4 - Musical Continuities: Sonority, Exoticism and Abstraction

Summary

In Search of Sonorities

Léon Vallas explained the significance of the debussyste revolution to his Lyonnais audience thus:

With Debussy, instead of the broad melodic idea of Franck, infinite development, which is very intellectual, and the grand variation, in short, instead of the work being highly planned and solidly structured – all powerful food for the musical spirit – we find above all the possibly extreme search for the sonorous sensation, for sonority for its own sake, or, if you will, the sensation as a goal instead of sensation as a means … the revenge of the flesh on the spirit. And, from the perspective of the philosophy of art, Debussy has a considerable importance because he crystallises tendencies of an era that have until now been scattered.

Vallas claimed that Debussy had inaugurated a new way of thinking about music as an end in itself, which was distinct from a higher spiritual or moral purpose and devoted instead to the quest for the sensation sonore. At the same time he, like many other critics, warned against the dangers of imitation: such innovative and shocking attitudes towards music were acceptable in the hands of such an original composer as Debussy but should not form the basis of a school or movement. Ravel and his intimates, including Koechlin and Delage, defiantly ignored such warnings, creating, as the Introduction has explored, the Société Musicale Indépendante (SMI) as a new and independent institution for the promotion of artistic research into sonority.