Debussy and the Fragment (Chiasma 18)

193 Pages·2006·1.23 MB·English

by  Linda Cummins

Debussy and the Fragment
Chiasma 18
General Editor
Michael Bishop
Editorial Committee
Adelaide Russo, Michael Sheringham,
Steven Winspur, Sonya Stephens,
Michael Brophy, Anja Pearre
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006
Debussy and the Fragment
Linda Cummins
Cover design: Pier Post
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of
‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence’.
Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions
de "ISO 9706:1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents -
Prescriptions pour la permanence".
ISBN-10: 90-420-2065-2
ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2065-8
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006
Printed in The Netherlands
CHIASMA
Chiasma seeks to foster urgent critical assessments focussing upon joinings
and criss-crossings, single, triangular, multiple, in the realm of modern French
literature. Studies may be of an interdisciplinary nature, developing connections
with art, philosophy, linguistics and beyond, or display intertextual or other
plurivocal concerns of varying order.
Michael Bishop
Halifax, Nova Scotia
*
Rather than solid frames, some less than perfect aesthetic objects have permeable
membranes which allow them to diffuse effortlessly into the everyday world.
In the parallel universes of music and literature, Linda Cummins extols the
poetry of such imperfection. She places Debussy’s work within a tradition
thriving on anti-Aristotelian principles: motley collections, crumbling ruins
real or fake, monstrous hybrids, patchwork and palimpsest, hasty sketches,
ellipses, truncated beginnings and endings, meandering arabesques, irrelevant
digressions, auto-quotations. Sensitive to the intermittences of memory and
experience and with a keen ear for ironic intrusion, Cummins draws the
reader into the Western cultural past in search of the surprisingly ubiquitous
aesthetic of the unfinished, negatively silhouetted against expectations of
rational coherence. Theories popularized by Schlegel and embraced by the
French Symbolists are only the first waypoint on an elaborately illustrated
tour reaching back to Petrarch. Cummins meticulously applies the derived
results to Debussy’s scores and finds convincing correlations in this chiasmatic
crossover.
Anja Pearre
Halifax, Nova Scotia 2006
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Professors Matthew G. Brown, now of the
Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, and Jan Herlinger
and Adelaide Russo of Louisiana State University, co-directors and
minor professor respectively, for invaluable guidance and generosity
with their time during the completion of the dissertation on which this
book is based; and since. The Graduate School of Louisiana State
University, the Bourse Chateaubriand, and the Camargo Foundation
provided indispensable financial support for research and writing, for
which I am mostgrateful. Dover Scores kindly provided permission to
use their publications as models for all musical examples. Thanks also
to Alaric Haag, who responded with characteristicélan to arequestfor
cover art; to Anja Pearre, whose conscientious and thorough editing
saved me frommany infelicities ofexpression;and to ChristaStevens,
for seeing the manuscript expeditiously through the press. Finally, I
thank my family and friends for their unflagging support and
encouragement.
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CONTENTS
Introduction 11
Chapter1
RuinsofConvention;ConventionsofRuin 21
Chapter2
Beginningsand Endings 63
Chapter3
Arcadias and Arabesques 95
Chapter4
TheSketch 117
Chapter5
Auto-Quotation 135
Chapter6
Preludes:APostlude 151
Bibliography 171