British Musicologist Calls Debussy Key to Cross-Fertilization of Arts

The music of Claude Debussy is the key to the "cross-fertilization of musical and poetic values that formed a fusion of the arts," a British musicologist maintained yesterday in the first Louis C. Elton lecture. Critic, scholar and composer, Edward Lockspeiser spoke on "Debussy, Poe and Freud: a New Approach to the Music of Cur Time."

A "vast panorama" of new influences have affected music in this century, creating a diffusion of styles and techniques, Lockspeiser asserted. The increasing use of these styles, as well as of electronics, has led to a loss of individuality in en "era of the impersonal, the self-effacing composer." Debussy was the first to enlarge the modes of expression, but at the same time to foresee the new impersonality. Lockspeiser maintained, citing Debussy's remark that Stravinsky would "become intolerant in his old age."

Debussy "Obsessed" With Poe

Lockspeiser, who has written a biography of Debussy, said "his life-long obsession" with the writings of Poe influenced the "musical psychology" of his works, especially Peleas et Mellgande, La Cathedrale Engloutle and La. Mer. Poe's fascination with dreams and sexual symbolism cast a "subtle and profound influence over his works," and two of them, The Devil in the Belfry and The Fall of the House of Usher, so affected the composer that he used them as the basis of two never-completed operas.

While Lockspeiser claimed no direct personal influence of Freud on Debussy he maintained that Debussy's musical psychology, most prominent in Peleas et Meilsande, was closely attuned to the ideas Freud was then developing.