Actores que han impulsado el cultivo de palma

Debussy’s prelude La Fille aux cheveux de lin certainly minimizes the role of the leading tone. On the other hand, the great importance assumed by 6 in the piece is matched by a notable ambivalence in its treatment, an ambivalence foreshad-owed by the initial motive, a minor-seventh arpeggio suggesting both G
major and E
(Aeolian) minor. In the context of G
(which shortly emerges as the unam-biguous tonic), the arpeggio extends from 5 down to 6 and back again; in this way it emphasizes those two degrees but obscures their conventional adjacency rela-tionship by fracturing a major second into a minor seventh (ex. 5.3). The theme confirms its tonality with a plagal leading tone, and the rest of the piece is punc-tuated with additional 6–8 cadences in several varieties (ex. 5.4): conventional pla-gal (IV–I), “mixed” dominant-plapla-gal (V¹¹ –I), deceptive plagal (IV–vi), and others.

In each instance, however, the cadential melody continues by retreating down the tetrachord from 8 to 5 (with the exception of measures 18–21, to be discussed

Très calme et doucement expressif

sans rigueur

Example 5.3. Debussy, “La Fille aux cheveux de lin,” from Préludes, book 1 #8 (1910), beginning.

35

perdendosi

3 30

18 15

(très peu)

3 12

Example 5.4. Debussy, “La Fille aux cheveux de lin,” cadences.

! ₃

3 cédez Un peu animé

Example 5.6. Debussy, “La Fille aux cheveux de lin,” climax and retransition (mm. 19–24).

motion disavows the convention of true leading-tone ascent.

At the same time, a simple audit of the melodic peaks in the piece reveals a structural soprano that ascends in consistently pentatonic motifs, driven locally by plagal leading tones (ex. 5.5). The piece’s climax in measure 21 (at mf, the dynamic pinnacle of this serene prelude) represents a crisis in this ascent. This jarring C
-major triad grows out of a 6–8 cadence in E
major and its three sub-sequent repetitions—first in the original tenor register, then an octave higher, and finally, though abortively, an octave higher still, in the register of the struc-tural soprano (ex. 5.6). That last, feigned repetition breaks with its model

m. 1

Example 5.5. Debussy, “La Fille aux cheveux de lin,” reduction.

d e b u s s y a n d t h e p e n t a t o n i c t r a d i t i o n ❧ 1 6 3 precisely at the moment of cadence, skipping 6 altogether and leaping instead from 5 to 8; in so doing, it avoids what would have been the first chromatic intru-sion into the structural line (c) and hence reverses the tonal trajectory of the piece in preparation for the recapitulation. Moreover, the requisite post-cadential descent also skips this note, using instead the gapped motif e
–d
–b
. Pivotally, the sudden insertion of a C
-major triad at this moment turns 1 in the key of VI^ into 6 in the key of I. The curious neglect of melodic c, and its sublimation harmonically into c
, function to destabilize the plagal leading tone of the sub-mediant (6/VI^), just as a classical retransition destabilizes the classical leading tone of the dominant (7/V)—in both cases global scale degree  4. (Further play between the raised and natural form of 6 ensues in the inner voices in measures 22–23.)

To this point, the structural line has outlined a span of a ninth from 5 up to 6—that is, a reversal of the opening motive’s distinctive boundary tones.

Whereas 5–6 existed just beyond the upper and lower bounds of the opening motive, it exists comfortably within the ninth in question, once at either extreme. This neighbor motion was in fact instantiated in the lower portion of the structural line (m. 6); the higher 6, which was so dramatically highlighted at the piece’s climax, soon connects with 5 in a final, octave-transposed statement of the theme (m. 28), creating a satisfying parallelism and invoking a resump-tion of classical behavior. From a more explicitly Schenkerian perspective, the piece to m. 28 represents an interruption structure elaborated by a large-scale transfer of register (again, see reduction, ex. 5.5). The final cadence of the piece, then, consummates this (pentatonic) interruption, extending the struc-tural line to its highest point and featuring 6–8 in both melody and bass, ii⁶4–I (ex. 5.7). The bare octave on 5 that follows as a seeming afterthought again stub-bornly challenges melodic closure and further indicates Debussy’s idiosyncratic construal of 6 as a deeply conflicted degree. Nineteenth-century composers’

long-sought emancipation of 6, though championed here by Debussy, is also reconsidered and reinterpreted in the interest of tempering melodic directed-ness. In a strange way, the pendulum has swung.

perdendosi 3

Example 5.7. Debussy, “La Fille aux cheveux de lin,” end.

brass, timp.

ww., str. a tempo

retenu

Example 5.8. Debussy, La Mer (1905), i (“De l’aube à midi sur la mer”), end.

In La Fille aux cheveux de lin, Debussy deploys 6 with uncommon imagination and with a commitment to long-range design. His La Mer, though subtitled “sym-phonic sketches,” likewise contains details involving the skillful and far-reaching regulation of the submediant, particularly at the ends of its three movements. If the first movement opens with an unremarkable 6—the modest 5–6 ostinato that comprises the initial melodic idea—the movement ends by showcasing this degree through an astounding sleight of hand (ex. 5.8). The final measures’

lumbering alternation between I and vi seems to set up a straightforward (if non-classical) tonal polarity, but the culminating chord is actually a combination of the two, I^add6. In the end, 6 is neither resolved nor retained (as happens,

d e b u s s y a n d t h e p e n t a t o n i c t r a d i t i o n ❧ 1 6 5 memorably, in Mahler’s “Der Abschied,” ex. 1.18), but simply dissolves by means of a brazen feat of orchestration. The major triad that is left makes a slightly unconvincing ending, and in any case can scarcely be heard as an arrival per se.

The second movement ends with a superimposition of weakly competing keys.

The tonic E is suggested by the cadential bass leap b–e into the final section (m.

245), which accompanies the resolution of a whole-tone set (and its altered dominant-seventh subset) into a long-sustained E^add6chord. On the other hand, two subsequent melodic figures suggest B as tonic, if only by implication: the pic-colo’s diatonic line and the harp’s pentatonic gesture both break off in the course of their would-be cadential ascents, at 7 of B (d–e–f–g–a) and at 6 of B (c–d–f–g), respectively (ex. 5.9). The opposition between the two tonics

E: I^{add 6}

Str.

8va Tpt.

3 Picc.

3

B: ?

Hp. B: ?

Example 5.9. Debussy, La Mer, ii (“Jeux de vagues”), mm. 249–254.

Hp.

B:

Fl. Glock.

3 Vn. E:

Example 5.10. Debussy, La Mer, ii (“Jeux de vagues”), end.

vi I 3

3

3 3

Example 5.11. Debussy, La Mer, iii (“Dialogue du vent et de la mer”), mm.

266–270.

3 3 3

Example 5.12. Debussy, La Mer, iii (“Dialogue du vent et de la mer”), mm.

254–256.

5.10). Measure 258 is the crucial convergence of three events, which, ingen-iously, attain and then swiftly annul melodic closure: (1) the high b in the vio-lins seems to resolve the harps’ dangling g pentatonically, as 6–8 of B; (2) simultaneously, however, the flutes, in imitation of the harp, land on g and sus-tain it until the end; (3) the glockenspiel, which, like the violins offered a down-beat b and hence a mild endorsement of tonic B, continue to c—that is, the same 6 of E that was highlighted in the previous (apparently tonic) added-sixth chords. In short, the moment compels the listener to consider two different notes as unresolved submediants.¹

These two pitch-classes connect with the tonality of La Mer as a whole, which, judging from the endings of the outer movements, can roughly be considered D
major: d
(⫽c) and a
(⫽g) are 1 and 5 of D
. More significantly, the melt-ing together of E-pentatonic and B-pentatonic recalls the opposition, and then melting together, of I and vi at the end of the first movement. The third move-ment, on the other hand, does finally achieve a forceful resolution in its struc-tural cadence (ex. 5.11): the majestic vi–I not only serves as a triumphant Picardy sixth in response to the equivocating motif that pervades the movement,

6–5–6–5 (ex. 5.12), but also recalls, and decisively settles, the elusive close of the first movement. While La Fille involved a constant equivocation between clas-sical and non-clasclas-sical resolutions of 6, the dramatic impact of La Mer surely

d e b u s s y a n d t h e p e n t a t o n i c t r a d i t i o n ❧ 1 6 7 depends in part on how it teasingly reserves a straightforward non-classical res-olution until the end of a multi-movement work.