Bedeutung Maeterlincks                                                                          Debussys Idee vom Bühnenwerk
Darstellung der Charaktere                                                                    Debussys Behandlung der Leitmotive
Musik als Illustration                                                                               Einsatz von Klangeffekten
Umgang mit Ausdrucksgestaltung                                                         Französische Diskretion

In our brief analysis of Debussy's 'first period' vocal music, we have often made comparisons with Pelléas et MéIisande. This is because Debussy was to exploit all the experience he had gained in this domain when moving on to a more complex form - a music drama based on a play by Maeterlinck. More than seventy years have passed since the creation of this masterpiece of Debussy's, completed in principle in 1895*-the only additions to the final Version, besides a few corrections and revisions, were the Interludes composed to fill in the time taken in shifting scenery. Throughout the years, the work has been the subject of so many analyses and commentaries that we shall confine ourselves to recalling certain features essential for our argument, or which bring us back to the problems so often raised in the present chapter.

Was Debussy an dem Drama Maeterlincks gereizt hat
What had attracted Debussy in Maeterlinck's play had been, as he himself admitted, 'an evocative language whose sensibility might find its counterpart in the music and orchestral décor' . But it was not only a question of language: the art of Maeterlinck corresponded exactly to the ideal drama which Debussy described in his conversations with Guiraud quoted above - a drama which would have characters 'whose history and dwelling place would belong to no specific time or place', and who 'would not discuss, but would just endure, whatever life or destiny offered them.'
Debussy, in fact, rejected the traditional ways of differentiating characters and the rudimentary psychology of contrasting characters and situations - that sacrosanct rule of Opera which Wagner himself had never really succceded in overcoming. But to make, as Wagner did, 'the symphonic development responsible for the dramatic action' (17) did not interest Debussy; nor did the custom of presenting the dramatis personae so that the spectator can imagine them in real life and on the stage.

Debussy wollte nicht, wie Wagner, reales Leben auf die Bühne bringen
His ambition went further: he wanted to create a dramatic work which would reveal to us the characters' inmost thoughts and embody the forces which determine man's destiny, not in outward events, but in the man himself.

Übereinstimmungen mit Maeterlings dramaturgischem Konzept
Maeterlinck's theatre corresponds to some extent to this desire, because tlie drama is played out on two different planes at the same time. one external, consisting of the words and gestures of the actors, and the other internal, where the real action takes place which conditions the action on the stage. The actors' words and actions are only important in so far as they reveal the existence of ineluctable laws. The heroes act like persons in a dream. They do not know where they come from or where they are going. They are like blind men, or men with no will of their own whose destiny is governed by cruel and invisible powers. lt is these that are the chief characters in the drama.

This piece saw the rebirth, in a somewhat naive and schematic form, of the tragic view of life (a subject particularly dear to Debussy) which had been played down by 'scientism': here symbols and allusions play a predominant part, as does likewise the subconsciousness of the characters, their words, their sober gestures and their silences. Must we add that it was precisely these features that had attracted the composer, who thought that music had to 'express the inexpressible'. It had to be a drama of this kind to fire the imagination of the artist who wanted to free opera from the burden of worn-out formulae, and to 'de-Wagnerise' it by removing the Teutonic pathos and 'will to power'.

  Wie Debussy das Interesse auf diese Charaktere lenkt
What means did Debussy employ to bring to life the pale shadows of the _Maeterlinckian drama and persuade the onlooker to take an interest in their destiny? Apparently simple means that had mostly been employed before in his vocal music, proving his wide musical culture and refined taste. He makes a frequent use of recitative, which respects the inflections peculiar to the French language, but he does not become a slave to this formula. To grasp and transmit the hidden meaning of the words he turns recitative into an instrument of infinite flexibility, and does not hesitate to employ means already used by others, even by Wagner, while adapting them to his own personal style.

 Debussys andere Art der Verwendung von Leitmotiven
It has often been said - and still is today - that Debussy in Pelléas makes use of those Leitmotifs which he denounced so bitterly in the works of other composers. Such an assertion could only be made by someone totally incapable of understanding thc gulf that separates the world of Wagner from that of Debussy. With the former the Leitmotif have a dynamic character, their object being to cement the orchestral masses by giving them a thematic continuity, and also to underline the story. With the latter, on the other hand, the motifs (Maurice Emmanuel discovered thirteen in Pelléas) are static, and often fragmentary; they change according to the situation, the atmosphere of tlie moment and the state of mind of tlie principal characters. They have a different role to play, and are the result of a different way of treating the actual sounds. Vincent d'Indy had already noticed this difference, calling Debussv's motifs 'pivotal themes' whose function it was to disseminate clusters of harmonic rays.
With what object? To avoid that kind of clarity which Wagner aimed at in his Gesamtkunstwerk, in order not to conceal under too transparent musical symbols the obscure and ambiguous significance of men, things and situations.

   Für Debussy war Wagners Leitmotiv zu allgemein, vereinfachend
At the beginning of the first scene of the second act the flutes announce Pelléas ,but this motif will not appear again in exactly the same form, nor in a similar context, any more than will the motifs of Mélisande, Golaud, or the fountain in the garden; others only appear once.
One ofthe variants of Golauds motif is the same as that which accompanies the ring that Mélisande lets fall into the water; others intermingle and change colour and consistency, sometimes suggesting reality, at others only the idea of reality.
When the ring falls into the water, with the glissando accompanying its fall the tonal character of the music also fades away. Debussy does not rule out illustration altogether; if necessary he even resorts to traditional methods

   Debussy benutzt auch musikalische Bildhaftigkeit
as, for example, at the beginning of the second scene of the third act (p. 187 of the score) where the lower registers of the orchestra convey the gloomy atmosphere of the castle's vaults. In such cases the composer sometimes makes use of new sonorities,
as in the Interlude between the second and third scenes of the second act (p. 13 1 of the score) -where the strings and drums imitate the sound of the wings of a flock of great birds in flight.

        Ebenso nutzt Debussy zur musikalischen Dramatik Klangeffekte
Debussy also makes use of what are purely sound-effects in the Interlude which follows the second scene of the third act : the passage where Pelléas, emerging with Golaud frorn the darkness of the vaults exclaims: 'Ah, je respire enfin!' over a chord of the ninth .
But this is not an example of either romantic illustration or of naturalistic onomatopeia, to which Debussy only rarely has recourse.

Doch diese sind mehr als realistische oder naturalistische Beschreibungen
What interested him much more than the mere experiencing of phenomena was to associate them with thoughts and feelings. Thus, for example, the theme in arabesque at the beginning of the second act does not imitate the sound of the fountain in the garden.  It suggests fluidity in general and a certain freshness; but in other circumstances it could suggest something quite different. lt was by procedures of this kind, very simple in appearance, that Debussy gradually liberated music from the dense layers of traditional symbols, and thus restored to it its ambiguity.

    Debussy vermied Themen wie Tod und Liebe musikalisch zu überladen
He avoided romantic models, and the example of Wagner, especially when dealing with 'eternal subjects' such as Love or Death. The transports of love, sorrow and despair were, according to the time-honoured traditions of composition, a pretext for re-inforcing , expression' by all possible means. Debussy was the first who dared to rebel against the pundits and to replace romantic emphasis (whether Germanic or Slav) by a characteristically French discretion, without thereby detracting from the expressive value of the music.

In the first tableau of the third act , the big scene between Pelléas and Mélisande leaning from the window of the tower is conducted throughout, in spite of its emotional tension, over a  pianissimo orchestral accompaniment:

 Gerade emotionale Szenen werden zart und diskret musikalisch gedeutet
Wagner, to take only one example, would at this passage have driven the orchestra into a frenzy so that nobody could fail to grasp the nature of his hero's sentiments.

In the fountain scene  Debussy goes even further: at the moment when Pelléas and Mélisande confess their love the orchestra, which up till then had been playing forte, is suddenly silent, then re-appears, as if coming out of the shadows, ppp, to accompany Peléas's impassioned recitative (for it is, characteristically, a recitative and not an aria):

Debussy´s vocal music and the lyric drama of Pelléas et Mélisande its crowning glory, mark the beginning of the process of renovating the language of music and its symbolism.