Claude Debussy’s Dirge: The Sonata for Violin and Piano as Compositional Culmination

Claude Debussy’s Dirge: The Sonata for Violin and Piano as Compositional Culmination

CAITLIN MOEHRLE French composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) is widely considered to have been the pioneer of impressionist music, despite not personally embracing this term. The techniques within his compositions defied tradition with regard to harmonic treatment, approaches to instrumentation, and the conception music as depicting a specific image or scene. Although Debussy deviated from traditional musical forms throughout his life, ironically, in his final years, he turned to the familiar sonata form to structure his compositions. One such piece was the Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Minor, Debussy’s final completed work before his untimely death at age 55. Because of the physical and mental ailments that plagued him—compounded by the strife of World War I—composing this sonata was difficult for him. As is evident within the first movement, Debussy pointed toward a potential future for his compositions which never came to pass by incorporating musical impressionism and exoticism—past styles he had embraced— within his version of the sonata form. This sudden adoption of the sonata form at the end of Debussy’s life, paired with the integration of his unique style, reveals how the Sonata for Violin and Piano served as a manifestation of his tumultuous emotions as well as a greater culmination of his musical career. Debussy’s severe physical and mental turmoil in the latter period of his life and his subsequent decision to return to classical forms are most likely linked. From 1915-1917, Debussy’s correspondences reveal a downward trajectory for the composer. After his colon cancer diagnosis in 1909, Debussy “underwent a drug treatment, an unsuccessful operation, and radiation therapy” (Scoville 20). He expressed existential and depressive thought patterns in his letters, citing his exhaustion at the persistence of World War I (especially

Suture 16 the German bombings of France) and how he would “watch the hours go past, each the same as the other” (Lesure & Nichols). His disillusionment with the state of the world and the failing state of his own body may have pushed him to broaden his compositional horizon, perhaps combating these depressive spirals with the familiar art of structured musical composition. In 1915, he resolved to write six sonatas “for different groups of instruments and the last one will combine all those used in the previous five” (Lesure & Nichols). This shift to embracing a traditional style can also be traced to a newfound “nationalistic fervor” as a consequence of the Great War. Debussy sought to bolster support for the French arts as his country suffered numerous attacks, and, in the process, create a grand work to focus his efforts on in the final years of his life (Scoville 20). In these contexts, the Sonata for Violin and Piano served Debussy’s artistic goals during physical and mental turmoil and acted as a pillar to uphold the integrity of a war-torn nation. Despite Debussy’s disillusionment with his personal life and global affairs, he persisted through these hardships with the promise of a completed set of sonatas, a final magnum opus to anchor his efforts. The form of the sonata, and the first movement in particular, hearkens to an earlier classical style—a major departure from Debussy’s earlier, highly experimental, and most successful works. The hallmarks of Debussy’s earlier style included techniques such as chromatic melodies and wide ranges in dynamics in service of channeling highly specific images in music. In pieces such as La Mer (1905), a musical mural of the sea, or Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894), a forest soundscape with the fauns of Greek mythology, the listener embarks on a pre-determined musical narrative and can envision these specific titular images. Though Debussy maintained certain aspects of this style, “the late sonatas present a preference for a simpler neoclassical texture. The composer described this transition as “a return to ‘pure music’” (Scoville 23). ‘Pure’ music references the idea of absolute music, or music without any extramusical material—such as specific images

Suture 17 or pieces of art—serving as context or inspiration for a composition. During the 18th century, French composers like Joseph Bodin de Boismortier and Jean-Marie Leclair wrote solo and trio sonatas. These compositions were devoid of any sort of program or image in mind, and Debussy reflects this with his absolute sonata. There are three parts to the sonata structure, and Evans outlines those sections in Debussy’s piece as corresponding to those of traditional sonata form (i.e. exposition, development, recapitulation). Within each section, there are smaller sections with differing violin-specific techniques like “the subtle ornamentation and employment of harmonics and portamento techniques” (Evans 91). Even if this sonata is hardly as structured as those of Haydn or Mozart, the fact that there is a recognizable structure to the piece is notable when considering the avant-garde and unpredictable nature of Debussy’s earlier works written at the height of his career. Even though Debussy took inspiration from the classical French sonata form, the idiomatic nuances present in the violin part maintain styles reminiscent of impressionism and the improvised sound of folk, Spanish, and Romani fiddle playing—the antitheses of stricter classical styles. A favorite subject of impressionist composers was water and its movement; Debussy and Ravel both composed works centered around this theme. Scoville argues that the same musical techniques evocative of water pioneered by Ravel can be found in Debussy’s sonata. Both sonically and visually on the sheet music, Debussy incorporated wave-like motion, Like the calmer sections of Ravel’s ocean, the piano lingers on certain tonalities for unexpected lengths of time, with melodies on the violin employing special techniques, before more dramatic action returns and disrupts the tranquility. Indications for the violinist to play over the fingerboard (sur la touche) and a motive consisting entirely of artificial harmonics further contribute to the special color of the section. (Scoville 29) At 2:30 in the recording by Augustin Hadelich and Orion Weiss, the piano accompaniment rocks back and forth, while

Suture 18 the ethereal timbre of the violin floats above. At 1:17, Hadelich performs the slides as written in the score, a technique idiomatic to string instruments and often employed in impressionist works. The sonata is a piece of absolute music, but these timbral gestures which maintain “ambiguity in harmony” suggest the same image-provoking sounds of earlier impressionist compositions (Scoville 23). In a similar manner, gestures toward Spanish and Romani fiddle playing can be found in the section at 0:55, when the violin soars into its highest register on the E string and plays appassionato, or passionately. The open G string and chords after that section evoke the use of open strings and string crossings in fiddle music. Although Debussy sought to affirm the primacy of French music with a return to its classical forms, the specific techniques he used in this sonata reveal how deeply entrenched past styles such as impressionism and exoticism already were in his compositional style. He leaned on this past knowledge to create interesting textures within the restraints of the sonata form. The mixture of traditional and innovative techniques in Debussy’s sonata resulted in a composition unique from anything audiences had expected from one of the greatest composers of the time. Examining critical receptions of this sonata in tandem with Debussy’s personal opinion of his composition points to this piece as one written without much regard for what an audience might enjoy. Unfortunately, the sonata’s premiere was not incredibly well received, and “a young composer who attended it, Francis Poulenc, described the scene: ‘At [Debussy’s] entrance on stage, he was given an ovation, but at the conclusion [of the performance], he was met with only polite applause’” (Lesure, Moreno). Debussy’s reputation upheld itself, but the actual reception of his final piece did not meet the audience’s standards. Debussy accepted this, addressing that he “wrote this sonata only to be rid of it, and because I was spurred on by my dear publisher… This sonata will be interesting from a documentary point of view and as an example of what an invalid can write in time of war” (Lesure & Nichols). His nonchalant dismissal of his

Suture 19 own work is tragic when considered alongside the knowledge that this was his final composition and one of the last pieces he ever performed. Even if Debussy did not believe his work to be grand, due to the mental and physical trauma he endured while writing this piece, his integration of old and new music was a step forward in musical composition. As he relied on his personal musical tendencies throughout this suffering and meshed them with classical techniques, he unwittingly created an entirely new style of music in his repertoire. The sonata is undeniably a culmination of Debussy’s life experiences, encompassing the hardships of a composer who seemingly had all of his best, most critically acclaimed work behind him. Amid the throes of cancer, depression, and war, Debussy managed to piece together everything he had learned about composition into these late sonatas, and the Sonata for Violin and Piano in particular is the pinnacle of these culminating works. The initial motive in the first movement of Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano “opens, as it were, distantly and detached, at first restrained and hesitant,” “build[ing] up momentum and realiz[ing] its expressive-motivic potential only gradually” (Somer 84). If at first Debussy expresses his own hesitancy toward his unfortunate lot in life with this reluctant opening, by the end of the first movement, the violin asserts its independence and sonic power. Somer’s take is also an apt description of the sonata’s reception; while hardly critically acclaimed at its premiere, present scholarship and analysis by the likes of Evans and Scoville asserts the appreciation it has always deserved. It is a terrible tragedy that one of the greatest composers who ever lived died believing his final composition to be a failure. Surely, if Debussy were alive today, we could justify this sonata’s worth to him as a culmination of his career and on the basis that it masterfully captures the complex emotions of a tortured man, one who endured debilitating hardships to do what he loved best: create music.

WORKS CITED

Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (n.d.). Sonata. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved May 15, 2022,

Evans, Tristan. “Thesis and antithesis: Resolving the dialectique in the first movement of Debussy’s Violin Sonata.” Bangor University, 2014.

Hadelich, Augustin. “Augustin Hadelich & Orion Weiss play Debussy Sonata for violin and piano.” Youtube, uploaded by Augustin Hadelich, 1 September 2020.

Lesure, François. Claude Debussy: A Critical Biography. Boydell & Brewer, University of Rochester Press, 2019.

Lesure, François and Roger Nichols. Debussy Letters. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987. Moreno, Henri. “Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation: Distribution des prix, année scolaire 18761877.” Le ménestrel 43. no. 36, (5 August 1877): 281-84.

Scoville, John. “Crossroads: An Examination of the French Sonatasfor Violin and Piano Written During the First

World War.” University of California, Santa Barbara, 2021.

Somer, Avo. “Musical Syntax in the Sonatas of Debussy: Phrase Structure and Formal Function.” Music Theory

Spectrum,Vol. 27, No. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 67-96. Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Music Theory.