Wheeldon, Debussy's Soupir (PNM 2000)

7/28/2019 Wheeldon, Debussy's Soupir (PNM 2000)

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Debussy's "Soupir": An Experiment in Permutational AnalysisAuthor(s): Marianne WheeldonSource: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 134-160Published by: Perspectives of New MusicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/833662 .

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DEBUSSY'S"SOUPIR":AN EXPERIMENT INPERMUTATIONALANALYSIS

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MARIANNEWHEELDONI

What attracted me in Mallarme, at the stage I had reached at thattime, was the extraordinaryformal density of his poems. Not onlywas the content truly extraordinary . . . but never has the Frenchlanguage been taken so farin the matter of syntax....What interested me was the idea of finding a musical equivalent,both poetic and formal, to Mallarme'spoetry ... this enabled me totranscribeinto musical terms forms that I had never thought of andwhich are derived from the literaryforms he himself used.1O F THE LITERARY FORMS that inspired Boulez, perhaps the mostinfluentialwas the one used by Mallarme in his last published work,

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Debussy's"Soupir"

Un coupde des(A throw of the dice). The most innovative aspect of Uncoupde des-and the one that provided a point of reference for Boulez'screation of variable forms and the composition of his Piano Sonata Num-ber 3 in particular-was its experiments with permutation and chance.While the title and content of the poem overtly address notions ofchance, reading and interpreting the poem also involve chance as a resultof typographicaleccentricities, which vary the placement, type-face, size,and amount of text on each of the twenty-one pages of the poem. Somepages present several configurations of text, while others present only asingle word. Certainwords and phrasesattract the reader's attention withcapital letters, bold face, larger fonts, or any of these in combination(Example 1). Because of its unorthodox presentation, Un coupde desper-mits severalreading possibilities:as there is no single linear route throughthe poem, each reading varies depending on the path the eye tracesacross the page.It is this availability of multiple readings in Mallarme's poem thatinspired Boulez to find a musical equivalent. Yet Mallarme was notBoulez's sole point of departure;he also cited Debussy's influence in thedevelopment of new musical forms:

Varese and Webernwere the first to learn the lesson of Debussy's lastworks and to "think forms," not-in Debussy's words-as "sonataboxes" but as arising from a process that is primarily spatial andrhythmic, linking "a succession of alternative, contrasting or corre-lated states"-that is to say, intrinsic to the object but at the sametime in complete control of it.2This article examines Debussy's late work "Soupir" (the first song ofDebussy's TroisPoemes de StephaneMallarme, 1913) from a Boulezianperspective, drawing specificallyon Boulez's preoccupation with the per-mutational possibilities of Un coupde des.In fact, Mallarme's Un coup de despresents visually what was alreadyinherent in much of his earlier poetry, including "Soupir" (1864).Despite their traditional appearance, Mallarme's earlier poems oftenintroduce such fragmented syntax that an understanding of the text ispredicated upon a comparable nonlinear reading. In moments of syntac-tic ambiguity the reader must cast forward and back for possible associa-tions in meaning and syntax, which often requires rereading previousmaterial in light of these newly acquired associations. Whereas the non-linear presentation of the text in Un coup de des makes explicit thenonlinear reading, in the more traditional forms of Mallarme's earlierpoems the same result is achieved by studiously fragmented syntax. In

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"Soupir," for example, the poem's syntax disrupts its metrical organiza-tion.

SoupirMon ame vers ton front ou reve, 6 calme soeur,Un automne jonche de taches de rousseur,Et vers le ciel errant de ton oeil angeliqueMonte, comme dans un jardinmelancolique,Fidele, un blanc jet d' eau soupire vers 1'Azur!-Vers 1'Azur attendri d' Octobre pale et purQui mire aux grand bassinssa langueur infinieEt laisse, sur l'eau morte ou la fauve agonieDes feuilles erre au vent et creuse un froid sillon,Se trainerle soleil jaune d' un long rayon.

SighMy soul toward your brow where dreams, o calm sister,An autumn strewn with freckles,And toward the wandering sky of your angelic eyeRises, as in a melancholy garden,Faithful, a white jet of water sighs toward the Azure!-Toward the tender Azure of pale and pure OctoberWhich mirrorsin great pools its infinite languorAnd lets, on the dead water where the tawny agonyOf 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 (aline of twelve syllables) are grouped in five rhyming couplets that alter-nate accented and unaccented rhyme. Yet the syllabic regularity of theAlexandrine and the aural unity of the rhyme are obscured by the factthat "Soupir"is a single sentence, which proceeds with minimal punctua-tion and run-on lines. That is, the enjambment of lines 3, 6, 7, and 8directs the reader's focus away from the end of the line and into thebeginning of the next, thereby concealing the regular pacing of the Alex-andrines and the auralstabilityusuallyprovided by end-rhyme.Instances of verb displacement in "Soupir" produce the nonlinearreading strategies outlined above. By placing verbs in positions contrary

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to the ones dictated by normal syntax, the reader is forced to consider"Soupir" in sequences other than the one given. One example occurswith the interpolation of lines 8 and 9, which separatesthe 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 OctoberWhich mirrors in great pools its infinite languorAnd lets the yellow sun drag itself out in a long ray.

The interpolation-"on the dead water where the tawny agony of leaveswanders in the wind and hollows a cold furrow"-twice interrupts theflow of "Soupir"'s conclusion: the first interruption occurs after "laisse"with the beginning of the interpolated clause, and the second with theresumption of the original sentence after its two line delay. The displace-ment of "se trainer" from "laisse" frames the interpolation, whichembeds a smallercomplete sentence within the largersentence.Another-and more dramatic-example of verb displacement createsthe incomplete syntactic patterns of the opening lines. "Soupir" beginswith a subject "My soul," accumulates prepositional phrases beginningwith "toward" (toward your brow, toward the wandering sky of yourangelic eye, toward the Azure), yet does not immediately present a verbof motion to join the two together. By delaying a verb, which should fol-low the poem's opening subject, Mallarme immediately creates syntacticconfusion. As John Porter Houston writes, with reference to Mallarme'sHerodiade:. . the reader's grasp of the syntax is momentarily enfeebled owingto the complexity of the language, and one almost has the feeling ofreading sentence fragments....4The experience of reading the first five lines of "Soupir"is similar.Thedisplacement of the verb "monte" ("rises") creates a succession of sen-

tence fragments that could be arrangedas follows:My soultoward your brow where dreamso calm sisteran autumn strewn with frecklesAnd toward the wandering sky of your angelic eyeRisesas in a melancholy garden

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Debussy's "Soupir"

faithfula 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 themsyntactically.Even when the verb "rises" appears, it does not connectimmediately with the surrounding syntax but is isolated in its context: asshown above, "rises" is itself a fragment unconnected to the precedingprepositional phrase or the following adverbialphrase. The displacementand isolation of the word "rises" necessitates moving among the frag-ments and images of the first five lines to find possible syntactic andsemantic connections. Yet jumping back and forth among these imagespresents a network of possible connections: the first sentence could readas "My soul rises toward your brow," but other constructions beginningwith the preposition "toward" offer other connections, such as "My soulrises toward the wandering sky of your angelic eye" and "My soul risestoward the Azure."Despite these ambiguities, Hugh Kenner, in his reading of "Soupir,"argues that there is a central image-or what he terms "kernel sen-tence"-to which everything is related and subordinate.5 Kenner viewsthe statement "My soul rises toward the Azure" ("Mon ame monte vers1'Azur") to be the kernel sentence. This reading, Kenner states, is sub-stantiated by the fact that each word of the kernel sentence "occupies arhetorical strong point where a line commences, while the previous con-structions in 'toward' have expended themselves in less prominentniches" (386). But even if one finds Kenner's thesis tenable, the frag-mented syntax of "Soupir" allows different interpretations of what con-stitutes its kernel sentence. For example, Arthur Wenk-who similarlyadvocates a central image in "Soupir"-interprets the ambiguous syntaxto mean "My soul risestoward your brow like a white jet of water sighingtoward the Azure" ("Mon ame monte vers ton front comme un blanc jetd' eau soupire vers 1'Azur").6 Both Kenner and Wenk produce their ker-nel sentences by casting about the first five lines of "Soupir" to gathertogether the necessary syntactic units. As Wenk states, "to understandthis poem more than superficiallyrequires considerable movement backand forth among the images to sort out their relationship" (246).Wenk's statement implies that one overall relationship exists betweenthe images of "Soupir."Perhaps,however, these images are not meant tobe "sorted out," as Wenk hypothesizes; rather, the fragmented syntaxand their potential interpretations are intended to remain in a state offlux. As Malcolm Bowie states, both the surfeit of possible readings and

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the moving back and forth among images that these readings entail cre-ate an important part of Mallarme'spoetic substance:Syntactic ambiguity gives each member of improbable word-chains ... an unusual independence and immediacy: each word is agravitational centre around which possible meanings of the entiresection gather. These virtualities will of course become fewer as wemove towards a relatively stable syntactic armature for the poem.But the meanings we relinquish do not simply disappear:the atmo-sphere of multiple potentiality which they create is part ofMallarme'spoetic substance.7This "atmosphere of multiple potentiality" provides the focus for thefollowing musical analysis.It is not the purpose here to align the discon-tinuities of "Soupir"with those of Debussy's setting, but rather to showthat similarprinciplesof formal flexibility and potential multiple readingsmotivate both the poem and its musical setting. Unlike Wenk, whobelieves that Debussy's musical setting is "an attempt to sort out the var-ious phrasesand clauses that complicates ["Soupir"'s] grammaticalstruc-ture" (249), I believe that Debussy's setting tries to imitate thepermutabilityof Mallarme'ssyntax.

IIIn his setting of "Soupir,"Debussy presents a succession of musical ideasthat bears little resemblance to traditional tonal forms. As shown by theannotated score (Example 2), changes of tempo and texture and, in thevocal writing, changes of tessituraand contour clearlyarticulate each ideaon the musical surface. These musical ideas do not repeat, develop, oraim toward a climax or resolution, but they proceed with no one ideahierarchicallymore significant than another. Each section of "Soupir"isequally intensive, musicallyautonomous, and nonteleological, so that thesections do not contribute to an overall contour or dynamic shape, butare more modular in their arrangement. This is especially noticeable inthe vocal line where each new melodic idea is initiated, completed, andthen relinquished, resulting in a succession of minute arabesquesratherthan one over-arching motion. Consequently, the vocal line rarelyrunssmoothly between consecutive sections, since each section produces abreakwith its predecessorwith a shift of tessituraand a new melodic con-tour. Since these sections do not connect smoothly or contribute to alarger dynamic shape, it would appear that melodic continuity or

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and octatonic collection I; and the final section moves from a harmonydrawn from octatonic collection III, through two sonorities foreign tothe octatonic harmony,which introduce AL and F respectively,to returnto the opening pentatonic configuration with its prominent Al and Fouter voices.With harmonies that are slow-moving, repetitious, and nonteleologi-cal, the piano accompaniment of "Soupir"also presents opportunities forpermutation, though for entirely different reasons. The lack of an overalllinear coherence between sections permits a potential reordering of thevocal line, whereas potential permutability between the sections of thepiano accompaniment is due, in large part, to the fact that none of theharmonies are goal-oriented and each nonfunctional harmony merelyalternates with its neighbor before moving to the next harmonic unit.Paradoxically, t is the harmonic stasis of the accompaniment that lends

itself to the mobility of permutation.The song's repetitive and nonteleological harmonies perhaps imitatethe freely associating, nonlinear strategies of Mallarme's "Soupir." Infact, this suggests that one might treat the form of "Soupir"in a manneranalogous to Boulez's Piano Sonata Number 3, which exploits the moreovert permutational practices of Un coupde des. To this end, Example 5presents an experiment in permutational analysis, with the sections of"Soupir" arranged in constellation to imitate Boulez's Piano SonataNumber 3 (Example 5a). The six sections of "Soupir,"when presented

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Debussy's "Soupir"

without specifying ordering, as in Example 5b, can be performed in anumber of different sequences. The confined ambitus of harmonic move-ment in "Soupir," the close relation between prominent pitch-centers,and the lack of harmonic progression between sections allow Example 5bto be performed in many permutations.

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

Unlike Boulez's constellation arrangement, which presents only eightpossible permutations, the static, nonteleological, and nonfunctional har-monies of "Soupir"permit a large number of virtual reorderings. In thisrespect, the permutabilityof Example 5 perhaps aligns more closely withMallarme's final experiments with chance in Le Livre (The Book), unfin-ished at the time of his death in 1898. In this work, Mallarme extendsthe elements of chance found within pages of Un coupde desto encom-pass the ordering of pages. The projected Livrecomprised a collection ofloose pages that could be read in any order, and Mallarme calculated theoverall structure so that any permutation would be viable. As a result,there would be a free association of ideas and ever-new possibilities ofinterpreting the work. As Jacques Scherer states in his essay onMallarme'sLivre:

Here we find, in opposition to the concept of history as enslaved tosuccession in irreversibletime, an intelligence capable of mastering a

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148 Perspectivesof New Music

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

subject by reconstructing it in all directions, including the reverse oftemporal succession.10The use of permutation and chance in Un coupde des and Le Livre isperhaps prefigured in the permutable syntax of Mallarme's "Soupir,"where interpretation similarly nvolves-albeit on a much smaller scale-"reconstructing [the poem] in all directions." Thus, Boulez's musical

response to Mallarme's Un coupde des-with the permutational possibili-ties of the Piano Sonata Number 3-suggests an analogous analyticapproachto Debussy's setting of Mallarme's "Soupir."The juxtapositionof autonomous musical fragments, their lack of causal connection, andthe consequent attenuation of musical sequence leads to the permuta-tional approach of Example 5, which eliminates musical sequence alto-gether and allows "Soupir"'s musical fragments to be placed in ordersother than their temporal order.

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Debussy's"Soupir"

IIIBoth the elimination of sequence and the juxtaposition of poetic frag-ments underpin the thesis presented in Joseph Frank's collection of essaysTheIdea of Spatial Form, which identifies a common trait of modern lit-erature: modern literary works are often designed so as to encourage aspatial approachto their reading rather than a consecutive one.1l Signifi-cantly,Mallarmeenters the discussion of spatialform in modern poetry asan example of one who radically"dislocated the temporalityof language"(p. 15). He, along with T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, attempted to:

undermine the inherent consecutiveness of language, frustratingthereader's normal expectation of a sequence and forcing him [or her]to perceive the elements of the poem as juxtaposed in space ratherthan unfolding in time. (p. 12)

Indeed, the idea of juxtaposition in space is especially pertinent to theseries of poetic fragments that open Mallarme's "Soupir."As discussedabove, the opening lines disintegrate into sentence fragments as a resultof displacing the verb "monte." Without the hierarchization of a largersyntactic pattern, the poetic fragments of "Soupir"are thrown into con-fusion since each fragment assumes-at least temporarily-equal weightand significance. Thus, any distinction between a single main prepositionand subordinate material disappearsand instead these fragments appear"juxtaposedin space" rather than part of an unfolding structured narra-tive. Though "Soupir"proceeds line by line, it cannot be understood inthis sequence, and it is only when these fragments are considered spatiallythat possible interpretations begin to emerge. Frank'sdiscussion ofT. S.Eliot's "The Wasteland" is equally applicableto Mallarme's"Soupir":

Syntactical sequence is given up for a structure depending on theperception of relationships between disconnected word-groups. Tobe properlyunderstood, these word-groups must be juxtaposed withone another and perceived simultaneously. Only when this is donecan they be adequately grasped;for while they follow one another intime, their meaning does not depend on this temporal relationship.(p. 14)To perceive "Soupir"'s "disconnected word-groups" spatially reliesupon an internalized performance of the poem and the mental collabora-tion of the reader:during a silent reading, the reader can move continu-

ously within the poem to reconsider each poetic fragment from different

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vantage points. A nonlinear reading allows "Soupir"'s fragments to coa-lesce into comprehensible formations, despite their disrupted sequenceon the page. Indeed, a nonlinear or spatial approach is vital to compre-hension, as it unveils syntactic and semantic connections otherwiseobscured within the poem. The internalized performance of Debussy's"Soupir"necessaryfor musical analysisis perhaps analogous to the inter-nalized reading of "Soupir,"in that both allow and encourage atemporaland anachronistic perspectives. Like the silent reader, the music analysthas similaropportunities to observe the composition in its entirety and insequences other than its temporal sequence. Thus, the permutationalanalysisof Example 5 and its atemporal perspectivesclosely approachthenonlinear reading strategies and spatial considerations invoked in com-prehending Mallarme's "Soupir."A corresponding spatial approachto a performance of Debussy's musi-cal setting of "Soupir" is not possible due to its sequence of events,which reinforces the temporal sequence of the poem. Unlike the silentreading of a poem, where the eye and mind are free to reconsider andreconstruct, a musical performance does not accommodate such intellec-tual wanderings and the performeror listener must submit to the compo-sition in its given sequence. Nevertheless, the fact that the sequence ofevents is fixed in performance (a fact which applies to works that areexpresslymobile, such as Boulez's Piano Sonata) means that permutabil-ity remains a latent potential within the music. Though this potential isunrealizablein actuality, t does have a tangible effect: it makes the order-ing that is given sound somewhat arbitraryor ambiguous.Yet Debussy's "Soupir" differs from Mallarme's "Soupir" in that thetemporal sequence of the song is not entirely incomprehensible or dis-continuous-as is the sequence of fragments in Mallarme's poem-butpresents continuities of its own. Example 6 shows linear continuities thatexist between consecutive sections of "Soupir"'spiano accompaniment.Recognizing the presence of linear connections between adjacent sec-tions of "Soupir,"however, neither diminishes the significance of nonlin-ear connections, nor does it inevitably lead to notions of musicalprogression or consequentiality. As Leonard B. Meyer observes inDebussy's compositional style:

... in the absence of emphaticallygoal-directed processes and con-ventional formal schemata, the ordering of successive events oftenseems problematic. Events come after one another, but they cannotbe readilyunderstood as following from one another.12

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Similarly,Debussy's setting of "Soupir" possesses linear connections thatcannot be viewed as teleological. For example, in the linear analysis ofExample 6, which traces registral strands in the song, E5 of section 3 isconnected to F5 of section 4 by means of a slur. This does not mean thatE5 strives toward F5 as it would, say,in the key ofF, as a leading tone thata listener would expect to resolve. The connection is merely one ofsalience: E5 and F5 connect because of their similar registral placementand musical reiteration. If the position of these sections were reversed orfurther separatedin time as in the permutations of Example 5, E5 wouldstill connect to F5-or vice versa-for the same reasons of salience.As suggested above, Example 6's linear analysis may tend towardExample 5's permutations implied by harmonic stasis. In the case ofExample 6, however, it is nonconsecutive linear-registralconnections thatpromote a permutational approach. The voice-leading is saturated withlinear connections to such a degree that salient pitches and pedal-pointsrecall and look forward to many sections, not just those that immediatelyprecede or follow. In the piano introduction (measures 1-8) all fiveregisters are activated, because the opening motive repeats in five differ-ent registers. With the exception of the omnipresent tenor voice, theseregistral strands recur and are relinquished throughout the song. Voice-leading in each register, therefore, is continuous, though often not suc-cessively continuous: voices drop in and out, and their linear continuityoften involves jumping forward or back to find the next or last referenceto that particular register. For example, the voice-leading of the upper-most register drops out after section 3 and does not return until the finalsection of the song. Similarly,section 2 omits the bass register, whichreturns again in section 3, while the beginning of section 5 omits thethree upper registers, which are reestablished at the end of section 5 andin section 6.The activation of the full registral range in the introduction and therecurrencesof each registralstrandthroughout "Soupir"allow the voice-leading to be multi-directional: the use of all registers simultaneouslymeans that, between random sections, there is usually a stepwise orcommon-tone connection between at least one of the registral strands.For example, section 1 could align smoothly with any subsequent sectionbecause each registral strand is in close proximity with-and thereforecould potentially connect to-all other registralstrands;the reiteratedEtat the end of section 5 (measure 26) could dovetail to the El descantpedal of section 3 (measure 13); the sonority that closes section 6 (mea-sure 30) contains many common tones that could link to the sonoritythat opens section 4 (measure 18); while the Al pedal and triplet ostinato

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Debussy's "Soupir"

that pervade the figurations of the piano accompaniment facilitate these,and many other, alternativeorderings of "Soupir"'ssections.Two nonsequential connections exist within Debussy's "Soupir" thatmay have special significance with regard to Mallarme's "Soupir." InMallarme's text, the prominence of the enjambed words "Monte" and"Et laisse" as well as the verb displacementsand interruptions they effect,create springboards within the poem: "Et laisse," for example, couldjump 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." InDebussy's setting, the metricalexpansions of the vocal line give particularprominence to both "Monte" and "Et laisse,"while the position of thesewords at the end of sections 2 and 4 respectivelyoffer similaropportuni-ties to jump to other sections of the song. Of the many connectionsimplicit in "Soupir," two especially pertinent connections would allow"Monte" and "Et laisse" to jump past the interruptions they induce, andmove directly to their syntactic conclusions. "Monte" of section 2 couldspring forward to "Versl'Azur," which opens section 4 and bypass theclause that describes the "melancholy garden" contained within section3. In Debussy's setting, the unaccompanied vocal line that closes section2 places particularemphasis on F# and G#, which could smoothly alignwith the G6 and Ab that open section 4 (See Example 7).

^ii ?> JP J)p ,Wj)i Mon -te veir LA- urMon-te versL'A-zur

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EXAMPLE 7: HYPOTHETICAL CONNECTION BETWEEN SECTION 2(MEASURE 12) AND SECTION 4 (MEASURE 18)

"Laisse"at the end of section 4 could spring forward to the infinitivecomplement "se trainer"that opens section 6 and bypassthe clause con-tained within section 5. In this reordering of Debussy's setting, the trip-let rhythm of section 6 enters in the final beats of section 4, with thequarter-note triplet in an animato tempo matching the eighth-note

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154 Perspectivesof New Music

1 3 - 1Se trainer,Et iis- se,t li- .3C3 3 3 3m.22 L ) m.27

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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 common-tone connection would link the contours of the vocal line.Thus the modular construction of "Soupir," coupled with the place-ment of syntactically solated words at the ends of sections, seems to sug-gest 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'spoem-where the readermay cast about for all pos-sible associations in meaning or syntax-so in the harmonic and linearfabric of the song connections are multiple, tenuous, and not necessarilysuccessive.

IVBoth Mallarme's and Debussy's "Soupir" illustrate how poet and com-poser undermine expectations of consecutiveness in their respective lan-guages. In Mallarme's single-sentence poem "the effect," as Kennerstates, "is to move our attention as far as may be from the thrust ofsubject-verb-object,"13 and Debussy's setting denies the thrust of ananalogous musical syntax, embodied in motion toward a goal, climax,and resolution.Yet many musical analyses interpret "Soupir" in terms of a traditionaldynamic shape. Two examples are Roy's assertion that:



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Debussy chooses to see "Fidele" [m. 15] as the climax and sets it offwith 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.14and Avo Somer's claim that:

Especially conspicuous is the tonally highly ambiguous passage thatleads to the climax of the song in measure 20-22-a climax sud-denly and diffidently deflected (ce'dez ..).15

The moments that are isolated as "Soupir"'smusical climax may be local-ized high points in the individual arabesquesof the vocal line, but theydo not represent a culmination of the preceding music nor do they pro-vide an irrefutable sense of climax. The fact that the two interpretationscited above differ on the location of "Soupir"'s high point-measure 15and measures 20-22 respectively-is perhaps an indication that the con-cept of climax is inappropriateto "Soupir,"since a musical climax shouldhardly be an ambiguous event. Indeed, Debussy's "Soupir"is devoid ofdramaticelements in general: the piano accompaniment offers only slightgradations in dynamic between pianissimo and piano; the vocal linebegins piano and from measure 13 onwards, is pianissimo throughout;and the slight fluctuations of tempo between sections do not indicate anyincreased momentum toward a particular goal.Concomitant with the absence of climax in "Soupir,"is a correspond-ing absence of resolution. For if "Soupir" proceeds with a series ofequally significant musical ideas, then closure becomes an arbitrary,or atleast an ambiguous event. BarbaraHerrnstein Smith's discussion of clo-sure and anticlosure in modern poetry and music is especiallyrelevant:

The relation between structure and closure is of considerable impor-tance here, for "anticlosure" in all the arts is a matter not only ofhow the works terminate but how and whether they are organizedthroughout. The "openness" and "unfinished" look and sound ofavante-garde poetry and music is not a quality of their endings only,but affect the audience's entire experience of such works.16In Mallarme's poem, anticlosure does not occur solely because of thecontent of the final lines-which drift into the abstractions of the "mel-

ancholy garden"-but because of a general lack of drive toward resolu-tion that characterizes the whole of "Soupir"'sten lines. Mallarme'sonlyconcession toward closure is the return of the rhyming couplet,

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presented intact in the opening lines but then denied throughout"Soupir" by enjambment and syntactic disruptions. By using a completeAlexandrine for "Soupir"'s last line and end-rhyme for "Soupir"'s finalcouplet, Mallarme creates auralunity to close the poem.In the musical setting of "Soupir," Debussy creates a sense of closureby slowing the tempo, returning to the focal pitches and harmony of theintroduction, and repeating the opening motive to close the song. Thereturn of pentatonic harmony in the final three beats of the song mirrorsthe introduction in that it is presented alone and not in alternation withits neighboring harmony, contrary to the regular alternation of harmo-nies throughout "Soupir."This isolation is compounded by the fact thatpentatonic harmony on Ab occurs only in the introduction and the finalsonority, further separating them from the more octatonic focus of theintervening sections. As a result, the final motive of "Soupir" soundssomewhat "tacked on," merely a brief, perfunctory restatement of theopening sonority and motive as a means to close the song. Thus, themethods of closure employed by both poem and song are limited in theireffectiveness, though these limitations are features of a change of style, asSmith explains:

any major stylistic development will on occasion create the sameproblem: that is, there will be something comparable to what wespeak of as a "cultural lag," where elements of the older style willcontinue to appear, but now inappropriately,or where poets willattempt to solve the closuralproblems created by the new style withconventions that are no longer effective. (229)Debussy's repetition of the opening motive to close "Soupir"may rep-resent a "culturallag," an anachronistic use of a recapitulatory gesture toconclude a composition that otherwise seems wholly unconcerned withnotions of reprise or return. The motive has not grown or evolved sinceits statement in the introduction, nor does it grow or evolve to aninevitable conclusion. In fact, one could go so far as to state that theopening motive plays no part in "Soupir"'ssubsequent musical ideas.Nevertheless, several commentators seize upon this closing motive asan indication of a motivic unity that has been expressed throughout"Soupir."Wenk believes that each rising contour of "Soupir"representsthe opening motive and that "each section . . . contains some referenceto the "Soupir" motive"17 and Roy states that "the sighing motiveappears in various guises in the keyboard part."18 Furthermore, Roybelieves that "the shape of the musical material to come is foreshadowed

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Debussy's"Soupir"

in the motive,"19a statement that underlines her adherence to an organi-cist ideology.Analyses like Roy's that interpret the reappearance of the openingmotive as an indication of an underlying organicism in the song drawupon a musical-analytic tradition that is not wholly applicable to"Soupir" or many of Debussy's late works. "Soupir"-composed in1913, between the second book of Preludes (1912-13) and the Etudes(1915)-belongs to a period of composition that was highly experimen-tal with respect to musical form. Many of these compositions present anarrayof contrasting musical ideas in a nondevelopmental fashion. Often,these ideas bear little relation to each other and so create a discontinuousand highly-fragmented form that is fundamentallydifferent from prevail-ing organic compositional procedures.20Though a less dramaticexampleof this compositional style, "Soupir" still exhibits the fragmentation andnondevelopmental presentation of ideas that characterize many ofDebussy's late works.

Indeed, Boulez goes further and isolates Debussy's late works (com-posed between 1913 and 1917) not only for their formal ingenuities butfor embodying a new meaning of musical time:... Debussy rejects any hierarchywhich is not implied in the musicalinstant. With him, often, musical time changes its meaning, espe-ciallyin the late works. So the act of creating his own technique, cre-ating his own vocabulary, creating his own form, leads him tooverturn ideas which had hitherto remained eminently static: thefluid and instantaneous irrupted into music; and not merely theimpression of the instantaneous, the fugitive, to which some havereduced it; but a genuinely irreversible,relative conception of musi-cal time, and of the musicaluniverse more generally.For in the orga-nization of sounds this conception translates into a rejection ofexisting harmonic hierarchies as the sole property of musical reality;relations between objects are established by context, according tovariablefunctions.21

Boulez's description of Debussy's rejection of hierarchy,and specificallyhis "rejection of harmonic hierarchies,"aptly describes "Soupir"'svocab-ulary of static, repetitive, and nonfunctional harmonies. These harmoniesdo not enter into an overarchinghierarchybut are significant only for thebrief span of the musical idea-or what Boulez describes as "the musicalinstant"-in which they participate. Significantly, this leads to musicalrelations that are established by contexts and according to variable func-tions. While Boulez's comments here on "variable functions" are

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tantalizingly vague-perhaps due to the large number of compositions towhich he is referring-he elaborates further and more specificallyin hisdescriptions of Debussy's balletJeux (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 isno distributive hierarchy in the organization of "sections" (staticsections; themes; dynamic sections, developments) but successivedistributions in the course of which the various constituent elementstake on a greater or lesser functional importance. One can wellunderstand that this sense of form is bound to run up against the lis-tening habits formed by three centuries of "architectural"music.22

Again, Boulez emphasizes the lack of a "distributivehierarchy," his timein connection with the organization of musical sections. But especiallyprescient are his comments on comprehending Jeux's form. Like JosephFrankin his descriptions of spatialform in modern literaryworks, Boulezsuggests a simultaneous musical approach to Jeux, stating that "[o]nemust experience the whole work to have a grasp of its form." Moreover,to use another of Boulez's perspicacious descriptions, the components ofDebussy's form are "braided," which invokes the intertwining, multi-directional and simultaneous superimposition of ideas implicit in the per-mutational possibilities of both Mallarme'spoem and Debussy's musicalsetting.Although Boulez's conception of musical forms that proceed in a non-linear manner arises out of his own compositional technique, as manifestin the explicitlypermutable form of works such as his Piano Sonata Num-ber 3, his descriptions may have a broader impact if they are not under-stood as just a mode of construction peculiar to a few isolated pieces ofnew music, but as a way of listening to much modern music. Debussy'slate compositions are obvious candidates for this way of listening sinceBoulez, himself, isolates them as important precursors for his formalexperiments. Thus, the permutational analysisof"Soupir" jumps forwardfive decades toward Boulez's codification of permutational forms, whichprovide a new vocabulary-one that is far removed from nineteenth-century dynamism and organicism-for discussing musical form, andmoreover, one that embraces the multiple potentialities of Mallarme'spoetry. In this way, the latent permutability of Debussy's harmonic andcontrapuntal setting can correspond to the explicit permutability ofMallarme'spoem.

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Debussy's"Soupir"

NOTES

This is an expanded version of a paper called "Permutation in Mallarme,Debussy, and Boulez" given at the Music Theory Society of New YorkState 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 MarySuzanne Roy, "Solo Vocal Settings of Texts by Stephane Mallarme1842-1898" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison: 1979),91-92.4. French Symbolismand the Modernist Movement:A Study of PoeticStructures(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, JohnPalmer,and Martin Price (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1973),384.6. Arthur B. Wenk, Claude Debussyand the Poets(Berkeley: Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1976), 246.7. Malcolm Bowie, Mallarme' and the Art of Being Difficult (Cam-bridge and New York:Cambridge University Press, 1978), 8.8. For octatonic classifications see Pieter C. van den Toorn, The Musicof Igor Stravinsky New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1983), 50-51.With reference to Debussy, see Allen Forte, "Debussy and the Octa-tonic," MusicAnalysis 10, nos.1-2 (1991): 126.9. David Michael Hertz also observes this permeation of A;:".. "Soupir" is characterized not by harmonic movement, but byharmonic stasis. A-flat (or its enharmonic equivalent G-sharp) iseither present or implied in some way in every bar of the piece. A-flatis absorbed by the changing contexts of the other pitches, but italways hovers, a continuous droning pedal tone. .. ." See The Tun-ing of the Word:TheMusico-LiteraryPoeticsof theSymbolistMovement

(Southern Illinois University Press: 1987), 117-18.

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10. JacquesScherer,quoted in Pierre Boulez, Orientations, 147.11. Joseph Frank, The Idea of Spatial Form (New Brunswick: RutgersUniversity Press, 1991), 12. First published as "Spatial Form inModern Literature,"Sewanee Review 53 (Spring/Summer/Autumn1945).12. Leonard B. Meyer, Style and Music: Theory,History, and Ideology(Philadelphia:University of PennsylvaniaPress, 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 ofHow PoemsEnd(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 242-43.17. Wenk, Debussyand thePoets,251.18. Roy, "SoloVocal Settings," 108.19. Roy, "Solo Vocal Settings," 108.20. For more on this topic, see my dissertation "Interpreting Disconti-nuity in the Late Works of Claude Debussy" (Ph.D. diss., Yale Uni-versity: 1997).21. Stocktakingsfrom an Apprenticeship, ed. Paule Thevenin, trans.Stephen Walsh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 23.22. Stocktakings,155.

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Documents

Wheeldon, Debussy's Soupir (PNM 2000)