Posts on my blog quite often reference music, composers, and performers. I attempt to relate ideas from music to leadership, exploring how both are created, performed, and how we experience music/leadership as listeners/followers. Claude Debussy, as captured by Stephen Walsh in Debussy: A Painter in Sound (2018), is a fascinating example of an artist who, from the very start of his composing career, challenged the norms of others and thereby innovated in ways that propelled music forward in the 20th century.
A. (Achille) Claude Debussy (1862-1918) sought to define a unique French voice in his music that would contrast with the dominant Germanic music of the late 19th century. Wagner was particularly influential at the time which is evident in several of Debussy’s early works. However, Debussy’s desire to escape this Wagernian influence pushed him toward innovation that might not otherwise have emerged. A very gifted pianist at age 10, he learned the conventions of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, but increasingly stretched, broke, and abandoned the rules during his life as a composer. Although Debussy is often classified as an impressionist, his style is more a reflection of “melodic arabesque – of the decorative and unruly vocal or instrumental lines that seem to copy the curves and swirls of Art Nouveau design” (p. 30). However, Debussy’s “evasion of the clear outlines of classical form and harmonic grammar” (p. 47) may be the most convincing evidence that the “impressionist” label fits to a degree.
Debussy was inspired in many of his compositions by poetry, particularly that of fellow French visionaries such as Banville, Verlaine, Mallerme, and Maeterlinck. He was also influenced by the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where Asian music and theater were introduced and made a deep impression on him. Maurice Ravel, a younger contemporary, composed several pieces that Debussy would use as his inspiration (exs. Ravel’s Habanera and Debussy’s Lindaraja, Ravel’s Jeux d’eau and Debussy’s Pagodes, and Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole and Debussy’s Iberia).
Readers without musical training will find much of Walsh’s text too technical and detailed to be easily read. I am fortunate to have musical training and I play a number of the pieces described in the book, which adds much greater depth to how I now play them. A couple notable examples (with links to recordings if you care to listen):
- Cathedrale engloutie – a cathedral emerging from the sea
- La Soiree dans Grenade - an enchanting garden in Granada
- Danseuses de Delphes – a sculpture of three female figures on the grand staircase of the Louvre
Debussy’s piano works are widely known and performed. Orchestrated versions of La Mer and Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune are sound paintings that are quite familiar to listeners in symphony halls but some of his larger works, the opera Pelleas and Melisande and the ballet score Jeux are less often heard. The historical context of Jeux is that it was preceded by two other very influential compositions - Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring; both of these were brilliant and innovative works that might be perceived to have overshadowed Debussy. Yet, Walsh singles out Jeux as representing the pinnacle of Debussy’s compositional output.
There is no mistake that as Debussy matured he went into full rebellion against what was presumed to be the reasonable convention of the time; this rebellion was the seed of his genius. However, Walsh concluded by writing that “while he (Debussy) questioned their (his compositional predecessors) methods, he never doubted their fundamental intention, which was to create beauty and to share sensibilities, to communicate wonder at the richness of the world around us” (p. 290).
How does Debussy’s genius and innovation relate to leadership? At a time in human history when solutions to environmental, economic, medical and other problems are not readily apparent, innovation is one of the primary things that leadership will be expected to foster. Working within the conventions of previous knowledge, leadership will need to challenge currently accepted notions in ways that will bring innovation to all fields. And, as Walsh’s telling of Debussy’s creative journey attests, the path to innovation is often strewn with imperfection and misunderstanding even as it yields essential and novel breakthroughs to improve the human condition and understanding.
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