Indeed, a parallelism exists throughout their
respective works. Debussy writes "Homage a Rameau"; Ravel "Le Tombeau de
Couperin." Debussy writes "Le Martyre de Saint-Sebastien"; Ravel
projects an oratorio, "Saint-Francois d'Assise." Ravel writes the
"Ondine" of the collection entitled "Gaspard de la nuit"; Debussy
follows it with the "Ondine" of his second volume of preludes. Both,
during the same year, conceive and execute the idea of setting to music
the lyrics of Mallarme entitled "Soupir" and "Placet futile."
Nevertheless, this fact constitutes Ravel in no wise the imitator of
Debussy. His work is by no means, as some of our critics have made haste
to insist, a counterfeit of his elder's. Did the music of Ravel not
demonstrate that he possesses a sensibility quite distinct from
Debussy's, in some respects less fine, delicious, lucent, in others
perhaps even more deeply engaging; did it not represent a distinct
development from Debussy's art in a direction quite its own, one might
with justice speak of a discipleship. But in the light of Ravel's actual
accomplishment, of his large and original and attractive gift, of the
magistral craftsmanship that has shown itself in so many musical forms,
from the song and the sonatine to the string-quartet and the orchestral
poem, of the talent that has revealed itself increasingly from year to
year, and that not even the war and the experience of the trenches has
driven underground, the parallelism is to be regarded as necessitated by
the spiritual kinship of the men, and by their contemporaneity.
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