The "song triptych": reflections on a Debussyan genre

Code, D.J. (2013) The "song triptych": reflections on a Debussyan genre. Scottish Music Review, 3(1), pp. 1-40.

[img]
Preview
Text
68794.pdf - Published Version

11MB

Publisher's URL: http://www.scottishmusicreview.org/index.php/SMR

Abstract

Debussy composed eight sets of three songs between 1891 and 1913. Containing almost all the mélodies of these years, the series tracks his development from post-Wagnerian maturity to ‘late’ style.While we have several fine readings of individual songs, the distinctive ‘triptych’ form of the Debussyan ‘song cycle’ has received little focused analytical attention. One reason might be glimpsed in Susan Youens’s assertion that these little cycles are not as ‘musically unified as [those] of Schubert, Schumann or Mahler’. Indeed the few existing studies of these tripartite sets generally emphasize textual links over musical ones, often in service of a narrowly ‘narrative’ sense of unity.In this paper, I take a fresh look at the various kinds of textual and musical unity on view in this distinctly Debussyan genre. I begin with a contextual glance into visual culture of the time, which saw a striking revival of interest in painted or printed triptychs. Then, in testing how such ‘painterly’ orientation can qualify our sense of multi-part literary and musical form,I outline an allegorical reading of Debussy’s successive triptychs as an evolving response to the pressures of modernist music historiography.

Item Type:Articles
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Code, Dr David
Authors: Code, D.J.
College/School:College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts > Music
Journal Name:Scottish Music Review
ISSN:1755-4934
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2013 The Author
First Published:First published in Scottish Music Review 3(1)
Publisher Policy:Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher

University Staff: Request a correction | Enlighten Editors: Update this record