CHAPTER 2 Getting Rid of Glue
Satie, Debussy, Fauré, Ravel, Lili Boulanger
Richard Taruskin
Who amongst us has not, in his ambitious days, dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose—musical without meter and without rhyme, flexible enough and sufficiently accented to correspond to the lyrical impulses of the spirit and to the undulations of the world of dreams?1
—Charles Baudelaire (1862)
As to the kind of music I want to make, I would like it to be flexible enough and sufficiently accented to correspond to the lyrical impulses of the spirit and to the capriciousness of dreams.2
—Claude Debussy (1886)
Ars gallica, the “truly French” art promised in 1871 by the Société Nationale de Musique in reaction to military humiliation at the hands of the Prussians, finally began rather bashfully to show its face toward the end of the next decade. Rather than attempt to vie with the Germans in loftiness and profundity, which merely encouraged “epigonism,” the newer French impulses were at first modest and unthreatening. They aimed at the deflation of rhetoric—an especially pointed gesture in the face of German expressive maximalism—and placed a renewed premium on immediate physical sensation.
- Citation (MLA):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 2 Getting Rid of Glue." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-chapter-002.xml>.
- Citation (APA):
- Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 2 Getting Rid of Glue. In Oxford University Press, Music in the Early Twentieth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 15 Mar. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-chapter-002.xml
- Citation (Chicago):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 2 Getting Rid of Glue." In Music in the Early Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 15 Mar. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-chapter-002.xml
