166 Lectures on Modem Music
the manner in which Monet, for example, gets his comple-
mentary tones and shades by a sharp juxtaposition of little
daubs of primary colors which are fused and blended by
the distant eye. The resemblance between the two methods
is so striking that the musical device would almost seem to
be a direct transposition of the technique of one art into
the realms of another. Yet one would scarcely be willing
to draw, from such circumstantial evidence, so audacious
a conclusion.
Among the specifically musical influences which assisted
in the formation of Debussy’s style—a style which, in its
harmonic aspects, seems at first sight so personal and rev-
olutionary that one might easily make the mistake of
thinking that it represents a complete break with the past—
we have already had occasion to speak of “Boris Godou-
now", of the relationship which doubtless exists between the
simplicity and directness of Moussorgsky’s diction and
the free, arioso-like recitative of uPelleas and Melisande".
Some historians have gone farther and largely on the
strength of the resemblance between these measures from
“Clouds”,
Clarinets
Bassoons
and the following passage from a song in Moussorgsky’s
“Without Sunlight” 1
‘See also these measures from Stravinsky’s “Nightingale”:
