[iTf] 
 
 D28P3 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MUSIC 
 
Cornell University Library 
 MT 100.D28P3 
 
 3 1924 022 439 610 
 
Cornell University 
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 The original of tiiis book is in 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022439610 
 
DEBUSSY'S 
 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 

NEW YORK 
 G. SCHIRMER 
 
 1907 
 
DEBUSSY'S 
 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 A GUIDE TO THE OPERA 
 
 WITH MUSICAL EXAMPLES 
 FROM THE SCORE 
 
 BY 
 
 LAA^TIENCE gULMAN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "phases OF MODERN MUSIC," " THE MUSIC OF 
 TO-MORROW," "stories OF SYMPHONIC MUSIC," " EDWARD 
 
 macdowell" (in "living masters of music" series) 
 " Strauss' 'salome,'" etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 G. SCHIRMER 
 
 1907 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1907j BY G. SCHIRMEH 
 
 19959 
 
 X 
 
TO THE MEMOEY OF 
 
 GUSTAVE SCHIRMER 
 
 A MUSIC LOVEE OF LIBEEAL TASTE 
 
 AND SENSITIVE APPEECIATION 
 
 AND AN INFLUENTIAL FORCE 
 
 IN THE PROMOTION OF 
 
 THE FINER THINGS OF THE ART 
 
 TO WHICH HIS LIFE 
 
 WAS DEVOTED 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PiGE 
 
 I. DEBUSSY AND HIS ART 3 
 II. THE PLAY 
 
 ITS QUALIIIES 20 
 
 ITS ACTION 26 
 
 III. THE MUSIC 
 
 A REVOLUTIONARY SCORE 47 
 
 THE THEMES AND THEIR TREATMENT 56 
 
DEBUSSY'S 
 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
" It is not an ill thing to cross at times the inarches of silence 
 and see the phantoms of life and death in a new way. It 
 is not an ill thing, even if one meet only the fantasies of 
 beauty." — Fiona Macleod. 
 
w 
 
 DEBUSSY AND HIS ART 
 
 ITH the production at Paris in the spring 
 of 1902 of Claude Debussy's PelUas et Mk- 
 liscmde, based on the play of Maeterlinck, the his- 
 tory of music turned a new and surprising page. 
 "It is necessary," declared an acutfe French critic, 
 M. Jean Marnold, writing shortly after the event, 
 "to go back perhaps to Tristan to find in the opera 
 house an event so important in certain respects for 
 the evolution of musical art." The assertion strikes 
 one to-day, five years after, as, if anything, over- 
 cautious. PelUas et Melisande exhibited not simply 
 a new manner of writing opera, but a new kind of 
 music — a new way of evolving and combining 
 tones, a new order of harmonic, melodic and rhyth- 
 mic structure. The style of it was absolutely new 
 and absolutely distinctive : the thing had never 
 been done before, save, in a lesser degree, by De- 
 bussy himself in his then little known earlier work. 
 Prior to the appearance of Pelleas et Melisande, he 
 had put forth, without appreciably disturbing the 
 musical waters, all of the extraordinary and indi- 
 vidual music with which his fame is now associated, 
 except the three orchestral "sketches," La Mer 
 (composed in 1903-1905 and published in the lat- 
 
4 pell:eas et melisande 
 
 ter year), the piano pieces Estampes (1903), and 
 Images, Masques, Vile jmjeuse (1905), and a few 
 songs. Certain audiences in Paris had heard, nine 
 years before, his setting of Rossetti's "Blessed Da- 
 mozel " {La Demoiselle J^lue), a " lyric poem" for two 
 solo voices, female chorus, and orchestra; in the 
 same year (1893) his string quartet was played by 
 Ysaye and his associates; in 1894 his Prelude a 
 VApres-midi d\in Faune was produced at a concert 
 of the National Society of Music ; the first two 
 Nocturnes for orchestra, Nitages and Files, were 
 played at a Lamoureux concert in 1900; the third, 
 Sirhies, was performed with the others in the fol- 
 lowing year. Yet it was not until PelUas et Meli- 
 sande was produced at the Opera-Comique in April, 
 1902, that his work began seriously to be reckoned 
 with outside of the small and inquisitive pubUc, in 
 Paris and elsewhere, that had known and valued 
 — or execrated — it. 
 
 In this score Debussy went far beyond the point 
 to which his methods had previously led him. It 
 was, for all who heard it or came to know it, a 
 revelation of the possibilities of tonal effect — this 
 dim and wavering and elusive music, with its infi- 
 nitely subtle gradations, its gossamer fineness of 
 texture, its delicate sonorities, its strange and echo- 
 ing dissonances, its singular richness of mood, its 
 
DEBUSSY AND HIS ART 5 
 
 shadowy beauty, its exquisite and elaborate art — 
 this music which drifted before the senses like iri- 
 descent vapor, suffused with rich lights, pervasive, 
 imponderable, evanescent. It was music at once 
 naive and complex, innocent and impassioned, fra- 
 gile and sonorous. It spoke with an accent unmis- 
 takably grave and sincere; yet it spoke without 
 emphasis : indirectly, flexibly, with fluid and unpre- 
 dictable expression. It was eloquent beyond denial, 
 yet its reticence, its economy of gesture, were ex- 
 treme — were, indeed, the very negation of empha- 
 sis. Is it strange that such music — hesitant, eva- 
 sive, dream-filled, strangely ecstatic, with its wistful 
 and twilight loveliness, its blended subtlety and sim- 
 plicity — should have been as difficult to trace to 
 any definite source as it was, for the general, im- 
 mensely astonishing and unexpected.? There was no- 
 thing like it to be found in Wagner, or in his more 
 conspicuous and triumphant successors — in, so to 
 speak, the direct and royal line. Richard Strauss 
 was, clearly, not writing in that manner; nor were 
 the brother musicians of Debussy in his own France; 
 nor, quite as obviously, were the Russians. The im- 
 mediate effect of its strangeness and newness was, 
 of course, to direct the attention of the larger world 
 of music, within Paris and without, to the artistic 
 personality and the previous attainments of the 
 
6 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 man who had surprisingly put forth such incom- 
 mensurable music. 
 
 Achille * Claude Debussy was bom at St. Ger- 
 main-en-Laye (Seine-et-Oise), France, August 22, 
 1862. He was still a youth when he entered the 
 Paris Conservatory, where he studied harmony un- 
 der Lavignac, composition under Guiraud, and 
 piano playing with MaiTnontel. He was only four- 
 teen when he won the first medal for solfege, and 
 fifteen when he won the second pianoforte prize. In 
 1884, when he was in his twenty-second year, his 
 cantata, VEnfant prodigue, won for him the Prix 
 de Rome by a majority of twenty-two out of twenty- 
 eight votes — it is said to have been the unanimous 
 opinion of the jury that the score was "one of the 
 most interesting that had been heard at the Insti- 
 tut for years." ^Vhile at the Villa Medicis he com- 
 posed, in 1887, his Printemps for chorus and orches- 
 tra, and, in the following year, his setting of Ros- 
 setti's " Blessed Damozel," of which the authorities 
 at the Conservatory saw fit to disapprove because 
 of certain liberties which Debussy even then was 
 taking with established and revered traditions. He 
 performed his military service upon his return from 
 Rome; and there is a tradition told, as bearing upon 
 his love of recondite sonorities, to the effect that 
 
 * He no longer uses the first of these given names. 
 
DEBUSSY AND HIS ART 7 
 
 while at Evreux he dehghted in the harmonic clash 
 caused by the simultaneous sounding of the trum- 
 pet call for the extinguishing of lights and the sus- 
 tained vibrations of some neighboring convent bells. 
 From this time forward his output was persistent 
 and moderately copious. To the year 1888 belong, 
 in addition to La Demoiselle Elue, the remarkably 
 individual "Ariettes,"* six settings for voice and 
 piano of poems by Verlaine. To 1889-1890 belong 
 the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra and the strik- 
 ing "Cinq Poemesde Baudelaire" (LeBalcon, Har- 
 monie du Soir, Le Jet d^Eau, Recueillement, La 
 Mart des Amants). In 1891 came some less signifi- 
 cant piano pieces; but the following two years were 
 richly productive, for they brought forth the exqui- 
 site Prelude a V Apres-midi dhm Faune for orches- 
 tra, after the Eclogue of Mallarme — the first ex- 
 tended and inescapable manifestation of Debussy's 
 singular gifts — and the very personal but less im- 
 portant string quartet. In 1893-1895 he was busied 
 with PelUas et Melisande,^ and with the Proses 
 
 * A revised version of these songs was published fifteen years later, 
 in 1903, dedicated a Miss Mary Garden, inoubliable Melisande. 
 t M. Debussy sends me the information that, although the music of 
 Pelleas et Melisande was begun as early as September, 1893, he was 
 not finally through with it until nine years later. In the spring of 1901 
 the last scene of the fourth act (the love-scene at the fountain in the 
 park, with its abrupt and tragic close) was rewritten, and in 1902, 
 after the first rehearsals at the Opera-Comique, it was found necessary 
 to lengthen the orchestral interludes between the different tableaux 
 
8 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 lyr'iques, four songs — not of his best — to words of 
 his own {De Rive, De Greve, Be Fleurs, De Soir). 
 The next four years — 1896-1899 — saw the issue of 
 the extremely characteristic and uncompromising 
 Nocturnes for orchestra {Nuages, Fetes, Sirenes), 
 and the fascinating and subtle Chansons de Bilitis, 
 after Pierre Louys — songs in which, aptly observed 
 his colleague Braneau, "he mingled an antique 
 and almost evaporated perfume with penetrating 
 modern odors." The collection "Pour le Piano" 
 (Prelude, Sarahande, Toccata) — inventions of dis- 
 tinguished and original style — and some less re- 
 presentative songs and piano pieces, completed his 
 achievements before the production of Pelleas et 
 Melisande brought him fame and a measm-e of re- 
 lief from lean and pinching days. He has from time 
 to time made public appearances in Paris as a pi- 
 anist in concerts of chamber music; and he has even 
 resorted — one wonders how desperatel}'.'' — to the 
 writing of music criticism for various journals and 
 reviews. "Artists,'" he has somewhat cynically ob- 
 served, "struggle long enough to win their place in 
 the market; once the sale of their productions is 
 assured, they quickly go backward." There is as vet 
 no sign that he himself is fulfilling this prediction ; 
 
 in order that the scene-shifters might have sufficient time to change 
 the settings. These extended interludes are included in the edition 
 of the score for piano and voices, witli French and English text, pub- 
 lished in 1907. 
 
DEBUSSY AND HIS ART 9 
 
 for his most recent published performance,* the su- 
 perbly fantastic and imaginative La Mer — com- 
 pleted three years after the production oiPelleas — 
 is charged to the brim with his peculiar and potent 
 quality. 
 
 What are the more prominent traits of the mu- 
 sic of this man who is the product of no school, who 
 has no essential affinities with his contemporaries, 
 who has been accurately characterized as the "tres 
 exceptionnel, tres curieux, tres solitaire M. Claude 
 Debussy"? One is struck, first of all, in savoring 
 his art, by its extreme fluidity, its vagueness of 
 contour, its lack of obvious and definite outline. It 
 is cloudlike, evanescent, impalpable ; it passes before 
 the aural vision (so to speak) like a floating and 
 multicolored mist; it is shifting, fugitive, intangi- 
 ble, atmospheric. Its beauty is not the beauty that 
 issues from clear and transparent designs, from 
 a lucid and outspoken style: it is a remote and 
 inexplicable beauty, a beauty shot through with 
 mystery and strangeness, baffling, incalculable. It 
 is unexpected and subtle in accent, wayward and 
 fantastic in rhythm. Harmonically it obeys no 
 known law — consonances, dissonances, are inter- 
 fused, blended, re-echoed, juxtaposed, without the 
 smallest regard for the rules of tonal relationship 
 
 * The above is written in July, 1907. 
 
10 pell:eas et m:^lisande 
 
 established by long tradition. It recognizes no boun- 
 daries whatsoever between the different keys; there 
 is constant flux and change, and the same to- 
 nality is seldom maintained beyond a single beat 
 of the measure. There are key-signatures, but they 
 strike one as having been put in place as a mere 
 yielding to what M. Debussy doubtless regards 
 indulgently as an amiable and harmless prejudice. 
 His melodic schemes suggest no knovra model — 
 they conform to patterns which intertwine and melt 
 and are suddenly and surprisingly transformed; 
 they are without punctuation, uncadenced, irregu- 
 lar, unpredictable, indescribably sensitive and sup- 
 ple. There is a marked indifference to the possi- 
 bilities of contrapuntal effect, a dependence upon 
 a method fundamentally homophonic rather than 
 polyphonic — this music is a rich and shimmering 
 texture of blended chord-groups, rather than a pat- 
 tern of interlaced melodic strands. One cannot but 
 note the manner in which it abhors and shuns the 
 easily achieved, the facile, the expected. Its colors 
 and designs are rare and far-sought and most heed- 
 fully contrived; its eloquence is never unrestrained; 
 and this hatred of the obvious is as plainly sincere 
 as it is passionate and uncompromising; it is not the 
 fastidiousness of Aprecieux, but of an extravagantly 
 scrupulous and austei-ely exacting artist. 
 
DEBUSSY AND HIS ART 11 
 
 Here, then, is as anomalous an aesthetic product 
 as one could well imagine. In a day when magnitude 
 of plan and vividness of color, rhetorical emphasis 
 and dynamic brilliancy, are the ideals which preemi- 
 nently sway our tonal architects, emerges this reti- 
 cent, half-lit, delicately structured, subtly accented 
 music; which is incorrigibly unrhetorical; which 
 never declaims or insists : an art alembicated, static, 
 severely restrained — for even when it is most har- 
 monically untrammeled, most rhythmically fantas- 
 tic, one is aware of a quietly inexorable logic, an 
 uncompromising ideal of form, underlying its seem- 
 ingly unregulated processes. It is the product of 
 a temperament unique in music, though familiar 
 enough in the modern expression of the other arts. 
 Debussy is of that clan who have uncompromis- 
 ingly "turned their longing after the wind and 
 wave of the mind." He is, as I have elsewhere written, 
 of the order of those poets and dreamers who per- 
 sistently heed, and seek to continue in their art, not 
 the echoes of passional and adventurous experience, 
 but the vibrations of the spirit beneath. He is of 
 the brotherhood of those mystical explorers, of pe- 
 culiarly modern temper, who are perhaps most es- 
 sentially represented in the plays and poetry and 
 philosophies of Mr. Yeats and M. Maeterlinck: 
 those who dwell — it has before been said — "upon 
 
12 PELLlfeAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 the confines of a crepuscular world whose every phase 
 is full of subtle portent, and who are convinced (in 
 the phrase of M. Maeterlinck himself) 'that there 
 are in man many regions more fertile, more pro- 
 found, and more interesting than those of his reason 
 or his intelligence.'" It is an order of temperament 
 for which the things of the marginal world of the 
 mind are of transcendent consequence — that world 
 which is perpetually haunted, for those mystics who 
 are also the slaves of beauty, by remote illusions and 
 disquieting enchantments : where it is not dreams, 
 but the reflections of dreams, that obsess ; where pas- 
 sion is less the desire of life than of the shadow of 
 life. It is a world of images and refractions, of vi- 
 sions and presentiments, a world which swims in dim 
 and opalescent mists — where gestures are adored 
 and every footfall is charged with indescribable in- 
 timations; where,"even in the swaying of a hand or 
 the dropping of unbound hair, there is less sugges- 
 tion of individual action than of a divinity living 
 within, shaping an elaborate beauty in a dream for 
 its own delight.'' It is, for those who inhabit it, a 
 world as exclusively preoccupying and authentic as 
 it is, for those who do not, incredible and inacces- 
 sible. The reports of it, intense and gleaming as 
 they may be, which are contained in the sirt of such 
 of its inhabitants as Debussy, are, admittedly, little 
 
DEBUSSY AND HIS ART 13 
 
 likely to conciliate the unbeliever. This is music 
 which it is hopeless to attempt to justify or promote. 
 It persuades, or it does not ; one is attuned to it, or 
 one is not. For those who do savor and value it, it is 
 reasonable only to attempt some such notation of 
 its qualities as is offered here. 
 
 Debussy's ancestry is not easily traced. Wagner, 
 whom he has amused himself by decrying in the 
 course of his critical excursions, shaped certain as- 
 pects of his style. In some of the early songs one 
 realizes quite clearly his indebtedness to the score of 
 Tristan; yet in these very songs — say the Harmo- 
 nie du Soir and La Mori des Amants (composed in 
 1889-1890) — there are amazingly individual pages: 
 pages which even to-day sound ultra-modern. And 
 when one recalls that at the time these songs were 
 written the score of Parsifal had been off Wagner's 
 desk for only seven years, that Richard Strauss was 
 putting forth such tentative things as his Dmi Juan 
 and Tod und VerMdrung, that the "revolutionary" 
 Max Reger was a boy of sixteen, and that Debussy 
 himself was not yet thirty, one is in a position for- 
 cibly to realize the early growth and the genuine- 
 ness of his independence. Adolphe Jullien, the ve- 
 teran French critic, discerns in his earlier writing 
 the influence of such Russians as Borodine, Rimsky- 
 Korsakoff, and Mussorgsky — a discovery which one 
 
14 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 finds some difficulty in crediting. Later, Debussy- 
 was undoubtedly affected, in a slight degi-ee, by Ce- 
 sar Franck; and there were moments — happily in- 
 frequent — during what one may call his middle 
 period, when a whiff of the perfumed sentiment of 
 Massenet blew disturbingly across his usually sin- 
 cere and poetic pages. But for traces of Liszt, or 
 Berlioz, or Brahms, one will search fruitlessly. That 
 he does not, to-day, touch hands at any point with 
 his brother musicians of the elder school in France 
 — with such, for example, as the excellent and bril- 
 liant and superbly unimaginative Saint-Saens — 
 goes almost without saying. With Vincent d'Indy, 
 a musician of wholly antipodal qualities, he dis- 
 putes the place of honor among the elect of the 
 "younger" school (whose members are not so young 
 as they are painted) ; and he is the worshiped idol 
 of still younger Frenchmen who envy, depreciate, 
 and industriously imitate his fascinating and dan- 
 gerously luring art. He has traveled far on the path 
 of his particular destiny ; not since Wagner has any 
 modem music-maker perfected a style so saturated 
 with personality — there are far fewer derivations in 
 his art than in the art of Strauss, through whose 
 scores pace the ghosts of certain of the greater dead. 
 All that Wagner could teach him of the potency 
 of dissonance, of structural freedom and elasticity. 
 
DEBUSSY AND HIS ART 15 
 
 of harmonic daring, Debussy eagerly learned and 
 applied, as a foundation, to his own intricately rea- 
 soned though spontaneous art; yet Wagner would 
 have gasped alike at the novelty and the exquisite 
 art of Pelleas et Melisande, of the Nocturnes, even of 
 the comparatively early Prelude a PJjjres-midi d'^un 
 Faune; for this is music of a kind which may, in- 
 deed, have been dreamed of, but which certainly 
 had never found its way upon paper, before Debussy 
 quietly recorded it in his scores. 
 
 What is the secret principle of his method? — if 
 one can call that a "method" which is, in effect, 
 nothing if not airily unmethodical, and that prin- 
 ciple "secret" which is neither recondite nor per- 
 plexing. It is simply that Debussy, instead of de- 
 pending upon the strictly limited major and minor 
 modes of the modern scale system, employs almost 
 continuously, as the structural basis of his music, 
 the mediaeval church modes, with their far greater 
 latitude, freedom, and variety. It is, to say the least, 
 a novel procedure. Other modern composers before 
 Debussy had, of course, utilized the characteristic 
 plain-song progressions to secure, for special pur- 
 poses, a particular and definite effect of color ; but 
 no one had ever before deliberately adopted the 
 Gregorian chant as a substitute for the modem 
 major and minor scales, with their deep-rooted and 
 
16 PELL^AS ET MELISANDE 
 
 ineradicable harmonic tendencies, their perpetual 
 suggestion of traditional cadences and resolutions. 
 To forget the principles underlying three centuries 
 of harmonic practice and revert to the methods of 
 the mediaeval church composers, required an extraor- 
 dinary degree of imaginative intuition; purposely 
 and consistently to employ those methods as a 
 foundation upon which to erect an harmonic struc- 
 ture most richly and elastically contrived — to vi- 
 talize the antique modes with the accumulated pro- 
 duct of modern divination and accompHshment — 
 was little less than an inspiration. Debussy must 
 undoubtedly have realized that the familiar scales, 
 which have so long and so faithfully served the ex- 
 pressional needs of the modem composer, tend now 
 to give issue to musical forms that are beginning 
 to seem clichee: forms too rigidly patterned, too re- 
 dolent of outworn formulas — in short, too com- 
 pletely cry stallized. Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, and after 
 them the modern Germans and their followers, 
 found in a scale of semitones a limited avenue of 
 escape from the confinement of the modern diatonic 
 modes, and bequeathed to contemporary music an 
 inheritance of ungovemed chromaticism which still 
 clogs its progress and obstructs its independence. 
 Debussy, through his appreciation of the living 
 value of the old church modes, has been enabled to 
 
DEBUSSY AND HIS ART 17 
 
 shape for himself a manner of utterance which de- 
 rives from none of these influences. It is anything 
 but chromatic; indeed, one of its most striking 
 characteristics is its use of whole-tone progressions, 
 a natural result, of course, of its dependence upon 
 the old modes. Other contemporary Frenchmen have 
 made occasional use of Gregorian effects ; but De- 
 bussy was the first to adopt them deliberately as 
 the basis of a settled manner of utterance, and he 
 has employed them with increasing consistency and 
 devotion. His example has indubitably served to en- 
 rich the expressional material at the disposal of the 
 modern music-maker — there cannot conceivably, 
 in reason, be two opinions as to. that : he has acted 
 upon a principle which is, beyond question, liber- 
 ating and stimulating. And the adaptability to his 
 own peculiar temperament of the wavering and fluid 
 order of discourse which is permitted by the flexibil- 
 ity and variety of the antique modes is sufficiently 
 obvious. 
 
 His resort to Gregorian principles is, it has been 
 observed, far from being a matter of recent history 
 with him. Almost twenty years ago we find him 
 wiiting in the spirit of the old modes. Examine the 
 opening phrases of his song, Harmonie du Soir 
 (composed in 1889-1890), and note the felicitous 
 adaptation to modem use of the "authentic" mode 
 
18 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 known as the Lydian, which corresponds to a C-ma- 
 jor scale with F-sharp. Observe the use of the same 
 mode in the introductory measures, and elsewhere, 
 of his setting of Verlaine's II pleure dans mon coeur 
 (1889), the second of the" Ariettes."Five years later, 
 in Pelleas et Melisande, the trait is omnipresent — 
 too extensive and obvious, indeed, to require de- 
 tailed indication. One might point out, at random, 
 the derivation from the seventh of the ecclesiastical 
 modes (the Mixolydian) of the phrase in the ac- 
 companiment to ArkePs words in the final scene, 
 "L'ame humaine aime a s'en aller seule;" or the re- 
 lationship between the opening measures of the or- 
 chestral introduction to the drama and the first of 
 the "authentic" modes, the Dorian; or between the 
 same mode (corresponding to the D-minor scale 
 without accidentals) and Melisande's song at the 
 tower window at the beginning of the third act. 
 
 It remains only to be said, by way of conclusion to 
 this brief survey, that, for those who are disposed 
 to open their sensibilities to the appeal of this mu- 
 sic, its high and haunting beauty must exert an in- 
 creasing sway over the heart and the imagination. 
 It is making no excessive or invidious claim for it 
 to assert that, after one hsis truly savored its qual- 
 ity, other music, transcendent though it may de- 
 
DEBUSSY AND HIS ART 19 
 
 monstrably be, seems a little coarse-fibred, a little 
 otiose, a little — as Jules Laforgue might have said 
 — quotidienne. But, however it may come to be 
 ranked, there are few, I think, who will not recog- 
 nize here an accent that is personal and unique, a 
 peculiar ecstasy, a pervading and influential magic. 
 
II 
 
 THE PLAY 
 ITS QUALITIES 
 
 MAURICE MAETERLINCK'S Pelleas et 
 Melisande, published in 1892, stands fifth 
 in the chronological order of his dramatic works. 
 It was preceded by La Princesse Maleine (1889); 
 Ulntruse, Les Aveugles (1890); and Les sept Prin- 
 cesses (1891). Since its appearance Maeterlinck has 
 published these plays: Alladine et Palomides; In- 
 terieii/r; La Mori de Tintagiles: Trois petits drames 
 pour Marionnettes (1894); Aglavaine et Selysette 
 (1896); Ariane et Barbe-Bleue; Sceur Beatrice 
 (1901); Monna Vanna (1902); Joyzelle (1903). Pel- 
 leas et Melisande, dedicated to Octave Mirbeau "in 
 token of deep friendship, admiration, and grati- 
 tude," was first performed at the Bouffes-Paiisiens, 
 Paris, on May 17, 1893, with this cast: PelUas, 
 Mile. Marie Aubry; Melisande, Mile. Meuris; 
 Arkel,i.mi\e Raymond; Golaiid, Lugne-Poe; Gene- 
 vieve, Mme. Camee; Le petit Yniold, Georgette 
 Loyer. 
 
 "Take care," warns The Old Man in that most 
 simply touching of Maeterlinck's plays, Inth-ieur; 
 "we do not know how far the soul extends about 
 
THE PLAY 21 
 
 men." It is a subtle and characteristic saying, and it 
 might have been used by the dramatist as a motto 
 for his Pelleas et Milisande ; for not only does it em- 
 body the central thought of this poignant masque of 
 passion and destiny, but it summarizes Maeterlinck's 
 attitude as a writer of drama. "In the theatre," he 
 says in the introduction to his translation of Ruys- 
 broeck's I'Ornement des Noces Spirituelles, "I wish 
 to study . . . man, not relatively to other people, not 
 in his relations to others or to himself; but, after 
 sketching the ordinary facts of passion, to look at 
 his attitude in presence of eternity and mystery, 
 to attempt to unveil the eternal nature hidden un- 
 der the accidental characteristics of the lover, fa- 
 ther, husband. ... Is the thought an exact picture 
 of that something which produced it .'' Is it not ra- 
 ther a shadow of some struggle, similar to that of 
 Jacob with the Angel ?" Art, he has said, "is a tem- 
 porary mask, under which the unknown without a 
 face puzzles us. It is the substance of eternity, in- 
 troduced ... by a distillation of infinity. It is the 
 honey of eternity, taken from a flower of eternity." 
 Everywhere, throughout his most deeply character- 
 istic work, he emphasizes this thought — he would 
 have us realize that we are the unconscious prota- 
 gonists of an overshadowing, vast, and august drama 
 whose significance and denouement we do not and 
 
22 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 cannot know, but of which mysterious intimations 
 are constantly to be perceived and felt. The char- 
 acters in his plays live, as the old king, Arkel, says 
 in Pelleas et Melisande, like persons "whispering 
 about a closed room." This drama — at once his 
 most typical, moving, and beautiful perfonnance — 
 swims in an atmosphere of portent and bodement; 
 here, as Pater noted in the work of a wholly differ- 
 ent order of artist, "the storm is always brooding;" 
 here, too, "in a sudden tremor of an aged voice, in 
 the tacit observance of a day," we become "aware 
 suddenly of the great stream of human tears falling 
 always through the shadows of the world." ]Mys- 
 tery and sorrow — these are its keynotes ; separately 
 or in consonance, they are sounded from beginning 
 to end of this strange and muted tragedy. It is fall 
 of a quality of emotion, of beauty, which is as "a 
 touch from behind a curtain," issuing from a back- 
 ground vague and illimitable. One is aware of vast 
 and inscrutable forces, working in silence and in- 
 direction, which somehow control and direct the 
 shadowy figures who move dimly, with grave and 
 wistful pathos, through a no less shadowy pageant 
 of griefs and ecstasies and fatalities. They are little 
 more than the instraments of a mysterious wiU, 
 these vague and mist-enwi-apped personages, who 
 seem always to be unconscious actors in some se- 
 
THE PLAY 23 
 
 cret and hidden drama whose progress is concealed 
 behind the tangible drama of passionate and tragic 
 circumstance in which they are ostensibly taking 
 part. 
 
 "Maeterlinck's man," says S. C. de Soissons in 
 a penetrating study of the Belgian's dramatic me- 
 thods, "is a being whose sensuous life is only a 
 concrete symbol of his infinite transcendental side; 
 and, further, is only a link in an endless change of 
 innumerable existences, a link that remains in con- 
 tinual communication, in mutual union with all the 
 other links. ... In Maeterlinck's dramas the whole 
 of nature vibrates with man, either warning him of 
 coming catastrophes or taking on a mournful atti- 
 tude after they have happened. He considers man 
 to be a great, fathomless mystery, which one can- 
 not determine precisely, at which one can only 
 glance, noting his involuntary and instinctive words, 
 exclamations and impressions. Maeterlinck con- 
 sciously deprives nature of her passive role of a 
 souUess accessory, he animates her, orders her to 
 collaborate actively in the action of the drama, to 
 speak mysteriously beside man and to man, to fore- 
 cast future incidents and catastrophes, in a word, 
 to participate in all the actions of that fragment of 
 human life which is called a drama." This "rhyth- 
 mic correspondence," as Mr. James Huneker calls 
 
22 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 cannot know, but of which mysterious intimations' 
 are constantly to be perceived and felt. The char- 
 acters in his plays live, as the old king, Arkel, says 
 in Pelleas et Melisande, like persons "whispering 
 about a closed room." This drama — at once his 
 most typical, moving, and beautiful performance — 
 swims in an atmosphere of portent and bodement; 
 here, as Pater noted in the work of a wholly differ- 
 ent order of artist, "the storm is always brooding;" 
 here, too, " in a sudden tremor of an aged voice, in 
 the tacit observance of a day," we become "aware 
 suddenly of the great stream of human tears falling 
 always through the shadows of the world." Mys- 
 tery and sorrow — these are its keynotes; separately 
 or in consonance, they are sounded from beginning 
 to end of this strange and muted tragedy. It is full 
 of a quality of emotion, of beauty, which is as "a 
 touch from behind a curtain," issuing from a back- 
 ground vague and illimitable. One is aware of vast 
 and inscrutable forces, working in silence and in- 
 direction, which somehow control and direct the 
 shadowy figures who move dimly, with grave and 
 wistful pathos, through a no less shadowy pageant 
 of griefs and ecstasies and fatalities. They are little 
 more than the instniments of a mysterious will, 
 these vague and mist-enwrapped personages, who 
 seem always to be unconscious actors in some se- 
 
THE PLAY 25 
 
 they are still. . . . Shepherd! why do they not 
 speak any more? 
 
 The Shepherd (mho is out of sight) 
 "Because it is no longer the road to the fold. 
 
 Yniold 
 "Where are they going? — Shepherd! Shepherd! 
 — where are they going ? — Where are they going 
 I to sleep to-night? Oh! oh! it is too dark! — I am 
 going to tell something to somebody." 
 
 Always the setting, the accessories, reflect and un- 
 derscore the inner movement of the drama, and al- 
 ways with arresting and intense effect. 
 
 It tempts one to extravagant praise, this heart- 
 shaking and lovely drama; this vieille et triste le- 
 gends de la foret, with its indescribable glamour, 
 its affecting sincerity, its restraint, its exquisite and 
 unflagging simplicity. The hesitant and melancholy 
 personages who invest its scenes — Melisande, timid, 
 na'ive, child-like, wistful, mercurial, infinitely pa- 
 thetic; Pelleas, dream-filled, ardent, yet honorable 
 in his passion; old Arkel, wise, gentle, and resigned; 
 the tragic and brooding figure of Golaud; Little 
 Yniold, artless and pitiful, a figure impossible any- 
 where save in Maeterlinck; the grave and simple 
 diction, at times direct and homely in phrasing and 
 imagery, at times rapturous, subtle, and evasive ; the 
 
Missing Page 
 
THE PLAY 27 
 
 ' action of the play (which should be read in the ori- 
 ginal by all who would know Debussy's setting of 
 it) I shall adhere to the slightly altered version 
 which forms the actual text of the opera. 
 
 The characters are these: 
 Aekel, King of AUemonde 
 
 y half-brothers, grandsons q/" Aekel 
 Melisande, an unknown princess ; later the bride of 
 
 GOLAUD 
 
 LiTi'iiE Yniold, Son of Golaud by a former mar- 
 riage 
 Genevieve, Mother o/Telleas and Golaud 
 A Physician 
 Servants, Beggars, etc. 
 
 Act I 
 
 The opening scene is in a forest, in an unknown 
 land. It is autumn. Golaud, gray-bearded, stern, 
 a giant in stature ("I am made of iron and blood," 
 he says of himself), has been hunting a wild boar, 
 and has been led astray. His dogs have left him to 
 follow a false scent. He is about to retrace his steps, 
 when he comes upon a young girl weeping by a 
 spring. She is very beautiful, and very timid. She 
 would flee, but Golaud reassures her. Her dress is 
 
'28 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 that of a princess, though her garments have been 
 torn by the briars. Golaud questions her. Her name,i 
 she says, is Melisande; she was born "far away;" 
 she has fled, and is lost; but she will not tell her 
 age, or whence she came, or what injury has been 
 done her, or who it is that has harmed or threat- 
 ened her — "Every one! every one!" she says. Her 
 golden crown has fallen into the water — "It is the 
 crown he gave me," she cries; "it fell as I was 
 weeping." Golaud would recover it for her, but 
 she will have no more of it. ..." I had rather die at 
 once!" she protests. Golaud prevails upon her toj 
 go with him — the night is coming on, and she 
 cannot remain alone in the forest. She refuses, at 
 first, in terror, then reluctantly consents. " "Where ^ 
 are you going?" she asks. "I do not know. ... I, 
 too, am lost," replies Golaud. They leave together. 
 The scene changes to a hall in the castle — the 
 silent and forbidding castle near the sea, surround-| 
 ed by deep forests, where Golaud, with his mother 
 Genevieve and his little son Yniold (the child of his 
 first wife, now dead), lives with his aged father, Ar- 
 kel, king of Allemonde. Here, too, lives Golaud's 
 young half-brother, Pelleas — for they are not sons 
 of the same father. Half a year has passed, and it 
 is spring. Genevieve reads to her father, the an- 
 cient Arkel, a letter sent by Golaud to Pelleas. 
 
THE PLAY 29 
 
 'After recounting the circumstances of his meeting 
 with Mehsande, Golaud continues: "It is now six 
 months since I married her, and I know as little of 
 her past as on the day we met. Meanwhile, dear 
 Pelleas, you whom I love more than a brother, . . . 
 make ready for our return. I know that my mother 
 will gladly pardon me; but I dread the King, in 
 spite of all his kindness. If, however, he will con- 
 sent to receive her as if she were his own daughter, 
 light a lamp at the summit of the tower overlook- 
 ing the sea, upon the third night after you receive 
 this letter. I shall be able to see it from our vessel. 
 If I see no light, I ^hall psiss on and shall return 
 no more." They decide to receive Golaud and his 
 child-bride, although the marriage has prevented 
 a union which, for political reasons, Arkel had ar- 
 ranged for his grandson. 
 
 Again the scene changes. Melisande and Gene- 
 vieve are walking together in the gardens, and they 
 are joined by Pelleas. "We shall have a storm to- 
 night," he says, "yet it is so calm now. . . . One 
 might embark unwittingly and come back no more." 
 They watch the departure of a great ship that is 
 leaving the port, the ship that brought Golaud and 
 his young wife. "Why does she sail to-night.'' . . . 
 She may be wrecked," says Melisande. . . . "The 
 night comes quickly," observes Pelleas. A silence 
 
30 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 falls between them. "It is time to go in," says Gene- 
 vieve. "Pelleas, show the way to Melisande. I must 
 go 'tend to little Yniold," and she leaves them alone. 
 "Will you let me take your hand.?" says Pelleas to 
 Melisande. Her hands are full of flowers, she re- 
 sponds. He wiU hold her arm, he says, for the road is 
 steep. He tells her that he has had a letter from his 
 dying friend Marcellus, summoning him to his bed- 
 side, and that he may perhaps go away on the mor- 
 row. "Oh! why do you go away.?" says Melisande. 
 
 Act II 
 
 The second act begins at an old and abandoned 
 fountain in the park — the "Fountain of the Blind," 
 so called because it once possessed miraculous heal- 
 ing powers. PeUeas and Melisande enter together. 
 It is a stifling day, and they seek the cool tran- 
 quillity of the fountain and the shadow of the over- 
 arching trees — "One can hear the water sleep," 
 says Pelleas. Their talk is dangerously intimate. 
 Melisande dips her hand in the cool water, and plays 
 with her wedding-ring as she lies stretched along 
 the edge of the marble basin. She throws the ring 
 in the air and it falls into the deep water. Melisande 
 displays agitation: "What shall we say if Golaud 
 asks where it is?" "The truth, the truth," replies 
 Pelleas. 
 
THE PLAY 31 
 
 The scene changes to an apartment in the castle. 
 Golaud lies upon a bed, with Melisande bending 
 over him. He has been wounded while hunting. 
 Melisande is compassionate, perhaps remorseful. 
 She too, she confesses, is ill, unhappy, though she 
 will not tell Golaud what it is that ails her. Her 
 husband discovers the absence of her wedding-ring, 
 and harshly, suspiciously, asks where it is. Meli- 
 sande, confused and terrified, dissembles, and an- 
 swers that she must have lost it in a grotto by the 
 seashore, when she went there in the morning to 
 pick shells for little Yniold. She is sure it is there. 
 Golaud bids her go at once and search for it. She 
 fears to go alone, and he suggests that she ask 
 Pelleas to accompany her. 
 
 The next scene discovers Melisande with Pelleas 
 in the grotto. They are deeply agitated. It is very 
 dark, but Pelleas describes to her the look of the 
 place, for, he tells her, she must be able to answer 
 Golaud if he should question her. The moon breaks 
 through the clouds and illumines brightly the in- 
 terior, revealing three old and white-haired beggars 
 asleep against a ledge of rock. Mehsande is uneasy, 
 and would go. They depart in silence. 
 
32 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 Act III 
 
 The opening scene of the third act shows the ex- 
 terior of one of the towers of the castle, with a wind- 
 ing staircase passing beneath a window at which sits 
 Melisande, combing her unbound hair, and singing 
 in the starlit darkness — "like a beautiful strange 
 bird," says Pelleas, who enters by the winding stair. 
 He entreats her to lean further forward out of the 
 window, that he may come closer, that he may 
 touch her hand ; for, he says, he is leaving on the 
 morrow. She leans further out, telling him that he 
 may take her hand if he wiU promise not to leave on 
 the next day. Suddenly her long tresses fall over her 
 head and stream about PeUeas. He is enraptured 
 "I have never seen such hair as youi-s, Melisande! 
 See ! see ! Though it comes from so high, it floods me 
 to the heai't! . . . And it is sweet, sweet as thou^ 
 it fell from heaven ! . . . I can no longer see the sky 
 
 through your locks My two hands can no longer 
 
 hold them They are alive like birds in my hands. 
 
 And they love me, they love me more than yon 
 do !" Melisande begs to be released. PeUeas kisses 
 
 the enveloping tresses "Do you hear my kisses? 
 
 — They mount along your hair." Doves come from 
 the tower — Melisande's doves — and fly aboutthem. 
 They are frightened, and are flying away. "Thej 
 
THE PLAY 33 
 
 will be lost in the dark!" laments Melisande. Go- 
 laud enters by the winding stair, and surprises 
 them, Melisande is entrapped by her hair, which is 
 caught in the branches of a tree. "What are you 
 doing here?" asks Golaud. They are confused, and 
 stammer inarticulately. "Melisande, do not lean so 
 far out of the window," cautions her husband. "Do 
 you not know how late it is? It is almost mid- 
 night. Do not play so in the darkness. You are a 
 pair of childi-en!" He laughs nervously. "What 
 children ! " 
 
 He and Pelleas go out, and the scene shifts to 
 the vaults in the depths under the castle, — dank, 
 unwholesome depths, that exhale an odor of death, 
 where the darkness is "like poisoned slime." Golaud 
 leads his brother through the vaults, which Pelleas 
 had seen only once, long ago. "Here is the stagnant 
 water of which I spoke; do you smell the death- 
 odor? — That is what I wanted you to perceive," in- 
 sinuates Golaud. "Let us go to the edge of this 
 overhanging rock, and do you lean over a little. You 
 will feel it in your face. . , . Lean over; have no fear; 
 ... I wiU hold you . . . give me . . . no, no, not your 
 hand, it might slip . . . Your arm, your arm ! Do 
 you see down into the abyss, Pelleas ?" " Yes, I think 
 I can see to the bottom of the abyss," rejoins Pelleas. 
 "Is it the light that trembles so?" He straightens 
 
34 PELLEAS ET M^LISANDE 
 
 up, turns, and looks at Golaud. "Yes, it is the lan- 
 tern," answers Melisande's husband, his voice shak- 
 ing. "See — I moved it to throw light on the walls." 
 
 " I stifle here Let us go ! " exclaims Pelleas. They 
 
 leave in silence. 
 
 The succeeding scene shows them on a terrace at 
 the exit of the vaults. Golaud warns Pelle'as. " About 
 Melisande: I overheard what passed and what was 
 said last night. I realize that it was but child's play; 
 but it must not be repeated. . . . She is very deli- 
 cate, and it is necessary to be more than usually 
 careful, as she is perhaps with child, and the least 
 emotion might cause serious results. It is not the 
 first time I have noticed that there might be some- 
 thing between you. . . . You are older than she ; it 
 will suffice to have said this to you. Avoid her as 
 much as possible, though not too pointedly." 
 
 The next scene passes before the castle. Golaud 
 and his little son Yniold, the innocent plajrfellow 
 of Melisande and Pelleas, are together. Golaud 
 questions him. "You are alwaj's with mama. . . . 
 See, we are just under mama's window now. She may 
 be saying her prayers at this moment. . . . Tell 
 me, Yniold, she is often with your uncle Pelleas, 
 is she not.?" The child's naive answers inflame his 
 jealousy, confirm his suspicions, though they baffle 
 him. "Do they never tell you to go and play some- 
 
THE PLAY 35 
 
 where else?" he asks. "No, papa, they are afraid 
 when I am not with them. . . . They always weep in 
 the dark. . . . That makes one weep, too. . . . She is 
 pale, papa." "Ah! ah !... patience, my God, pa- 
 tience!" cries the anguished Golaud. . . . "They kiss 
 each other sometimes ? " he queries. " Yes . . . yes ; . . . 
 once . . . when it rained." "They kissed each other.? 
 — But how, how did they kiss.?" "So, papa, so!" 
 laughs the boy, and then cries out as he is pricked 
 by his father's beard. " Oh, your beard ! . . . It 
 pricks ! It is getting all gray, papa ; and your hair, 
 too — all gray, all gray!" Suddenly the window 
 under which they are sitting is illuminated, and 
 the light falls upon them. "Oh, mama has lit her 
 lamp!" exclaims Yniold. "Yes," observes Golaud; 
 "it begins to grow light." Yniold wishes to go, but 
 Golaud restrains him. "Let us stay here in the 
 shadow a little longer. . . . One cannot tell, yet. . . . 
 I think Pelleas is mad!" he exclaims violently. He 
 lifts Yniold up to the window, cautioning him to 
 make no noise, and asks him what he sees. The 
 child reports that Melisande is there, and that his 
 uncle Pelleas is there, too. "What are they doing.? 
 Are they near each other.?" "They are looking at 
 the light." "They do not say anything.?" "No, 
 
 papa, they do not close their eyes Oh ! oh ! . . , 
 
 I am terribly afraid!" "Why, what are you afraid 
 
36 PELLlfeAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 of ?— look ! look ! " demands Golaud. " Oh, oh ! I am 
 going to cry, papa! — let me down! let me down!" 
 insists Yniold, in nameless terror. 
 
 ActIV 
 Melisande and Pelleas meet in an apartment in the 
 castle. Pelleas is about to leave, to travel, he teUs 
 her, now that his father is recovering; but before 
 he goes he must see her alone — he must speak to 
 her that night. He asks that she meet him in the 
 park, at the "Fountain of the Blind." It will be the 
 last night, he says, and she will see him no more. 
 Melisande consents to meet him, but she wiU not 
 hear of his going away. "I shall see you always; I 
 shall look upon you always," she tells him. " You will 
 look in vain," says Pelleas; "I shall try to go very 
 far away." They separate. Arkel enters. He tells 
 Melisande that he has pitied her since she came to 
 the castle: "I observed you. You were listless — 
 but with the strange, astray look of one who, in 
 the sunlight, in a beautiful garden, awaits ever a 
 great misfortune. — I cannot explain. — But I was 
 sad to see you thus. Come here ; why do you stay there 
 mute and with downcast eyes.!" — I have kissed 3'ou 
 but once hitherto, the day of your coming; and yet 
 the old need sometimes to touch with their lips a 
 woman's forehead or the cheek of a child, that they 
 
THE PLAY 37 
 
 may still keep their faith in the freshnesis of life 
 and avert for a moment the menaces of death. Are 
 you afraid of my old lips? How I have pitied you 
 these months ! " She tells him that she has not been 
 unhappy. But perhaps, he says, she is of those who 
 are unhappy without knowing it. Golaud enters, 
 ferocious and distraught. He has blood on his fore- 
 head. It is nothing, he says — he has passed through 
 a thicket of thorns. Melisande would wipe his brow. 
 He repulses her fiercely. "I will not have you touch 
 me, do you understand.?" he cries. "I came to get 
 my sword." "It is here, on the prie-Dieu," says 
 Melisande, and she brings it to him. "Why do you 
 tremble so.?" he says to her. "I am not going to 
 kill you. — You hope to see something in my eyes 
 without my seeing anything in yours ? Do you sup- 
 pose I may know something?" He turns to Arkel. 
 "Do you see those great eyes? — it is as if they 
 gloried in their power." "I see," responds Arkel, 
 "only a great innocence." "A great innocence!" 
 cries Golaud wildly. "They are more than inno- 
 cent! . . . They are purer than the eyes of a lamb. — 
 They might teach God lessons in innocence ! A great 
 innocence ! Listen ! I am so near them that I can feel 
 the freshness of their lashes when they close — and 
 yet I am less far from the great secrets of the other 
 world than from the smallest secret of those eyes! 
 
38 PELL^AS ET MELISANDE 
 
 —A great innocence? — More than innocence! One 
 would say that the angels of heaven celebrated there 
 an unceasing baptism. I know those eyes! I have 
 seen them at their work ! Close them ! close them ! or 
 I shall close them forever ! — You need not put your 
 right hand to your throat so; I am saying a very 
 simple thing — I have no concealed meaning. If I had, 
 why should I not speak it .'^ Ah ! — do not attempt to 
 flee! — Here! — Give me that hand! — Ah! your 
 hands are too hot ! — Away ! the touch of your flesh 
 disgusts me! — Here! — You shall not escape me 
 now!" He seizes her by the hair. "Down on your 
 knees! On your knees before me! — Ah! your long 
 hair is of some use at last!" He throws her from 
 side to side, holding her by her hair. "Right, left! 
 — Left, right! — Absalom! Absalom! — Forward! 
 now back! To the ground! to the ground! Ha! ha! 
 you see, I laugh already like an imbecile!" Arkel, 
 running up, seeks to restrain him. Golaud affects a 
 sudden and disdainful calmness. "You are free to 
 act as you please," he says. — "It is of no conse- 
 quence to me. — I am too old to care; and, besides, 
 I am not a spy. I shall await my chance; and then 
 ... Oh! then! ... I shall simply act as custom de- 
 mands." "What is the matter.? — Is he drunk.''" 
 asks Arkel. "No, no!" cries Melisande, weeping. 
 " He hates me — and I am so wretched ! so wretched !" 
 
THE PLAY 39 
 
 "If I were God," ruminates the aged king, "how in- 
 finitely I should pity the hearts of men!" 
 
 The scene changes once more to the fountain in 
 the park. Yniold is discovered seeking to move 
 a great rock behind which his golden ball has 
 rolled. Night is coming on. The distant bleating of 
 sheep is heard. Yniold looks over the edge of the 
 terrace and sees the flock crowding along the road. 
 Suddenly they cease their crying. Yniold calls to 
 the shepherd. "Why do they not speak any more.?" 
 "Because," answers the shepherd, who is concealed 
 from sight, "it is no longer the road to the fold." 
 " Where are they going to sleep to-night ? " cries the 
 child. There is no answer, and he departs, exclaim- 
 ing that he must find somebody to speak to.* Pel- 
 leas enters, to keep his tryst with Melisande. "It 
 is the last time," he meditates. "It must all be 
 ended. I have been playing like a child with what 
 I did not understand. I have played, dreaming about 
 the snares of fate. By what have I been suddenly 
 awakened ? Who has aroused me all at once ? I shall 
 depart, crying out for joy and woe like a blind man 
 fleeing from his burning house. I shall teU her I 
 am going. My father is out of danger; and I can no 
 longer lie to myself. — It is late; she is not coming. 
 
 * Although this scene was set to music by Debussy, and appears in 
 both the orchestral and piano scores, it is omitted from the perfor. 
 mances at the Op^ra-Comique. 
 
40 PELL^AS ET MELISANDE 
 
 — It would be better to go away without seeing 
 her again. — But I must look well at her this time. 
 — There are some things that I no longer recall. — 
 It seems at times as though I had not seen her for 
 a hundred years. — And I have not yet looked deep 
 into her gaze. There remains nothing to me if I go 
 away thus. And all those memories! — it is as if I 
 were to carry away a little water in a muslin bag. 
 • — I must see her one last time, see to the bottom 
 of her heart. — I must tell her all that I have never 
 told her." Melisande enters. Their greeting is sim- 
 ple. PeUeas bids her come under the shade of the 
 linden. She wishes to remain where it is lighter; she 
 vnshes to stay where she may be seen. Golaud, she 
 says, is sleeping. It is late. In an hour the great 
 gates of the castle will be closed. PeUeas tells her 
 that it is perhaps the last time he shall see her, that 
 he must go away forever. She asks him why it is 
 that he is always saying that. "Must I teU you 
 what you know already?" rejoins Pelleas. "You 
 know not what I am going to tell you.?" "Why, 
 no; I know nothing," says Melisande. "You know 
 Mot why I must go.? You know not that it is be- 
 cause [he kisses her abruptly] I love you?" "I love 
 you too," says Melisande simply, in a low voice. 
 "You love me? you love me too?" cries Pelleas. 
 "Since when have you loved me?" "Since I saw 
 
THE PLAY 41 
 
 you first," she answers. "Oh, how you say that!" 
 cries Pelleas. "Your voice seems to have blown 
 across the sea in spring! . . . You say it so frankly 
 — like an angel questioned. — Your voice! your 
 voice ! It is cooler and more frank than the water 
 is! — It is like pure water on my lips! — Give me, 
 give me your hands! — Oh, how small your hands 
 are ! — I did not know you were so beautiful ! I have 
 never before seen anything so beautiful! — I was 
 filled with unrest ; I sought everywhere ; yet I found 
 not beauty. — And now I have found you! — I do 
 not believe there can be upon the earth a woman 
 more beautiful !" Their love-scene is harshly inter- 
 rupted. "What is that noise.?" asks Pelleas. "They 
 are closing the gates ! — We cannot return now. Do 
 you hear the bolts ? — Listen ! — the great chains ! 
 — It is too late!" "So much the better!" cries 
 Melisande, in passionate abandonment. "Do you 
 say that ?" exclaims her lover. " See, it is no longer 
 we who will it so! Come, come!" They embrace. 
 " Listen ! my heart is almost strangling me ! Ah ! 
 how beautiful it is in the shadows!" "There is 
 some one behind us ! " whispers Melisande. Pelleas 
 has heard nothing. " I hear only your heart in the 
 darkness." " I heard the crackling of dead leaves," 
 insists Melisande. "A-a-h! he is behind a tree!" 
 she whispers. "Who.?" "Golaud! — he has his 
 
4.2 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 sword!" "And I have none!" cries Pelleas. "He 
 does not know we have seen him," he cautions. "Do 
 not stir; do not turn your head. — He will remain 
 there so long as he thinks we do not know he is 
 watching us. — He is stiU motionless. — Go, go at 
 once this way. I will wait for him — I wiU hold him 
 back." "No, no, no!" cries Melisande. 
 
 "Go! go! he has seen everything! — He will kiU 
 us!" 
 
 "All the better! all the better!" 
 
 "He is coming! — Your mouth! your mouth!" 
 
 "Yes! Yes! Yes!" 
 
 They kiss desperately. 
 
 "Oh, oh! All the stars are falling!" cries Pelleas. 
 
 "Upon me also!" 
 
 "Again! Again! — Give! give!" 
 
 "All! aU! all!" 
 
 Golaud rushes upon them with drawn sword and 
 kills Pelleas, who falls beside the fountain. Meli- 
 sande flees in ten-or, crying out as she goes, "Oh! 
 oh ! I have no courage ! I have no courage ! " 
 
 Golaud pursues her in silence through the forest. 
 
 Act V 
 The last act opens in an apai-tment in the castle. 
 Melisande is stretched unconscious upon a bed. 
 Golaud, Arkel, and the physician stand in a comer 
 
THE PLAY 43 
 
 of the room. Some days earlier Melisande and her 
 husband had been found stretched out senseless be- 
 fore the castle gate, Golaud having still in his side 
 the sword with which he had sought to kill him- 
 self. Melisande had been wounded, — "a tiny little 
 wound that would not kill a pigeon;" yet her life 
 is despaired of; and on her death-bed she has been 
 delivered of a child — "a puny little girl such as a 
 beggar might be ashamed to own — a little waxen 
 thing that came before its time, that can be kept 
 alive only by being wrapped in wool." The room is 
 very silent. "It seems to me that we keep too still 
 in her room," says Arkel; "it is not a good sign; 
 look how she sleeps — how slowly. — It is as if her 
 soul were forever chilled." Golaud laments that he 
 has killed her without cause. "They had kissed like 
 little children — and I— I did it in spite of my- 
 self!" Melisande wakes. She wishes to have the win- 
 dow open, that she may see the sunset. She has 
 never felt better, she says, in answer to Arkel's 
 questioning. She asks if she is alone in the room. 
 Her husband is present, answers Arkel. "If you are 
 afraid, he will go away. He is very unhappy." "Go- 
 laud is here.?" she says; "why does he not come to 
 me ? " Golaud staggers to the bed. He begs the others 
 to withdraw for a moment, as he must speak with 
 her alone. "When they have left him, his torturing 
 
44 PELLlfeAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 suspicions, suspicions that will not down, find voice. 
 He entreats her to tell him the truth. "The truth 
 must be spoken to one about to die." Did she love 
 Pelleas.? he asks in agony. "Why, yes, I loved him 
 — where is he.?" The answer maddens him. "Do 
 you not understand.? Will you not understand? It 
 seems to me — it seems to me — well, then, it is this: 
 I ask you if you loved him with a guilty love ? Were 
 you — were you both guilty.?" "No, no; we were 
 not guilty," she replies; "why do you ask me that.?" 
 Ark el and the physician appear at the door. "You 
 may come in," says Golaud despairingly; "it is use- 
 less, I shall never know! I shall die here like a blind 
 man !" "You will kill her," warns Arkel. "Is it you, 
 grandfather.?" questions Melisande; "is it true that 
 winter is already coming.? — it is cold, and there 
 are no more leaves." "Are you cold? Shall I close 
 the windows?" asks Golaud. "No, no, not till the 
 sun has sunk into the sea — it sets slowly." Arkel 
 asks her if she wishes to see her child, "^^^lat 
 child?" she inquires. Arkel tells her that she is a 
 mother. The child is brought, and put into her arms. 
 Melisande can scarcely lift her arms to take her. 
 "She does not laugh, she is little," says Melisande; 
 "she, too, will weep — I pity her." Gradually the 
 room has filled with the women-servants of the cas- 
 tle, who range themselves in silence along the walls 
 
THE PLAY 45 
 
 and wait. "She is going to sleep," observes Arkel; 
 "her eyes are full of tears. It is her soul, now, that 
 weeps. Why does she stretch her arms out so? — 
 what does she wish?" "Toward her child, without 
 doubt," answers the physician. "It is the struggle 
 of motherhood against . . . " "At this moment? — 
 At once?" cries Golaud, in a renewed outburst of 
 anguish. . . . "Oh, oh! I must speak to her! Meli- 
 sande! Melisande! — leave me alone with her!" 
 "Trouble her not," gravely interposes Arkel. "Do 
 not speak to her again. — You know not what the 
 soul is. — We must speak in low tones now. She 
 must no longer be disturbed. The human soul is 
 very silent. The human soul likes to depart alone. 
 It suffers so timidly! But the sadness, Golaud, the 
 sadness of all we see!" At this moment the ser- 
 vants fall suddenly on their knees at the back of 
 the room. Arkel turns suddenly: "What is the mat- 
 ter?" The physician approaches the bed and ex- 
 amines the body of Melisande. "They are right," 
 he says. There is a silence. 
 
 "I saw nothing. Are you sure?" questions Arkel. 
 
 "Yes, yes." 
 
 "I heard nothing. So quickly! so quickly! She 
 goes without a word !" 
 
 Golaud sobs aloud. 
 
 "Do not remain here," says Arkel. "She must 
 
46 PELL^AS ET MELISANDE 
 
 have silence now. Come; come. It is terrible, but 
 it is not your fault. It was a little being, so quiet, 
 so timid, and so silent. It was a poor little myste- 
 rious being like everyone. She lies there as though 
 she were the elder sister of her baby. Come ; the 
 child should not stay here in this room. She must 
 live, now, in her place. It is the poor little one's 
 turn." 
 
Ill 
 
 THE MUSIC 
 A REVOLUTIONARY SCORE 
 
 DEBUSSY'S Pelleas et Melisande, drame ly- 
 r\qae en 5 actes et 12 tableaux, was performed 
 for the first time on any stage at the Opera-Co- 
 mique, Paris, April 30, 1902. Its first performance 
 outside of Paris was at the Theatre de la Monnaie, 
 Brussels, January 9, 1907 ; its second was at Frank- 
 fort, April 19, 1907. Its third will be the coming 
 production at the Manhattan Opera House, New 
 York. The original Paris cast was as follows : Pelleas, 
 M. Jean Perier; Melisande, Miss Mary Garden; 
 Arkel, M. Vieuille; Golaud, M. Dufrane; Genevieve, 
 Mile. Gerville-Reache ; Le petit Yniold, M. Blondin; 
 (In Medicin, M. Viguie. M. Andre Messager was 
 the conductor. The work was admirably mounted 
 under the supervision of the Director of the Opera- 
 Comique, M. Albert Carre. 
 
 The fortunes of the opera have not been alto- 
 gether happy. It has been said that Debussy con- 
 ceived the idea of writing music for Maeterlinck's 
 play soon after its first performance at the Bouffes- 
 Parisiens in 1893; that, although it was necessary 
 to secure the dramatist's consent to its adaptation, 
 
48 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 he did not solicit Maeterlinck's permission until he 
 had thought out his musical scheme to a consider- 
 able degree of elaboration; and that Maeterlinck 
 (being of that complacent majority of literary men 
 who neither care for nor are intelligently curious 
 concerning musical art) was immensely surprised to 
 learn that his play had suggested a tonal setting. 
 There was much correspondence between composer 
 and dramatist before Maeterlinck finally heard the 
 music of Debussy at a rehearsal at the Opera-Co- 
 mique : so, at least, runs the legend. Just when or pre- 
 cisely how the famous and probably inevitable rup- 
 ture occurred between them, tradition does not make 
 altogether clear. Maeterlinck is alleged to have be- 
 come incensed on account of certain excisions made 
 by Debussy in fitting the text of the play to mu- 
 sic; then, it appears, there was a quarrel over the 
 choice of a singer for the performance, and Maeter- 
 linck published a letter of protest in which he de- 
 clared that "the PelUas of the Opera-Comique" was 
 "a piece which had become entirel}- foreign" to him, 
 and that, as he was "deprived of all control over 
 it," he could only hope "that its fall would be 
 prompt and noisy." The matter is important only as 
 contributing to the history of Debussy's work, and 
 would scarcely rewai-d detailed examination or dis- 
 cussion. 
 
THE MUSIC 49 
 
 One would have said, in advance of the event, 
 that Debussy, of all composers, living or dead, was 
 best fitted to write music for Maeterlinck's beauti- 
 ful and perturbing play. He was not only best fitted, 
 he was ideally fitted; in listening to this music one 
 catches oneself imagining that it and the drama 
 issued from the same brain. It is impossible to con- 
 ceive of the play wedded to any other music, and 
 it is difficult, indeed, after knowing the work in its 
 lyric form, to think of it apart from its tonal com- 
 mentary. For Debussy has caught and re-uttered, 
 with almost incredible similitude, the precise poetic 
 accent of the dramatist. He has found poignant and 
 absolute analogies for its veiled and obsessing love- 
 liness, its ineflable sadness, the strange and fate- 
 burdened atmosphere in which it is steeped — these 
 things have here attained a new voice and tangi- 
 bility. 
 
 In calling this a "revolutionary" score one is be- 
 ing simply and baldly literal. To realize the just- 
 ness of the epithet, one has only to speculate upon 
 what Wagner would have said, or what Richard 
 Strauss may think, of an opera (let us adhere, for 
 convenience, to an accommodating if inaccurate 
 term) written for the voices, from beginning to 
 end, in a kind of recitative which is virtually a 
 chant; an opera in which there is no vocal melody 
 
50 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 whatsoever, and comparatively little symphonic de- 
 velopment of themes in the orchestra; in which an 
 enigmatic and whoUy eccentric system of harmony 
 is exploited ; in which there are scarcely more than 
 a dozenfortissimo passages in the course of five acts; 
 in which, for the greater part of the time, the orches- 
 tra employed is the orchestra of Mozart, — surely, 
 this is something new in modem musico-dramatic 
 art; surely, it requires some courage, or an indiffer- 
 ence amounting to courage, to wiite thus in a day 
 when the plangent and complex orchestra of the 
 Ring is considered inadequate, and the 113 instru- 
 mentalists o{ Salome, like the trumpeters of an elder 
 time, are storming the operatic ramparts of two 
 continents. 
 
 The radicalism of the music was fully appreciated 
 at the time of the first performances in Paris. To the 
 dissenters, Debussy's musical personages were mere 
 "stammering phantoms," and he was regaled with 
 the age- worn charge of having "ignored melody 
 altogether." Debussy has defended his methods with 
 point and directness. "I have been reproached,'' he 
 says, "because in my score the melodic phrase is 
 always in the orchestra, never in the voice. I tried, 
 with all my strength and all my sincerity, to iden- 
 tify my music with the poetical essence of the drama. 
 Before all things, I respected the characters, the 
 
THE MUSIC 51 
 
 lives of my personages; I wished them to express 
 themselves independently of me, of themselves. I 
 let them sing in me. I tried to listen to them and 
 to interpret them faithfully. I wished — intended, 
 in fact — that the action should never be arrested; 
 that it should be continuous, uninterrupted. I 
 wished to dispense with parasitic musical phrases. 
 When listening to a work, the spectator is wont to 
 experience two kinds of emotions which are quite 
 distinct : the musical emotion, on the one hand ; the 
 emotion of the character [in the drama], on the 
 other; generally they are felt successively. I have 
 tried to blend these two emotions, and make them 
 simultaneous. Melody is, if I may say so, almost 
 anti-lyric, and powerless to express the constant 
 change of emotion or life. Melody is suitable only 
 for the song {chanson), which confirms a fixed sen- 
 timent. I have never been willing that my music 
 should hinder, through technical exigencies, the 
 changes of sentiment and passion felt by my char- 
 acters. It is effaced as soon as it is necessary that 
 these should have perfect liberty in their gestures 
 as in their cries, in their joy as in their sorrow." 
 However much one may hesitate to subscribe to De- 
 bussy's generalities, the final justification for his 
 procedure is in the fact that it is ideally suited to 
 its especial purpose, — the tonal utterance of Mae- 
 
52 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 terlinck's rhymeless, metreless, and broken phrases. 
 To have set them in the sustained arioso style of 
 Tristan mid Isolde would have been as impossible 
 as it would have been inept. As it is, the writing 
 for the voices in Pelleas never, as one might rea- 
 sonably suppose, becomes monotonous. The achieve- 
 ment — an astonishing tour deforce, at the least — 
 is as artistically successful as it is unprecedented in 
 modern music. 
 
 In his treatment of the orchestra, Debussy makes 
 a scarcely less resolute departure from tradition. 
 There is little symphonic development in the Wag- 
 nerian sense. His orchestra reflects the emotional 
 implications of the text and action with absolute 
 and scrupulous fidelity, but suggestively rather 
 than with detailed emphasis. The drama is far less 
 heavily underscored than with Wagner; the note 
 of passion or of conflict or of tragedy is never forced. 
 His personages love and desire, exult and hate and 
 die, with a surprising economy of vehemence and in- 
 sistence. Yet, unrhetorical as the music is, it is never 
 pallid; and in such tinily climacteric moments as 
 that of Golaud's agonized outbreak in the scene 
 with Melisande, in the foui-th act, and the ecstatic 
 culmination of the final love-scene, the music sup- 
 poi-ts the dramatic and emotional crisis with superb 
 competency and vigor. 
 
THE MUSIC 53 
 
 He follows Wagner to the extent of using the 
 inescapable device of representative themes, though 
 he has, with his usual airy inconsistency, character- 
 ized the Wagnerian Leitmotiv system as "rather 
 coarse." It is true, however, that his typical phrases 
 are employed far more sparingly and subtly than 
 modern precedent would have led one to expect. 
 They are seldom set in sharp and vividly dramatic 
 contrast, as with Wagner; nor are they polyphoni- 
 cally deployed. Often they are mere sound- wraiths, 
 intended to denote moods and nuances of emotion 
 so impalpable and evanescent, so vague and inte- 
 rior, that it is more than a little difficult to mark 
 their precise significance. Often they are mere frag- 
 ments of themes, mere patches of harmonic color, 
 evasive and intangible, designed almost wholly to 
 translate phases of that psychic penumbra in which 
 the characters and the action of the drama are en- 
 wrapped. They have a common kinship in their 
 dim and muted loveliness, their grave reticence, 
 the deep and immitigable sadness with which, even 
 at their most rapturous, they are penetrated. This 
 is a score rich in beauty and strangeness, yet the 
 music has often a deceptive naivete, a naivete that 
 is so extreme that it reveals itself, finally, as the 
 quintessence of subtlety and reticence — in which 
 respect, again, we are reminded of its perfect, its 
 
54 PELL^AS ET M^LISANDE 
 
 well-nigh uncanny, con-espondence with the qual- 
 ity of Maeterlinck's drama. 
 
 As it has been remarked, Debussy's orchestra is 
 here, with few exceptions, the orchestra of Mozart's 
 day. On page after page he writes for strings alone, 
 or for strings with wood-wind and horns. He uses 
 the full modern orchestra only upon the rarest oc- 
 casions, and then more often for color than for vol- 
 ume. He has an especial affection for the strings, 
 particularly in the lower registers; and he is ex- 
 ceedingly fond of subdividing and muting them. 
 It is rare to find him using the wood-wind choir 
 alone, or the wood and brass without the strings. 
 His orchestra contains the usual modem equipment 
 — 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, an English horn, 
 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, bass 
 tuba, kettledrums, glockenspiel, cymbals, 2 harps, 
 and strings ; yet one may count on but little more 
 than the fingers of both hands the pages in which 
 this apparatus is employed in its full strength. And 
 in spite of this curious and unpopular reticence, we 
 listen here, as M. Bruneau has observed, to "a ma- 
 gic orchestra" — an orchestra of indescribable rich- 
 ness, delicacy, and suppleness — an orchestra that 
 melts and shimmers with opalescent hues — an or- 
 chestra that has substance without density, sonority 
 without blatancy, refinement without thinness. 
 
THE MUSIC 55 
 
 The music, as a whole, is as insinuating as it is un- 
 paralleled. Many passages are of an hypnotic and 
 abiding fascination. There is something necromantic 
 in the art which can so swiftly and so surely cast an 
 ineluctable spell upon the heart and the imagina- 
 tion : such a spell as is cast in the scene at the Fon- 
 taine des Aveugles, in the second act; or when, from 
 the window in the castle tower, Melisande's un- 
 bound hair falls and envelops Pelleas — an unfor- 
 gettable page; or when the lovers meet for the last 
 time at the Fountain of the Blind; or in the scene 
 of Melisande's death — one of the most pathetic and 
 affecting pages in all music. One must wonder at 
 the elasticity and richness of the harmonic texture 
 — which, while it is incurably "irregular," is never 
 crude or inchoate; at the distinction of the melodic 
 line; at the rhythmical variety; at the masterly 
 and individual orchestration. No faculty of trained 
 perception is required justly to value the excel- 
 lences of Debussy's score. There is great beauty, 
 great eloquence, in this music. It has sincerity, dig- 
 nity, and reserve, yet it is both deeply impassioned 
 and enamoringly tender ; and it is as absolutely per- 
 sonal, as underived, as was Tristan forty years ago. 
 
56 PELLEAS ET MliLISANDE 
 
 THE THEMES AND THEIR TREATMENT 
 The score of PelMas et Milisande ill brooks the 
 short and ruthless method of the thematic anno- 
 tator. As I have pointed out in the foregoing pages, 
 its themes are often so indeterminate, so shadowy 
 and elusive, as to rebuke the analyst who would 
 disengage and expose them. Many of them are 
 simply harmonic hues and half-lights, melodic shreds 
 and fragments, whose substance is as impalpable as 
 mist and whose outlines waver and fade almost be- 
 fore they are perceived. Few of them are clearly 
 and definitely articulated; for the most part they 
 are, as I have called them, mere "sound- wraiths," 
 intentionally suggestive rather than definitive, evo- 
 cative rather than descriptive. If one ventures to 
 exhibit and to name them, one does so rather for 
 the purpose of drawing attention to their beauty, 
 their singularity, and their delicate potency, than 
 with any thought of imposing an arbitrary charac- 
 ter upon them or of insisting upon what seems to 
 be their essential meaning — which is often alto- 
 gether too recondite for positive identification. I 
 shall not, therefore, attempt to dissect the music 
 measure by measure, but shall endeavor rather to 
 survey it "in the large," to offer simply a general 
 indication of its more significant features. Nor shall 
 
THE MUSIC 57 
 
 I offer any further justification or apology for the 
 titles which I have adopted for the various repre- 
 sentative themes than to say that they have seemed 
 to me to be sufficiently supported by their associ- 
 ation with the moods and events of the drama. It 
 is, of course, entirely possible that apter designa- 
 tions might be found for them ; I offer those that 
 I have chosen more as an invitation to the sympa- 
 thetic and the inquisitive than from any desire to 
 impose my own interpretation upon unwilling, dis- 
 senting, or indifferent minds. 
 
 Act I 
 
 A brief orchestral prelude, less than twenty mea- 
 sures in length, introduces the opening scene of the 
 first act. Divided and muted 'cellos, double-basses, 
 and bassoons intone, 'pp, a solemn and brooding 
 theme* designed to evoke the thought of the forest, 
 which, sombre, mysterious, and oppressive, forms 
 the background against which the events of the 
 drama are projected (page 1, measure l):f 
 
 • Its curious progressions, based on the Dorian mode of the plain- 
 chant (corresponding to a scale of D-minor without accidentals), I 
 have alluded to in a previous chapter. 
 
 + These indications refer to the arrangement of the score for voices 
 and piano, with French and English text, published by A. Durand & 
 Fils of Paris in 1907. I have indicated in each case, in addition to the 
 page, the measure in which the example begins. 
 
58 
 
 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 I. The Foeest 
 
 Trts modere 
 
 This is immediately followed by one of the most im- 
 portant themes in the opera, that which seems to 
 typify the veiled and overshadowing destiny which 
 is very close to the central thought of Maeterlinck's 
 play. Strangely harmonized, this Fate theme (it is in 
 the second measure that its kernel is contained, and 
 it is this portion of it that is most frequently re- 
 peated) is sounded, pp, tres modere, by oboes, Eng- 
 lish horn, and clarinets (page 1, measure 5): 
 
 II. Fate 
 
 These two themes are repeated, with altered har- 
 monization ; then follows one of the two principal 
 themes of the score — that oi MHisande, sung, doiuo 
 
THE MUSIC 
 
 59 
 
 et expressif, by the oboe over tremolos in the di- 
 vided strings (page 1, measure 14): 
 
 III. Melisande 
 
 p doux ef expressif 
 
 It is followed by a derivative theme which, in the 
 drama, suggests the naivete of Melisande's personal- 
 ity (page 1, measure 1): 
 
 rV. Melisande's Naivete 
 
 Flute, oboe and clarinet repeat it over a counter- 
 point formed by the Fate theme (2 horns), and the 
 curtain opens to the accompaniment of the Forest 
 motive. This latter theme, with the motive of Fate, 
 underscores the earlier portions of the dialogue be- 
 tween Golaud and MeUsande. At Golaud's words: 
 "Oh! you are beautiful! "we hear (page 7, measure 1) 
 
60 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 an ardent phrase in the strings expressive of his 
 
 awakened passion for the distressful little princess: 
 
 V. Golaud's Love 
 
 Animee 
 
 This theme is sounded again, with peculiarly pene- 
 trating effect, in the divided strings, as Golaud en- 
 treats Melisande not "to weep so" (page 9, mea- 
 sure 4), and, later in the scene (page 19, measure 1), 
 when he tells her that she must not stay in the forest 
 alone after nightfall, and urges her to go with him. 
 As he informs her that he is " Prince Golaud, grand- 
 son of Arkel, the aged king of AUemonde," we hear, 
 on the bassoons and horns, his own motive (page 14, 
 measure 8): 
 
 VI. Golaud 
 
 Tr%3 soutena 
 
 ^ !t g. 
 
 
 
 =Tffi=* 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 V •"' 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 "You look like a mere child," he says, and the MMi- 
 
THE MUSIC 61 
 
 sande theme is given out, doux et calme, by the di- 
 vided strings (page 18, measure 2). As the two go 
 out together, the motive of Fate is quietly intoned 
 by the horns (page 22, measure 3). 
 
 An interlude of some fifty measures, in which the 
 Forest, Fate, and Melisande themes are exploited, 
 introduces the second scene of the act. To an ac- 
 companiment of long-sustained chords varied by re- 
 currences of the Melisande theme, Genevieve reads 
 to the venerable Axkel Golaud's letter to his bro- 
 ther. The entrance of Pelleas is accompanied by the 
 theme which characterizes him throughout — the se- 
 cond of the two motives (that of Melisande being 
 the other) which most conspicuously dominate the 
 score. It is announced (page 33, measure 10) by 
 three flutes and a clarinet, over a viola accompani- 
 ment: 
 
 VII. Pelleas 
 
 .Animei un peu__ 
 
 ¥■{ f 
 
 m 
 
 ft* 
 
 f a J) J J Ji 
 
 '"p r r- 
 
 m.g 
 
 The scene closes with a variant of this, and there is 
 an interlude in which the orchestra weaves a com- 
 
62 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 mentary out of the themes of Fate and Golaucfs 
 
 Love. 
 
 As the third scene opens (before the castle), the 
 Melisande theme is sung, melancolique et doux, by 
 the oboe against a murmuring accompaniment of 
 the strings. Together with the PelUas theme, it 
 accompanies the opening portion of the scene. A 
 suggestive use is made of a fragment of the Fate 
 theme at Melisande's words, after Pelleas prophe- 
 sies the approach of a storm : "And yet it is so calm 
 now !" (page 44, measure 5). Just before the voices 
 of the departing sailors are heard, the curious 
 student will note a characteristic passage in the 
 orchestra (page 45, measure 1) — a sequence of de- 
 scending "ninth-chords" built on a downward scale 
 of whole tones. The Faie theme, combined with 
 that of Melisande, colors the rest of the scene to 
 the end. The conclusion of the act is striking : two 
 flutes outline a variant of the Melisande motive; 
 a horn sounds the first three notes of the second 
 measure of the Fate theme, and four horns and 
 flute sustain, pp, an unresolved suspension — Cjl- 
 
•y ff|F|tir-=- 
 
 1 ' I ^ 
 
 « 1 = 
 
 1 
 
 
 h~f^ — ■ — * — 
 
 
 P^ 
 
 s^ 
 
 -" 1 
 
 
 O 
 
 
 ' r 
 
 ^ f ' 
 
 Act II 
 
 The PelUas theme, sung by two flutes, opens the 
 brief introduction to the second act. It is repeated, 
 interwoven with harp arpeggios. Immediately pre- 
 ceding the entrance of PelleasandMelisandeamuted 
 horn, two flutes, two oboes, and harp sound a chord 
 of singularly liquid quality — one of those frag- 
 mentary effects in the invention of which Debussy 
 is so curiously happy. It is the motive of The Foim- 
 tam.* 
 
 * I quote it in the completer and more beautiful form in which it 
 appears on page 57. measures 1-8. 
 
64 
 
 PELLEAS ET MEILISANDE 
 IX. The Fountain 
 
 Modere 
 
 jjl MKLIflANDS 
 
 It is repeated, with still more magical effect (scored 
 for divided violins and violas, two muted horns, 
 and harp), as Melisande remarks upon the clearness 
 of the water, while the violins and violas weave 
 about it a shimmering figure in sixteenth-notes 
 with which its appearances are usually associated. 
 As Pelleas warns Melisande to take care, while she 
 leans above the water along the msirble edge of the 
 basin, the clarinet, over a string accompaniment, 
 announces an impassioned phrase (page 62, mea- 
 sure 3) — the theme of Awakening Des'trc: 
 
THE MUSIC 
 
 65 
 
 X. Awakening Desiee 
 
 En nnimant 
 
 As Pelleas questions Melisande about the ring with 
 which she is playing, — her wedding-ring, — and 
 when it falls into the water while she is tossing it 
 in the air, we hear persistently the theme of Fate, 
 which, with the Golaud theme (portentously sound- 
 ed, pp, by horns and bassoons), closes the scene. 
 There is an interlude in which the Golaud, Meli- 
 sande, and Fate themes are heard. 
 
 The rhythm of the latter theme mutters omi- 
 nously in the bass as the second scene is disclosed. 
 When Golaud, lying wounded on his bed, describes 
 to Melisande how, "at the stroke of noon," his 
 horse "swerved suddenly, with no apparent cause," 
 and threw him, as he was hunting in the forest 
 ("could he have seen something extraordinary ?"), 
 the oboe recalls the theme of Awahening Desire, 
 which was first heard as Melisande and Pelleas sat 
 together by the fountain in the forest during the 
 
66 PELL^AS ET MELISANDE 
 
 heat of midday. The rhythm of the Fate motive 
 is hinted by violas, 'cellos, and horns as Golaud, 
 in answer to Melisande's compassionate question- 
 ing, observes that he is "made of iron and blood." 
 Melisande weeps, and the oboe sounds a plaintive 
 variant of her motive (page 82, measure 2); the 
 strings repeat it as she complains that she is iU. 
 Nothing has happened, no one has harmed her, 
 she answers, in response to Golaud's questionings: 
 "It is no one. You do not understand me. It is 
 something stronger than I," she says; and we hear 
 the PelUas theme, dulcetly harmonized, in the 
 strings. When, later, Golaud mentions his brother's 
 name inquiringly, and she replies that she thinks 
 he dislikes her, although he speaks to her some- 
 times, we hear, very softly, the theme of Awaken- 
 ing Desire. As their talk progresses to its climax, 
 there is a recurrence of the Fate theme; then, as 
 Golaud, upon discovering the loss of her wedding- 
 ring, harshly tells her that he "would rather have 
 lost everything than that," the trombones and tuba 
 declaim (page 99, measure 5) a threatening and 
 sinister phrase which wiU later be more definitely 
 associated with the thought of Golaud's vengeful 
 purpose : 
 
THE MUSIC 
 
 67 
 
 XI. Vengeance 
 
 Anime. un pea retena 
 
 tmT 
 
 This is repeated still more vehemently three mea- 
 sures further on, and there is a return of the Fate 
 motive as Melisande, at the bidding of Golaud, 
 goes forth to seek the missing ring. An interlude, 
 in which are blended the variant of the Melisande 
 theme, which denotes her grieving, and the shim- 
 mering figure in sixteenth-notes heard during the 
 dialogue at the fountain, leads into the scene be- 
 fore the grotto. 
 
 As Pelleas and Melisande stand in the darkness 
 of the cavern we hear again (page 110, measure 2) 
 the variant of the Fate motive which marked the 
 close of the preceding scene; then, as a sudden 
 shaft of moonlight illuminates the grotto, it is ex- 
 panded and transmuted into a gleaming flood of 
 orchestral and harmonic color (two flutes, oboe, 
 two harps glissando, string tremolos, cymbals p^). 
 While they talk of the beggars sleeping in a comer 
 of the cave, an oboe and flute trace a tenuous and 
 melancholy phrase (doux et triste) which continues 
 
68 PELLEAS ET MfeLISANDE 
 
 almost to the end of the scene; it leads into a 
 
 quiet coda formed out of the theme of Fate. 
 
 AcTin 
 
 After several bars of preluding by flute, harp, vio- 
 las, and 'cellos (harmonics), on an arpeggio figure, 
 ppp, flutes and oboe present (page 115, measure 6) 
 a theme which, in an ampler version, dominates the 
 entire scene. Its complete form, in which I conceive 
 it to be suggestive of the magic of night, is as fol- 
 lows (page 118, measure 2): 
 
 XII. Night 
 
 Wod^rs (saiis lenteurV 
 
 • f^f^i ^1^ 
 
 T «^-,, 
 
 It continues in the orchestra until, as PeUeas urges 
 Melisande to lean further out of the window that 
 he may see her hair unbound, a new theme enters, 
 seeming to characterize the ardor of PeUeas' mood 
 (page 120, measure 3*): 
 
 * 1 quote it as it appears in its maturer form on pape 125 (measure SX 
 
THE MUSIC 
 
 69 
 
 XIII. Ardor 
 
 Animez toujours 
 
 As Melisande leans further and further out of her 
 window, these two themes {Night and Ardor) grow 
 increasingly insistent. They are interrupted at 
 Pelleas' words, "I see only the branches of the 
 willow drooping over the wall," by a rich passage for 
 divided violins, violas, and 'cellos (page 124, mea- 
 sure 3), and by a brief phrase to which attention 
 should be drawn because of its essentially Debussy- 
 like quality — the progression in the first measure 
 of page 125 (scored for violins and violas). Then 
 suddenly Melisande's unloosed hair streams down 
 from the open window and envelops Pelleas, and 
 we hear (a famous passage) in the strings alone,_^, 
 a precipitate descending series of seventh-chords 
 built on the familiar whole-tone scale which De- 
 bussy finds so impelling (page 127, measure 1). 
 
70 
 
 PELL^AS ET MELISANDE 
 XIV 
 
 ,&iumez toujonrs 
 
 Then begins (page 128, measure 1) a delectable epi- 
 sode. Over a murmurous accompanying figure given 
 out by violas, 'cellos, harp, and horn, a clarinet sings 
 a variant of the Melisande theme. The harmonic 
 changes are kaleidoscopic, the orchestral color of 
 prismatic variety. The lovely rhapsody over his be- 
 
 XV 
 
 Moins Tite et pusiotmement coatena 
 
 f\l-\ f^ =^ 
 
 I,Jm -J%^ 
 
 ^r^j >rj 1 
 
 pp tret expreaif 
 
 VW^ 
 
 \^'yU 
 
 
 - — ■ 1 'H^. ''^ 
 
 y ii w'Ap Ft^ 
 
 r >f r r r r ^ 
 
 : I.E T !■ F g=^ 
 
 ' T F r F r T T r r r r ■ r J T-J ^ ■ 
 
 loved's tresses which Maeterlinck puts into the 
 mouth of Pelleasis exquisitely enforced by the music. 
 There is ravishing tenderness and beauty here, and 
 an intensity of expression as penetrating as it is 
 restrained. As Melisande's doves come from the 
 tower and fly about the heads of the lovers, we hear. 
 
THE MUSIC 71 
 
 tremolo in the strings, a variation of her motive. 
 Golaud enters by the winding stair, and the threat- 
 ening phrase quoted as Ex. XI is heard sombrely 
 in the horns, bassoons, violas, and 'cellos — its deri- 
 vation from Golaud's own theme (see Ex. VI) is here 
 apparent. The latter motive sounds, p, as he warns 
 Melisande that she will fall from the window if she 
 leans so far out. It is followed by the Fate theme 
 as he departs, laughing nervously. A short interlude 
 is evolved from the Melisande theme (the PelUas 
 motive forming a counterpoint), and the Fate and 
 Vengeance motives — the latter outlined, over a roU 
 of the timpani and a sustained chord in the horns 
 and woodwind, by a muted trumpet, pp. 
 
 No new thematic matter is presented during the 
 two succeeding scenes (in the vaults under the cas- 
 tle and, afterward, on the terrace), nor are there sig- 
 nificant reminiscences of themes already brought 
 forward. The music of the vault scene forms a 
 pointed commentary on the implications of the 
 action and dialogue — in character it is dark-hued, 
 forbidding, sinister. As Golaud and Pelleas emerge 
 from the vaults, much use is made in the orchestra 
 of a jubilant figure in triplets (first given out^or- 
 tissimo by flutes and oboes, over an undulating ac- 
 companiment, on page 152, measure 1) which seems 
 to express a certain irresponsible exuberance on the 
 
72 PELLiAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 part of Pelleas; it accompanies his light-hearted re- 
 marks about the odor of the flowers, the sheen of 
 the water, and the invigorating air, as they come 
 out upon the sunlit terrace. As the scene changes 
 again, a very short interlude introduces a new theme 
 — that of Little Yniold, Golaud's son, whom he is 
 to use as the innocent tool of his suspicions. This 
 motive, which occurs repeatedly during the ensuing 
 scene, is one of the less important, but most typi- 
 cal and haunting ones, in the entire score. It is first 
 presented (page 158, measure 4) by the oboe, 
 d<rux et eoopressif: 
 
 It is heard again as an accompaniment to Yniold's 
 naive answers to Golaud's interrogations (page 160); 
 when he cries out that his father, in his agitation, 
 has hurt him (page 164); and, in a psuiicularly 
 touching form, on page 165, measure 4, when Go- 
 laud promises that he will give him a present on 
 the mon-ow if Yniold will tell him what he knows 
 concerning Melisande and Pelleas. We hear the 
 
THE MUSIC 73 
 
 Pelleas theme in the strings and wood-wind (page 
 172, measure 7) when Yniold says that they "weep 
 always in the dark," and that "that makes one weep 
 also," and again when he tells of having seen them 
 kiss one day — "when it rained." Thereafter it is 
 heard repeatedly in varying forms to the end of the 
 scene, at times underlying a persistent triplet-figure 
 which has the effect of an inverted pedal-point. A 
 tumultuous and agitated crescendo passage brings 
 the act to a portentous close. 
 
 Act IV 
 
 A variant of the Pelleas theme, with the opening 
 notes of the Fate motive as an under voice, begins 
 the short prelude to the fourth act ; there is a hint 
 of the Yniold theme, and the first two notes of the 
 Pelleas motive introduce the first scene. The inter- 
 view between Melisande and her lover, in which 
 they arrange their tryst at the fountain in the park, 
 is treated with restraint; an expressive phrase sung 
 by the 'cellos (page 194, measure 11) may be noted 
 at the point where Pelleas informs Melisande that she 
 will look in vain for his return after he has gone. 
 The Milisande theme, in a new form, opens the 
 moving scene between Melisande and Arkel in 
 
74 PELL:^AS ET MilLISANDE 
 
 which he tells her of his compassionate observation 
 of her since first she came to the castle. During his 
 speech and her replies we hear her motive and that of 
 Fate (page 205), the latter theme announcing the 
 entrance of Golaud, distraught, blood-bespattered, 
 seeking, he says, his sword. The music of the en- 
 suing scene does not call for extended description 
 — rather for the single comment that in it Debussy 
 has proved once for all his power of forceful, direct, 
 and tangible dramatic iitterance : the music here, to 
 apply to it Golaud's phrase in the play, is compact 
 of "blood and iron" — as well it needed to be for 
 the accentuation of this pertui'bing and violent 
 episode. The Fate motive courses ominously though 
 its earlier portions. We hear, too, what I have called 
 the "second" Mellsande theme — that which seems 
 to denote her naivete (see Ex. IV), and a strange 
 variant of the first Melisande theme (page 212, 
 measure 4). At the climax of the scene, when Go- 
 laud seizes his wife by her long hair and flings her 
 from side to side, the music is as brutal, as "virile," 
 as the most exigent could reasonably demand. 
 Later, as he hints at his purpose, — "I shall await 
 my chance," — the trombones, tubas, and double- 
 hasses pizzicato mutter,^p, the motive of Vengeance. 
 The orchestral interlude is long and elaborate. We 
 hear a variant of the Fate theme, which reaches a 
 
THE MUSIC 75 
 
 climax in & fortissimo outburst of the full orchestra. 
 The theme in this form is developed at length ; there 
 is a reminiscence of the MSlisande theme, and the 
 music, by a gradual diminuendo, passes into the third 
 scene of the act — in the park, before the Fountain 
 of the Blind. At the beginning occurs the incident 
 of the passing flock of sheep observed by Yniold. 
 This scene need not detain us long, since it is mu- 
 sically as well as dramatically episodic. There are 
 no new themes, and no significant recurrences of fa- 
 miliar ones, though the music is rich in suggestive 
 and imaginative details; as I have previously noted, 
 it is omitted in the performances at the Opera- 
 Comique. 
 
 Pelleas enters, and there is an impassioned de- 
 claration of his theme, scored, f, for wood-wind, 
 horns, and strings, as he observes that he is about 
 to depart, " crying out for joy and woe like a blind 
 man fleeing from his burning house." There is a re- 
 turn of the Melisande theme ; and then, as she her- 
 self enters, and Pelleas urges her not to stay at the 
 edge of the moonlight, but to come with him into 
 the shadow of the linden, there enters a theme of 
 great beauty and tenderness, announced, 7Wj/*iemM5e- 
 ment, by horns and 'cellos (page 236, measure 6). I 
 may call it, for want of a better name, the motive 
 of The Shadows, since it appears only in association 
 
76 
 
 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 with the thought of sheltering darkness and con- 
 cealment : 
 
 XVn. The Shadows 
 
 Modere 
 
 We hear the Fate motive when Melisande warns 
 Pelleas that it is late, that they must take care, as 
 the gates of the castle will soon be closed for the 
 night. There is a gracious variant of this motive as 
 Melisande tells how she caught her gown on the 
 nails of the gate as she left the castle, and so was 
 delayed. Then comes a reminiscence of the Foun- 
 tain theme (the authentic wonder of which is that it 
 is not a theme at all, but merely a single chord in- 
 troduced by a grace-note ; yet the vividness of its 
 effect is indisputable), suggested, pp, by horns and 
 harp, at Melisande's words: "We have been here be- 
 fore." As Pelleas asks her if she knows why he has 
 bidden her to meet him, strings and horn give out, 
 pp et tres express^, a lovely phrase derived from the 
 Pelleas theme (page 242, measure 1). Their mutual 
 
THE MUSIC 
 
 77 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Modere 
 
 m 
 
 ^ 
 
 .1, J .1,.]. ■ , I ,], = 
 
 S 
 
 j?td ^ «^ tres ex pressif 
 
 confessions of love, so simply uttered in the text, are 
 entirely unaccompanied by the orchestra; but as 
 Pelleas exclaims: "The ice is melted with glowing 
 fire!" four solo 'cellos, with sustained harmonics in 
 the violins and violas, sound, pianissimo, a rav- 
 ishing series of "ninth-chords" (page 244, mea- 
 sure 6) — a sheer Debussy-esque effect, for the rela- 
 tion between the chords is as absolutely anarchistic 
 as it is deeply beautiful. " Your voice seems to have 
 
 XIX 
 
 , lent 
 
PELLlfeAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 Tu dia ce-i» dNi-ne volnoiTieirt du bout da n>o n-del... iejap t'«i 
 
 P 
 
 pres-qne pas en'tcn-due ... Tu m'ai-mes? tu m'ai-mes >us>^^^ 
 
 blown across the sea in spring," says Pelleas, and 
 a horn, accompanied by violins in six parts, an- 
 nounces the motive of Ecstcisy (page 245, mea- 
 sure 7): 
 
 XX. Ecstasy 
 
 Uodere 
 
 The 'cellos intone the Melisande theme as PeUeas 
 tells her that he has never seen anyone so beautiful 
 as she ; the theme of Ecstasy follows in the strings, 
 
THE MUSIC 
 
 79 
 
 horns, and wood- wind, forte; the theme of The 
 Shadows returns as Pelleas again invites her into 
 the darkness beneath the trees; there is a dolorous 
 hint of the Melisande theme as she says that she is 
 happy, yet sad. And then the amorous and caress- 
 ing quality of the music is sharply altered. There 
 is a harsh and sinister muttering in the double- 
 basses as Pelleas, startled by a distant sound, cries 
 that they are closing the gates of the castle, and 
 that they are shut out. The Golaud motive is recalled 
 with sombre force in the strings as the rattle of 
 the great chains is heard. "All the better! All the 
 better!" cries Melisande; and, as they embrace in 
 sudden abandonment, we hear, introduced by an 
 exquisite interplay of tonalities, the motive oi Rap- 
 ture, announced, pp, by divided strings and flutes 
 (page 258, measure 12): 
 
 XXI. Raptuee 
 
 .Mod ere 
 
 As Melisande whispers suddenly to Pelleas that 
 there is some one behind them, a menacing version 
 
80 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 of the Vengeance theme is played, jap, by the basses, 
 trombones, and timpani. This theme and that of 
 Rapture hasten the music toward its culminating 
 point of intensity. The Pelleas theme is given out 
 by the 'cellos, the Melisande theme (this is not in- 
 dicated in the piano version) by the violins, and as 
 the lovers embrace desperately, a crescendo leads 
 to a. fortissimo proclamation, by all the orchestral 
 forces, of a greatly broadened version of the motive 
 oi Ecstasy. As Golaud rushes upon them and strikes 
 down Pelleas, the Fate theme is declaimed by four 
 horns in unison over string tremolos ; and, as he 
 turns and silently pursues the fleeing Melisande 
 through the forest, his Vengeance theme brings the 
 act, by a rapid crescendo, to a crashing close. 
 
 Act V 
 The last act opens with a dolorous phrase derived 
 from the variant of the Melisande theme noted on 
 page 82 of the piano score. It is played by the 
 violas, with harp accompaniment. The violins re- 
 peat it, and two flutes announce a new theme (page 
 3, measure 5), the motive of Pity: 
 
THE MUSIC 
 
 81 
 
 XXII. Pity 
 
 Lent ei triste 
 
 As Golaud bends with Arkel over the unconscious 
 figure of Melisande where she hes stretched upon 
 her bed, muted horns and 'cellos play a gentle va- 
 riant of the Fate theme, followed by the Milisande 
 motive as Golaud exclaims that they had but 
 "kissed like little children." The theme of Piti/ ac- 
 companies Melisande's awakening, and a new mo- 
 tive is heard as she responds, to Arkel's question : 
 "I have never been better." This new theme (page 
 274, measure 4), of extraordinary poignancy, is 
 given out by an oboe supported by two flutes, and 
 its expression is marked triste et tres doucement 
 expressif. I shall call it the motive of Sorrow, for 
 it seems like the comment of the music upon the 
 transporting and utter sadness of the play's de- 
 nouement. It voices a gentle and passive commise- 
 ration, rather than a profound and shaking grief: 
 
82 
 
 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 
 XXIII. Sorrow 
 
 Lent et triste 
 
 p triste et ires dtmcement eapress(f 
 dim. 
 
 A third new theme, also of searching pathos, occurs 
 in the strings, p, tres doux, as Mehsande quietly 
 greets her husband (page 279, measure 1), and 
 later, when she says that she forgives him (page 
 282, measure 1). It may be caUed the motive of 
 Melisande's Gentleness: 
 
 XXIV. Melisande's Gentleness 
 
 As Golaud's stiU unvanquished doubts and suspi- 
 cions torture him into hai-sh interrogations, and 
 he asks her if she loved Pelleas "with a forbidden 
 love," an oboe and two flutes recall, p et doux, the 
 Rapture motive. Later, in succession, we hear (on a 
 solo violin over flute and clarinets) the Pelleas theme 
 (page 289, measure 2), the motive of Gentleness, 
 
THE MUSIC 83 
 
 for the last time (page 290, measure 3), and the 
 Melisande theme (pages 290-292). As Melisande 
 recognizes Arkel, and asks if it be true "that the 
 winter is coming," a solo violin, solo 'cello, and two 
 clarinets play an affecting phrase (page 294, mea- 
 sure 5). She tells Arkel that she does not wish the 
 windows closed until the sun has sunk into the sea,- 
 and the orchestra accompanies her in a passage of 
 curiously delicate sonority (page 295, measure 6). 
 The final scene of the act is treated with sur- 
 passing reticence, dignity, and simplicity, yet with 
 piercing intensity of expression. Nothing could be 
 at the same time more sparing of means and more 
 exquisitely eloquent in result than Debussy's set- 
 ting of the scene of Melisande's death — it is music 
 which dims the eyes &i^d sibdues the spirit. The 
 jommmwjo-repeated chords in the divided strings 
 which accentuate Arkel's warning words (page 304, 
 measure 8) ; the blended tones of the harp and the 
 distant bell at the moment of dissolution (page 
 306, measure 11); Arkel's simple requiem over 
 the body of the little princess, with the grave and 
 tender orchestral commentary woven out of fami- 
 liarly poignant themes (pages 308-309); the mur- 
 murous coda, with its muted trumpet singing a 
 gentle dirge under an accompaniment of two flutes 
 (page 310, measure 7), — these things are easy to 
 
84 
 
 PELLEAS ET MELISANDE 
 XXV 
 
 Tres lent 
 
 value, but they may not easily be praised with ade- 
 quacy. 
 
 Concerning felicities of structural and technical 
 detail in the work as a whole, this has not been the 
 place to speak ; but if curious appreciators, or others 
 who are merely curious, should perhaps be induced, 
 by what has been written here, to explore for them- 
 selves Debussy's beautifiil and in many ways in- 
 comparable score, the purpose of this study will 
 have been achieved.