Here's what Charles Ives' teacher said about Strauss and Debussy in 1909

The opera is just now the largest figure on our musical horizon, and opera, always responsive to the latest fashion, has undergone very important typical changes of late years. "Salomé," by Richard Strauss, for instance, is more an extended symphonic poem than opera in the older sense. It is as if scenery, words, and action had been added to the musical resources of such a work as Strauss's "Zarathustra." It is only about twice as long as "Zarathustra." Strauss's "Salomé" and Debussy's "Pelléas and Mélisande" are typical modern musical achievements. In spite of the suavity and popularity of Italian operas of our time and of the operatic traditions of the Italians as a nation, they do not appear to have the importance of the German and French works just mentioned. The two men mentioned seem just now the most active forces in our musical life, and it may throw light upon the music of our own time to compare the two operas with each other, not with other classic or modern works of the same nature; for from such they differ too widely for a comparison to be useful. Old-fashioned people seek in opera a union of speech and song, and each of these two composers has renounced the latter definitely. No human voice gives forth any musically interesting phrase in "Pelléas and Mélisande." In "Salomé" the voices, when used melodically, which is seldom, are treated like instruments, and it is no exaggeration to say that song is relegated entirely to the orchestra. The voices declaim, the orchestra sings. Each opera is a natural continuation of its composer's previous work. Each is an independent growth. Neither composer has influenced the other to a discernible extent. Yet it seems impossible to find any other notable musical work of our own day which does not show the influence of one or the other of these two men.

"Salomé" is in one act and lasts an hour and a half; "Pelléas and Mélisande" is in five acts and lasts about three hours. The difference in time is largely due to the underlying play which determines the form and length of each opera. It may be granted that each of these two works reflects conscientiously the spirit of the text. The shadowy, wistful people of Maeterlinck's drama are faithfully portrayed in the uncertain, keyless music of Debussy, as are the outrageous people of Wilde's play in the extravagant, vociferous music of Strauss. "Pelléas and Mélisande" as a play is perhaps the extreme of mystic symbolism. When reduced to its simplest terms in every-day speech, it may mean anything, everything, or nothing. The motive of the play "Salomé" is frankly an attempt to shock Herod, as tough a sinner as ever was drawn. The object is attained, and it is small wonder that the audience is moved. There seems to be throughout Debussy's work, to speak pathologically, a preponderance of white blood-corpuscles. In our day and generation we want red blood and plenty of it [oh just wait a few years Horatio], and we find it in "Salomé," a whole cistern spattered with it. At its first performance in New York so much got on the stage that ladies had to be led out and revived.

There is a great difference in the matter of pure noise. Throughout the whole of "Pelléas and Mélisande" one feels that the orchestra has its mouth stuffed with cotton wool lest it should really make a noise. Most people want a healthy bellow from time to time to show that the orchestra is alive. And in "Salomé" we have an orchestra with its lid entirely removed. The hazy, indeterminate, wistful vagueness which is so much admired in Maeterlinck's poem some people resent in the music. That is too much like an Aeolian harp, too purely decorative, too truly subordinate. The orchestra never gets up and takes hold of the situation as it often so frankly does in Strauss's "Salomé." "Pelléas" is a new sensation, perhaps a new art; but it is a little like looking at the stage through colored glass. Undoubtedly the play is the thing.

The musical vocabulary of the two men differs immensely. Many admirers of the modern French school think Strauss's music vulgar because it really has tunes, and because one can almost always tell what key it is in. In the French music the continual evasion of everything we consider obvious becomes monotonous and after an hour or two furiously unimportant. One longs in vain for a tonal point of departure, for some drawing; but there is only color. In passing it may be said that the play in its form and vocabulary is the exact opposite of the music. Points of departure are not lacking in its construction, and the language is marvelously simple, lucid, and direct.

The matter of tonality remains. The six-tone scale which Debussy loves and uses so much divides the octave into six equal parts. The augmented triad, which he uses with the same frequency, divides the octave into three equal parts. Both devices constitute a definite negation of tonality or the key sense; for we used the recurrence of semitones in any scale which is to be recognizable as having a beginning and an end. It may be that our grandchildren will not want tonality in our sense, and again it may well be that they will prize it more highly than we do. It is hard to imagine what can take its place; certainly there is no substitute for it in music, for the essence of musical form consists chiefly in a departure from and a return to a clearly expressed tonality. A substitute for tonality outside of music would seem a hopeless abandonment of nearly all that makes the music of Beethoven, Bach, and Wagner great to us. Compare Strauss and Debussy in this respect. Each composer has a rich, individual, personal, melodic, and harmonic vocabulary; each offers new and satisfying rhythmic discoveries; each shows us a wealth of new and beautiful color. The differences in melody lie in the greater directness of Strauss's work. His tunes are sometimes garish in their very baldness and simplicity. This is never true of Debussy, to whom a plain tune like the principal dance tune in "Salomé" would seem utterly common and hateful. Polyphony is regarded as the highest, the ultimate development of melody. There seems to be vastly more polyphonic and rhythmic vitality in Strauss's work than in Debussy's. "Salomé" is as alive as an ant-hill. "Pelléas" is more like an oyster-bed, with no actual lack of life, but not much activity.

Harmony has become an attribute of melody, and our harmonic sense, a recent growth, furnishes the only means we have of definitely localizing formal portions of musical structure. Total absence of form is inconceivable in music, and form implies inevitably some degree of formality. This element is always clearly present in Strauss and always purposely absent in Debussy, who steadfastly avoids the indicative mood and confines himself apparently to the subjunctive. At great climaxes Strauss ordinarily seeks a simple triad, Debussy some more than usually obscure and refined dissonance. The harmonic element in Strauss is, perhaps, less refined, but it is less subtle. In Debussy this element is less direct and perhaps less beautiful, but quite distinctly less obvious or common, even if less varied.

Fully aware of inviting the warmest kind of dissent, I venture to suggest that Strauss may be a positive and Debussy a negative force in music, the one greatest in what he does, the other in what he avoids. After all, we cannot get on without the common things of daily life, and, admitting his occasional lapses into the commonplace or something lower, Strauss is the most consummate master of musical expression the world has ever seen; not the greatest composer, but the one most fully able to realize in sound his mental musical conceptions. In the last analysis it is, of course, what a man has to say, not entirely how he says it, which furnishes the basis for a sound judgment of him. We should not be too much impressed by Strauss's skill in writing for great orchestral masses. In itself that signifies little more than ability to use the wealth of orchestral material now available in Germany. Strauss's appetite for orchestra is a little like the Eastport man's appetite for fish. It is easily satisfied and not too extravagant. Much more convincing is the accuracy with which he finds rhythm, melody, harmony, and color to express just the shade of meaning he wishes to convey. To repeat, no musician was ever so well equipped to give to the world his musical creations, and yet since he was a very young man Strauss has produced no pure music, nothing without an extra-musical foundation; and although many of his friends and admirers hope still that he will, he admits frankly that he does not intend to.

Are we, therefore, to believe that music must be pinned down henceforth to its illustrative function? One prefers to think that our living composers are unconsciously intoxicated by the luxuriance and wealth of new and beautiful musical resources which have only recently been placed at their command. They confuse the means with the end. They have not yet learned to use their wealth. They are nouveaux riches. The more perfect performers, the more intelligent listeners, the new riches on every side tempt them to concrete rather than to abstract utterance. I believe that in the future the highest flights of composers will be, as they have been in the past, into those ideal, impersonal, ethereal regions where only imagination impels, informs, and creates. As for illustrative music, it must always have one foot firmly fixed on earth. How, then, can it rise to the heavens? Although not yet with us, the new vision will come in the fullness of time; and when it does, the whole world will know and follow it.

As a bonus, here's what his editor thought in 1913:

Note. — Professor Parker's well-balanced ideas and wise conclusions are of the utmost value. The suggestion that present composers are working in the new medium of modern orchestral color, and have not yet gone much beyond the mastering of the technique of composing in the new style, is most pertinent. The great masters of music amount to less than two dozen in number, so that we need not lose hope if we have had no commanding genius of the pioneer type since Wagner. Debussy and Strauss are preparing the way by experiments. In addition, it is harder to write pure music than to illustrate a programme in tones. One may mention again the case of Brahms, who wrote absolute music of the greatest value in his symphonies, in spite of the programme influence of the romantic school. What he did with the classical orchestra will very likely be done in the future with the fuller modern forces. Professor Parker's words, too, are not those of a speculative dreamer, but come from the pen of a great composer, well informed in the classics, and echoing an earlier school nobly in his own great oratorio, "Hora Novissima."


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