chord-groups

Updated: August 23, 2026

There is a marked indifference to the possibilities of contrapuntal effect, a dependence upon a method fundamentally homophonic rather than polyphonic this music is a rich and shimmering texture of blended chord-groups, rather than a pattern of interlaced melodic strands. One cannot but note the manner in which it abhors and shuns the easily achieved, the facile, the expected.

Lawrence Gilman - Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande: A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score