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Nineteenth Century Musical Renaissance in France 21

Korsakov and Glazunov, Russian folk-songs and liturgical
music; and, almost more important for Debussy himself, the
gamelang orchestra at the 'Javanese village.' It was a pro-
vidential moment. Not only had Debussy himself just
returned, disillusioned, from his second pilgrimage to
Bayreuth. The Revue Wagnirienne was on its last legs and
ceased publication the next year. The crisis of Wagnerism
had passed among musicians, and was attacking the poets.
Chabrier is remembered now not for his Wagnerian
Gwendoline but for his succulent comic-lyric miniatures-the
Joyeuse marche, the Bourde fantasque, the songs and the oddly
original music to an old-fashioned opera libretto, Le roi malgri
lui, whichappeared in 1887. In 1887, too, an eccentric amateur
wrote a set of three short piano pieces which combined
harmonic experimentation with an entirely new, almost
ascetic simplicity of manner. These he called Sarabandes
and they were followed in the next three years by others
like them bearing mystical and high-sounding names of
very doubtful sense-Gymnopddies. Ogives, Gnossiennes. The
composer's name was Erik Satie and it was not long before
he met Debussy and a gifted Conservatoire pupil in his
'teens called Maurice Ravel. Once again a new picture forms,
a new grouping of names. Most of Debussy's friends were
anything but musicians, but one of his few composer friends,
Paul Dukas, spent a November afternoon in x885 with him,
comparing the masses of Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso;
and his chief work composed since his return from Rome
was inspired by Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Blessed Damozel.
What did all these incredibly heterogeneous interests por-
tend ?-from Javanese music to sixteenth century polyphony,
from Pre-Raphaelite exquisiteness to Russian folk-song,
Japanese prints and Symbolist poems ? Paul Dukas gives
us an idea of what the writers, at least, meant to Debussy. :
Verlaine and Mallarm6 and Laforgue (he writes) brought us new
colours and new sonorities. They cast hitherto unknown lights on to
the words they used: their methods were wholly novel and literature
was expected to produce effects whose subtlety and force had not as yet
been dreamed of. Above all, their approach to their material, whether
it was verse or prose, was that of musicians. The images and their
verbal expressions were treated and combined on fundamentally musical
principles.
Illustrations: ' Ballade des gros dindons,' by Chabrier;
'Gymnopddie,' by Satie, orchestrated by Debussy.
Escape from the art of the immediate past-yes, even from
the once beloved Wagner: that was Debussy's guiding
aim. But with Debussy something of Wagner's ideal of the

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