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Updated: June 27, 2025
There is not in existence any fine music descriptive of any form of fighting; and here slashing passages on the strings, blares of the brass, shrieks of the wood-wind, do not cover the inevitable failure of invention.
He was sitting at his work-table scoring a passage in the third act of The Dumb Princess for the wood-wind choir when her knock, faint as it was, breaking in upon the rhythm of his theme, caused his pen to leap away from the paper and his heart to skip a beat. But had it actually been a knock upon his door? Such an event was unlikely enough.
The orchestral accompaniment during Isolde's speech has a very solemn character imparted to it by slow chords of the trombones, piano, with somewhat feverish semiquaver triplets on the strings, snatches of the love-motive and other motives being heard in the wood-wind; while in the pauses, runs on the violins mark Kurwenal's impatience.
He has an especial affection for the strings, particularly in the lower registers; and he is exceedingly fond of subdividing and muting them. It is rare to find him using the wood-wind choir alone, or the wood and brass without the strings.
"Then, too," he said in conclusion, "I have organized a real orchestra of twenty-one players, strings, brass, wood-wind, etc., which I hope is going to be of real use on the other side during our training period in France. You see, 'over there' the soldier boys' chances for leave are limited and we will have to depend a good deal on our own selves for amusement and recreation.
Pelléas enters, and there is an impassioned declaration of his theme, scored, f, for wood-wind, horns, and strings, as he observes that he is about to depart, "crying out for joy and woe like a blind man fleeing from his burning house." We hear the Fate motive when Mélisande warns Pelléas that it is late, that they must take care, as the gates of the castle will soon be closed for the night.
The strife of these elements is managed with great cleverness, ending beatifically with the motive of Gretchen dying away in the wood-wind. An orchestral score that has been published is the Dedication March for Carnegie Hall in Pittsburg. It begins with a long fanfare of horns heard behind the scenes.
As it has been remarked, Debussy's orchestra is here, with few exceptions, the orchestra of Mozart's day. On page after page he writes for strings alone, or for strings with wood-wind and horns. He uses the full modern orchestra only upon the rarest occasions, and then more often for color than for volume.
It ends with the F sharp minor chord in the 6-4 position with full brass and drums; then sudden silence in the orchestra as the voice sings the words "furchtbarer Trank." As he lies in a swoon the wood-wind in turns continue the malediction. The tone then changes as Kurwenal stands beside him, uncertain whether he is alive or dead.
The four constituents, the wild laughter of the shakes of the wood-wind, the slashing figure of the strings, the galloping figure of the bass, the Ride theme had these been used by any one save Wagner the result would have been unendurably wooden.
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