ained arioso style of
_Tristan und Isolde_ would have been as impossible as it would have been
inept. As it is, the writing for the voices in _Pelleas_ never, as one
might reasonably suppose, becomes monotonous. The achievement--an
astonishing _tour de force_, at the least--is as artistically successful
as it is unprecedented in modern music.

In his treatment of the orchestra, Debussy makes a scarcely less
resolute departure from tradition. There is little symphonic development
in the Wagnerian sense. His orchestra reflects the emotional
implications of the text and action with absolute and scrupulous
fidelity, but suggestively rather than with detailed emphasis. The drama
is far less heavily underscored than with Wagner; the note of passion or
of conflict or of tragedy is never forced. His personages love and
desire, exult and hate and die, with a surprising economy of vehemence
and insistence. Yet, unrhetorical as the music is, it is never pallid;
and in such truly climacteric moments as that of Golaud's agonized
outbreak in the scene with Melisande, in the fourth act, and the
ecstatic culmination of the final love-scene, the music supports the
dramatic and emotional crisis with superb competency and vigor.

He follows Wagner to the extent of using the inescapable device of
representative themes, though he has, with his usual airy inconsistency,
characterized the Wagnerian _Leitmotiv_ system as "rather coarse." It is
true, however, that his typical phrases are employed far more sparingly
and subtly than modern precedent would have led one to expect. They are
seldom set in sharp and vividly dramatic contrast, as with Wagner; nor
are they polyphonically deployed. Often they are mere sound-wraiths,
intended to denote moods and nuances of emotion so impalpable and
evanescent, so vague and interior, that it is more than a little
difficult to mark their precise significance. Often they are mere
fragments of themes, mere patches of harmonic color, evasive and
intangible, designed almost wholly to translate phases of that psychic
penumbra in which the characters and the action of the drama are
enwrapped. They have a common kinship in their dim and muted loveliness,
their grave reticence, the deep and immitigable sadness with which, even
at their most rapturous, they are penetrated. This is a score rich in
beauty and strangeness, yet the music has often a deceptive naivete, a
naivete that is so extreme that it reveals itself