": Syntactical sequence is given up for a structure depending on the perception of relationships between disconnected word-groups. To be properly understood, these word-groups must be juxtaposed with one another and perceived simultaneously. Only when this is done can they be adequately grasped; for while they follow one another in time, their meaning does not depend on this temporal relationship. (p. 14) To perceive "Soupir"'s "disconnected word-groups" spatially relies upon an internalized performance of the poem and the mental collaboration of the reader: during a silent reading, the reader can move continuously within the poem to reconsider each poetic fragment from different
150
vantage points. A nonlinear reading allows "Soupir"'s fragments to coalesce into comprehensible formations, despite their disrupted sequence on the page. Indeed, a nonlinear or spatial approach is vital to comprehension, as it unveils syntactic and semantic connections otherwise obscured within the poem. The internalized performance of Debussy's "Soupir" necessary for musical analysis is perhaps analogous to the internalized reading of "Soupir," in that both allow and encourage atemporal and anachronistic perspectives. Like the silent reader, the music analyst has similar opportunities to observe the composition in its entirety and in sequences other than its temporal sequence. Thus, the permutational analysisof Example 5 and its atemporal perspectives closely approach the nonlinear reading strategies and spatial considerations invoked in comprehending Mallarme's "Soupir." A corresponding spatial approach to a performance of Debussy's musical setting of "Soupir" is not possible due to its sequence of events, which reinforces the temporal sequence of the poem. Unlike the silent reading of a poem, where the eye and mind are free to reconsider and reconstruct, a musical performance does not accommodate such intellectual wanderings and the performer or listener must submit to the composition in its given sequence. Nevertheless, the fact that the sequence of events is fixed in performance (a fact which applies to works that are expressly mobile, such as Boulez's Piano Sonata) means that permutability remains a latent potential within the music. Though this potential is unrealizable in actuality,it does have a tangible effect: it makes the ordering that is given sound somewhat arbitraryor ambiguous. Yet Debussy's "Soupir" differs from Mallarme's "Soupir" in that the temporal sequence of the song is not entirely incomprehensible or discontinuous-as is the sequence of fragments in Mallarme's poem-but presents continuities of its own. Example 6 shows linear continuities that exist between consecutive sections of "Soupir"'s piano accompaniment. Recognizing the presence of linear connections between adjacent sections of "Soupir," however, neither diminishes the significance of nonlinear connections, nor does it inevitably lead to notions of musical progression or consequentiality. As Leonard B. Meyer observes in Debussy's compositional style: ... in the absence of emphatically goal-directed processes and conventional formal schemata, the ordering of successive events often seems problematic. Events come after one another, but they cannot be readily understood as following from one another.12
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Similarly,Debussy's setting of "Soupir" possesses linear connections that cannot be viewed as teleological. For example, in the linear analysis of Example 6, which traces registral strands in the song, E5 of section 3 is connected to F5 of section 4 by means of a slur. This does not mean that E5 strives toward F5 as it would, say, in the key ofF, as a leading tone that a listener would expect to resolve. The connection is merely one of salience: E5 and F5 connect because of their similar registral placement and musical reiteration. If the position of these sections were reversed or further separated in time as in the permutations of Example 5, E5 would still connect to F5-or vice versa-for the same reasons of salience. As suggested above, Example 6's linear analysis may tend toward Example 5's permutations implied by harmonic stasis. In the case of Example 6, however, it is nonconsecutive linear-registralconnections that promote a permutational approach. The voice-leading is saturated with linear connections to such a degree that salient pitches and pedal-points recall and look forward to many sections, not just those that immediately precede or follow. In the piano introduction (measures 1-8) all five registers are activated, because the opening motive repeats in five different registers. With the exception of the omnipresent tenor voice, these registral strands recur and are relinquished throughout the song. Voiceleading in each register, therefore, is continuous, though often not successively continuous: voices drop in and out, and their linear continuity often involves jumping forward or back to find the next or last reference to that particular register. For example, the voice-leading of the uppermost register drops out after section 3 and does not return until the final section of the song. Similarly, section 2 omits the bass register, which returns again in section 3, while the beginning of section 5 omits the three upper registers, which are reestablished at the end of section 5 and in section 6. The activation of the full registral range in the introduction and the recurrences of each registral strand throughout "Soupir" allow the voiceleading to be multi-directional: the use of all registers simultaneously means that, between random sections, there is usually a stepwise or common-tone connection between at least one of the registral strands. For example, section 1 could align smoothly with any subsequent section because each registral strand is in close proximity with-and therefore could potentially connect to-all other registral strands;the reiterated Et at the end of section 5 (measure 26) could dovetail to the El descant pedal of section 3 (measure 13); the sonority that closes section 6 (measure 30) contains many common tones that could link to the sonority that opens section 4 (measure 18); while the Al pedal and triplet ostinato
Debussy's "Soupir"
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that pervade the figurations of the piano accompaniment facilitate these, and many other, alternative orderings of "Soupir"'ssections. Two nonsequential connections exist within Debussy's "Soupir" that may have special significance with regard to Mallarme's "Soupir." In Mallarme's text, the prominence of the enjambed words "Monte" and "Et laisse" as well as the verb displacements and interruptions they effect, create springboards within the poem: "Et laisse," for example, could jump ahead to its infinitive complement "se trainer," while "Monte" could spring to any of the prepositional phrases beginning with "vers," and perhaps ultimately to the final statement of "vers l'Azur." In Debussy's setting, the metrical expansions of the vocal line give particular prominence to both "Monte" and "Et laisse," while the position of these words at the end of sections 2 and 4 respectively offer similar opportunities to jump to other sections of the song. Of the many connections implicit in "Soupir," two especially pertinent connections would allow "Monte" and "Et laisse" to jump past the interruptions they induce, and move directly to their syntactic conclusions. "Monte" of section 2 could spring forward to "Vers l'Azur," which opens section 4 and bypass the clause that describes the "melancholy garden" contained within section 3. In Debussy's setting, the unaccompanied vocal line that closes section 2 places particular emphasis on F# and G#, which could smoothly align with the G6 and Ab that open section 4 (See Example 7).
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EXAMPLE 7: HYPOTHETICAL
CONNECTION
BETWEEN
SECTION
(MEASURE 12)
AND SECTION 4 (MEASURE 18)
"Laisse" at the end of section 4 could spring forward to the infinitive complement "se trainer" that opens section 6 and bypass the clause contained within section 5. In this reordering of Debussy's setting, the triplet rhythm of section 6 enters in the final beats of section 4, with the quarter-note triplet in an animato tempo matching the eighth-note
154
if;
^
EtEt iisli-s se, .3 C3
13m.27
j
Se
trai-
1J
3
ner,
m.22
? r
rM-
EXAMPLE 8: HYPOTHETICAL CONNECTION BETWEEN SECTION 4
(MEASURE22) AND SECTION6 (MEASURE27)
triplet in the Plus lent of the final section (see Example 8). In addition, stepwise voice-leading would occur in the tenor voice, while a commontone connection would link the contours of the vocal line. Thus the modular construction of "Soupir," coupled with the placement of syntacticallyisolated words at the ends of sections, seems to suggest these connections while, in terms of harmony and voice-leading, they form only one of a number of possible nonconsecutive connections. Just as in Mallarme's poem-where the reader may cast about for all possible associations in meaning or syntax-so in the harmonic and linear fabric of the song connections are multiple, tenuous, and not necessarily successive.
IV Both Mallarme's and Debussy's "Soupir" illustrate how poet and composer undermine expectations of consecutiveness in their respective languages. In Mallarme's single-sentence poem "the effect," as Kenner states, "is to move our attention as far as may be from the thrust of subject-verb-object,"13 and Debussy's setting denies the thrust of an analogous musical syntax, embodied in motion toward a goal, climax, and resolution. Yet many musical analyses interpret "Soupir" in terms of a traditional dynamic shape. Two examples are Roy's assertion that:
Debussy's "Soupir"
155
Debussy chooses to see "Fidele" [m. 15] as the climax and sets it off with two simple major triads. . . . The greater melodic activity at "vers l'Azur attendri" . .. then extinguishes itself at "et laisse," returning to sighing, hesitating, motion until the end.14 and Avo Somer's claim that: Especially conspicuous is the tonally highly ambiguous passage that leads to the climax of the song in measure 20-22-a climax suddenly and diffidently deflected (ce'dez. ..).15 The moments that are isolated as "Soupir"'s musical climax may be localized high points in the individual arabesques of the vocal line, but they do not represent a culmination of the preceding music nor do they provide an irrefutable sense of climax. The fact that the two interpretations cited above differ on the location of "Soupir"'s high point-measure 15 and measures 20-22 respectively-is perhaps an indication that the concept of climax is inappropriateto "Soupir," since a musical climax should hardly be an ambiguous event. Indeed, Debussy's "Soupir" is devoid of dramatic elements in general: the piano accompaniment offers only slight gradations in dynamic between pianissimo and piano; the vocal line begins piano and from measure 13 onwards, is pianissimo throughout; and the slight fluctuations of tempo between sections do not indicate any increased momentum toward a particulargoal. Concomitant with the absence of climax in "Soupir," is a corresponding absence of resolution. For if "Soupir" proceeds with a series of equally significant musical ideas, then closure becomes an arbitrary,or at least an ambiguous event. BarbaraHerrnstein Smith's discussion of closure and anticlosure in modern poetry and music is especially relevant: The relation between structure and closure is of considerable importance here, for "anticlosure" in all the arts is a matter not only of how the works terminate but how and whether they are organized throughout. The "openness" and "unfinished" look and sound of avante-garde poetry and music is not a quality of their endings only, but affect the audience's entire experience of such works.16 In Mallarme's poem, anticlosure does not occur solely because of the content of the final lines-which drift into the abstractions of the "melancholy garden"-but because of a general lack of drive toward resolution that characterizesthe whole of "Soupir"'s ten lines. Mallarme's only concession toward closure is the return of the rhyming couplet,
156
presented intact in the opening lines but then denied throughout "Soupir" by enjambment and syntactic disruptions. By using a complete Alexandrine for "Soupir"'s last line and end-rhyme for "Soupir"'s final couplet, Mallarme creates auralunity to close the poem. In the musical setting of "Soupir," Debussy creates a sense of closure by slowing the tempo, returning to the focal pitches and harmony of the introduction, and repeating the opening motive to close the song. The return of pentatonic harmony in the final three beats of the song mirrors the introduction in that it is presented alone and not in alternation with its neighboring harmony, contrary to the regular alternation of harmonies throughout "Soupir." This isolation is compounded by the fact that pentatonic harmony on Ab occurs only in the introduction and the final sonority, further separating them from the more octatonic focus of the intervening sections. As a result, the final motive of "Soupir" sounds somewhat "tacked on," merely a brief, perfunctory restatement of the opening sonority and motive as a means to close the song. Thus, the methods of closure employed by both poem and song are limited in their effectiveness, though these limitations are features of a change of style, as Smith explains: any major stylistic development will on occasion create the same problem: that is, there will be something comparable to what we speak of as a "cultural lag," where elements of the older style will continue to appear, but now inappropriately, or where poets will attempt to solve the closural problems created by the new style with conventions that are no longer effective. (229) Debussy's repetition of the opening motive to close "Soupir" may represent a "culturallag," an anachronistic use of a recapitulatory gesture to conclude a composition that otherwise seems wholly unconcerned with notions of reprise or return. The motive has not grown or evolved since its statement in the introduction, nor does it grow or evolve to an inevitable conclusion. In fact, one could go so far as to state that the opening motive plays no part in "Soupir"'s subsequent musical ideas. Nevertheless, several commentators seize upon this closing motive as an indication of a motivic unity that has been expressed throughout "Soupir." Wenk believes that each rising contour of "Soupir" represents the opening motive and that "each section . . . contains some reference to the "Soupir" motive"17 and Roy states that "the sighing motive appears in various guises in the keyboard part."18 Furthermore, Roy believes that "the shape of the musical material to come is foreshadowed
Debussy's "Soupir"
157
in the motive,"19 a statement that underlines her adherence to an organicist ideology. Analyses like Roy's that interpret the reappearance of the opening motive as an indication of an underlying organicism in the song draw upon a musical-analytic tradition that is not wholly applicable to "Soupir" or many of Debussy's late works. "Soupir"-composed in 1913, between the second book of Preludes (1912-13) and the Etudes (1915)-belongs to a period of composition that was highly experimental with respect to musical form. Many of these compositions present an arrayof contrasting musical ideas in a nondevelopmental fashion. Often, these ideas bear little relation to each other and so create a discontinuous and highly-fragmented form that is fundamentally different from prevailing organic compositional procedures.20Though a less dramatic example of this compositional style, "Soupir" still exhibits the fragmentation and nondevelopmental presentation of ideas that characterize many of Debussy's late works. Indeed, Boulez goes further and isolates Debussy's late works (composed between 1913 and 1917) not only for their formal ingenuities but for embodying a new meaning of musical time: ... Debussy rejects any hierarchywhich is not implied in the musical instant. With him, often, musical time changes its meaning, especially in the late works. So the act of creating his own technique, creating his own vocabulary, creating his own form, leads him to overturn ideas which had hitherto remained eminently static: the fluid and instantaneous irrupted into music; and not merely the impression of the instantaneous, the fugitive, to which some have reduced it; but a genuinely irreversible, relative conception of musical time, and of the musical universe more generally.For in the organization of sounds this conception translates into a rejection of existing harmonic hierarchies as the sole property of musical reality; relations between objects are established by context, according to variable functions.21 Boulez's description of Debussy's rejection of hierarchy, and specifically his "rejection of harmonic hierarchies," aptly describes "Soupir"'svocabulary of static, repetitive, and nonfunctional harmonies. These harmonies do not enter into an overarching hierarchy but are significant only for the brief span of the musical idea-or what Boulez describes as "the musical instant"-in which they participate. Significantly, this leads to musical relations that are established by contexts and according to variable functions. While Boulez's comments here on "variable functions" are
158
tantalizingly vague-perhaps due to the large number of compositions to which he is referring-he elaborates further and more specifically in his descriptions of Debussy's ballet Jeux (1913): One must experience the whole work to have a grasp of its form, which is no longer architected, but braided; in other words, there is no distributive hierarchy in the organization of "sections" (static sections; themes; dynamic sections, developments) but successive distributions in the course of which the various constituent elements take on a greater or lesser functional importance. One can well understand that this sense of form is bound to run up against the listening habits formed by three centuries of "architectural"music.22 Again, Boulez emphasizes the lack of a "distributivehierarchy,"this time in connection with the organization of musical sections. But especially prescient are his comments on comprehending Jeux's form. Like Joseph Frankin his descriptions of spatial form in modern literaryworks, Boulez suggests a simultaneous musical approach to Jeux, stating that "[o]ne must experience the whole work to have a grasp of its form." Moreover, to use another of Boulez's perspicacious descriptions, the components of Debussy's form are "braided," which invokes the intertwining, multidirectional and simultaneous superimposition of ideas implicit in the permutational possibilities of both Mallarme's poem and Debussy's musical setting. Although Boulez's conception of musical forms that proceed in a nonlinear manner arises out of his own compositional technique, as manifest in the explicitly permutable form of works such as his Piano Sonata Number 3, his descriptions may have a broader impact if they are not understood as just a mode of construction peculiar to a few isolated pieces of new music, but as a way of listening to much modern music. Debussy's late compositions are obvious candidates for this way of listening since Boulez, himself, isolates them as important precursors for his formal experiments. Thus, the permutational analysisof"Soupir" jumps forward five decades toward Boulez's codification of permutational forms, which provide a new vocabulary-one that is far removed from nineteenthcentury dynamism and organicism-for discussing musical form, and moreover, one that embraces the multiple potentialities of Mallarme's poetry. In this way, the latent permutability of Debussy's harmonic and contrapuntal setting can correspond to the explicit permutability of Mallarme's poem.
Debussy's "Soupir"
159
NOTES
This is an expanded version of a paper called "Permutation in Mallarme, Debussy, and Boulez" given at the Music Theory Society of New York State in April 1997, at the Eastman School of Music. 1. Pierre Boulez, Conversations with Celestin Deliege, trans. Robert Wangermee (London: Eulenberg Books, 1976), 93-94. 2. Orientations: Collected Writings, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, trans. Martin Cooper (London and Boston: Faber, 1986), 371. 3. This translation is taken, with some modifications, from Mary Suzanne Roy, "Solo Vocal Settings of Texts by Stephane Mallarme 1842-1898" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison: 1979), 91-92. 4. French Symbolismand the Modernist Movement: A Study of Poetic Structures (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 107. 5. "Some Post-Symbolist Structures," in Literary Theoryand Structure: Essays in Honor of William K. Wimsatt, eds. Frank Brady, John Palmer, and Martin Price (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 384. 6. Arthur B. Wenk, Claude Debussyand the Poets (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 246. 7. Malcolm Bowie, Mallarme' and the Art of Being Difficult (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 8. 8. For octatonic classifications see Pieter C. van den Toorn, The Music of Igor Stravinsky(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 50-51. With reference to Debussy, see Allen Forte, "Debussy and the Octatonic," Music Analysis 10, nos.1-2 (1991): 126. 9. David Michael Hertz also observes this permeation of A;: ".. "Soupir" is characterized not by harmonic movement, but by harmonic stasis. A-flat (or its enharmonic equivalent G-sharp) is either present or implied in some way in every bar of the piece. A-flat is absorbed by the changing contexts of the other pitches, but it always hovers, a continuous droning pedal tone. .. ." See The TunMovement ing of the Word:TheMusico-LiteraryPoeticsof the Symbolist Illinois Press: 117-18. (Southern University 1987),
160
10. Jacques Scherer, quoted in Pierre Boulez, Orientations, 147. 11. Joseph Frank, The Idea of Spatial Form (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 12. First published as "Spatial Form in Modern Literature," Sewanee Review 53 (Spring/Summer/Autumn 1945). 12. Leonard B. Meyer, Style and Music: Theory,History, and Ideology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 270. 13. "Post-Symbolist Structures," 390. 14. "Solo Vocal Settings," 108-9. 15. Avo Somer, "Chromatic Third-Relations and Tonal Structure in the Songs of Debussy," Music TheorySpectrum17, no. 2 (1995): 233. 16. BarbaraHerrnstein Smith, Poetic Closure:A Study of How PoemsEnd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 242-43. 17. Wenk, Debussyand the Poets,251. 18. Roy, "Solo Vocal Settings," 108. 19. Roy, "Solo Vocal Settings," 108. 20. For more on this topic, see my dissertation "Interpreting Discontinuity in the Late Works of Claude Debussy" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University: 1997). 21. Stocktakingsfrom an Apprenticeship, ed. Paule Thevenin, trans. Stephen Walsh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 23. 22. Stocktakings,155.

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Debussy's "Soupir": An Experiment in Permutational Analysis Author(s): Marianne Wheeldon Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 38, No.

Perspectivesof New Music

Perspectivesof New Music

Perspectivesof New Music

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Perspectivesof New Music

EXAMPLE 4: HARMONIC COLLECTIONS

EXAMPLE 5A: PERMUTATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN BOULEZ'S PIANO SONATA NUMBER 3

Perspectivesof New Music

EXAMPLE 5B: PERMUTATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF DEBUSSY'S "SOUPIR"

Perspectivesof New Music

Perspectivesof New Music

Mon -te Mon-te

vers L'A-zur veir L A- ur

AND SECTION 4 (MEASURE 18)

Perspectivesof New Music

EXAMPLE 8: HYPOTHETICAL CONNECTION BETWEEN SECTION 4

(MEASURE22) AND SECTION6 (MEASURE27)

Perspectivesof New Music

Perspectivesof New Music

Perspectivesof New Music

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Wheeldon, Debussy's Soupir (PNM 2000)

Wheeldon, Debussy's Soupir (PNM 2000)