stead of intellectual thought and strictness of form, but I shall not attempt to criticise the validity of his principles, but merely to state them and to show how successfully he has developed them. His creed helps one to understand his love for sweet harmony, the external beauty of chords, and the secondary importance of form. Sound for sound's sake is his motto. It is the spirit of decadence, but Debussy is a thorough decadent. Wagner pushed the movement in his musical descriptions of the human passions, but he was not a decadent, because he chose the opera as his form, and this excuses all styles of music in that they are descriptive of the text. It is being carried to extremes by the modern French school, and there are already men who go beyond Debussy,-De Severac, De Breville, Ravel, and several others, but none of their work has the genuineness of their leader, Debussy. It is difficult to learn much of his life. He either is, or affects to be, a recluse, and gives little knowledge of himself to the world except through his music. Although but forty-four, he has already won the prix de Rome by an orthodox work, has been refused honors in Paris, on account of excessive modernity in a comparatively simple work, and has to his credit an opera, five tone-poems, two cantatas, a quartet, and many songs and piano pieces. He did not begin composing in his present style. His first works were simple and orthodox. Suddenly he was tempted by the sweets of chromatic harmony, and launched himself into the new paths they opened to him with enthusiasm. He professes to dislike Wagner, but this may safely be considered an affectation, for he owes Wagner too much to be able to scorn him.

Debussy's greatest work is the opera "Pelléas et Mélisande." It required thirteen years to finish. Fortunately, he has been fully repaid for his labors. From a comparatively unknown musician, he became a world-famed composer. As this great work is a complete departure in every way from conventional operatic forms, one can readily understand why he needed thirteen years to perfect it. He has founded a new style, which is already being widely copied. His themes, rhythms,

harmonies, and use of the human voice are strikingly new. The singer becomes merely a part of the orchestra; there is little melody, and that which takes the place of melody is a vocal obligato. The most important triumph in reference to the opera is that it is absolutely wedded to the words. Debussy understands the spirit of Maeterlinck's drama so well, that the music is a perfect translation into musical sounds of the verbal text. Moods, scenes, atmosphere and emotions are all reflected as in a mirror. Of course the Wagnerian form of a continuous orchestral description without pause is followed. Maeterlinck's nervous marionettes, with their untold sorrows, of whose causes they are themselves ignorant, declaim their terrors to each other with the same mystic undertone in their music as in their speech. The shadows flit about to exquisite fountain music, highly dramatic grotto music, music of the cool forest, but never of the free, healthy open air. It is now wistful, now fierce, but never happy. Especially beautiful is the pensive music of the little Yniold, who must sing his petty, childlike woes in accents of that strange and tranquil sorrow peculiar to Maeterlinck.

Remarkable also is Debussy's setting of Mallarmé's "Afternoon of a Faun." It displays the same thorough understanding of his subject, the exact reproduction in music of the emotions in the words. We are made to see vividly the languid creature, whiling away its time at the side of the brook, its mind full of sensuous pictures. Debussy seems to have been more inspired by this subject than by any other. The soft, bewitching tones of the flute sing a languid melody, accompanied by shivers of stringed orchestra, surging upwards into gorgeous masses of rich color. A passionately longing melody enters, given out by strings. The emotion becomes more and more intense, as the instruments develop their own melodies. The accents of the flutes grow wilder and wilder, until the whole orchestra is in motion. Gradually the flow subsides, and the languid melody is exquisitely reviewed in prolonged far-away tones, and the piece ends serenely in E major.

Debussy's musical pictures cannot be taken literally, and criticised
Form, unity, conventional key-
His work must be looked at as
Something floats by before us,
pleasurable or otherwise. The

with respect to the old rules of art.
relationships must not be demanded.
the work of an impressionist painter.
and we experience a certain emotion,
impressionist painter does not expect us to examine the minute details
of his workmanship. We must stand at a distance and take the picture
as a whole. There are big masses of color, impressions for their own
sake. And this very quality constitutes the decadence of the modern
French school. Debussy loves a poetic idea, a beautiful chord, not as
essentially part of the composition, but because it is beautiful. His
love of an idea as such is easily seen in the words he has written for
some of his own songs. To quote from his "Proses Lyriques":

"The night has the sweetness of woman, and the old trees slumber beneath the golden moon."

"Twilight falls over the sea, white-fringed silk."

"The waves chatter like little children, little girls coming out of school."

Another begins: "Sunday on the cities, Sunday in the hearts, Sunday at the homes of the little girls singing with shapeless voices." "Sunday the trains go fast, devoured by insatiable tunnels, and the good signals exchange with a unique eye totally mechanical impressions."

Debussy departs even from the usual form of writing in verse. The music is set to prose words, and there is no pretence at metre. He also has the degenerate's hatred of bright light. The climax of one of the songs runs:

"Break the spell of lies, break the spell of witchcraft; my soul dies of too much sun."

It is seen again in his lack of open-air freshness. Like Chopin, he is a composer for the drawing-room. Perfumes envelop his music with purple mists. His colors are never black nor white. Much is left for

the imagination to play upon. Nevertheless, though these are not the healthy channels for a pure art to pursue, there is a fascination in following it through these changes. The history of music will assuredly repeat itself, and a violent reaction will ensue. It may come soon, it may take many years. All depends on the character of the next great genius that appears; he who will be placed in the ranks of the immortals; who will hold a position with Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner. There will be a band of young enthusiasts, who will seek Nature in her simplest form, and who will preach wildly against the excesses of the harmonist. Until then, we can enjoy the fascination which lies even in the excesses of Debussy and his school.

Reginald Lindsey Sweet.

CHRISTMAS HYMN.

Great God, whate'er the form, the creed,
We build for Thee in fear or whim,
Through joy of hope and human need,
To Thee we raise our Christmas hymn.

Not as of old with simple hearts,

Upon Thy hills we seek Thy Star;
On thronged streets we play our parts
Where only shrill misgivings are.

The doubts are many, small the faith;
In painful reveries we raise,

Each man his house of life and death,
Each man his garden, each his maze.

No more for us rings overhead

Thy voice, nor sings Thine angel horde; The poetry of faith is dead

Within Thy children, Mighty Lord!

With calculating hearts and slow,

Gaunt laws we worship and obey. Only a tale of long ago

Speaks of the glory passed away.

A tale, and at the year's bright end,
When for an instant is forgot

All pain, and each is all men's friend,—
Like echoes of we know not what,

That stirs our dust-worn dreams and dim,
We feel the old notes' magic thrill,

A sodden world's first Christmas hymn:

Peace on the earth, 'twixt men good-will!

Hermann Hagedorn, Jr.