Intervallic Procedures in Debussy: Serenade from the Sonata for Cello and Piano, 1915

Abstract

THE FIRST two measures of the Serenade make clear that, of the various musical aspects, it is the intervallic that is most significant. The interval has acquired a new self-sufficiency and independence as an entity in its own right. Isolation of the interval from a motivic or contrapuntal context permits its exploitation in more systematic fashion through symmetrical organization, planned alteration, and patterning. In particular, this isolation allows the type of symmetrical molecular arrangement that appears here. A nucleus of two consecutive half-steps, constituting together the interval of the whole step, is defined by the first three pitches, played pizzicato by the cello. This nucleus is then repeated, but transposed to leave a gap of a minor third between the two occurrences. After another gap of a minor third, the nucleus is heard for the third time, now in the piano, but without its middle term, so that its composite interval, the whole step, is presented explicitly. The total distance covered in this systematic fashion is an octave; two successive presentations of the nucleus cover the distance of a fifth. The standard unit of calibration, the octave, seems to be divided into three equal parts by the successive placements of the intervallic nucleus, since the points of division fall in each instance within the gap of a minor third that separates them. The fact that these points of division occur at two thirds of the first gap, at the pitch level of C, and at one third of the second gap, at the level of E, shows that the placements of the nucleus are not symmetrical in relation to the octave, however; rather do these placements begin a series that would not be completed until the entire great circle of fifths has been traversed, since each nucleus begins at the equivalent of a fifth below the preceding one. To close off within an octave three successive statements, as Debussy does here, is a less obvious and more interesting procedure than would be a true tripartite division, as their relationship to the octave is unexpected. Since the fifth itself is two thirds of an octave, it encompasses two of the placements. It therefore is divided in turn into two halves that

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