The term ‘late style’ has come to refer to peculiar shifts in technique that often comprise a composer's final years, and the ways that those creative choices indicate engagement with issues of ageing, illness, mortality, and historical position.Footnote ¹ When Claude Debussy composed his last works, he had already been diagnosed with cancer, and his awareness of bodily deterioration and death was heightened. But if his illness was a stimulus for the adoption of new compositional idioms, Marianne Wheeldon's book argues that Debussy's late style formed part of a very public project. Noting how Debussy's cognizance of his own mortality went hand in hand with a concern for his musical legacy, Wheeldon's interdisciplinary study aims to show how he attempted to shape his public image through a strategic compositional engagement with the symbolic order of wartime France.

Wheeldon defines Debussy's final creative period as spanning late 1914 until his last completed works in 1917, an interval that coincides with World War I. Whereas in the preceding years Debussy had worked primarily on theatrical and poetic works, the wartime compositions are mostly small in scale, often bear generic or abstract titles, and create marked shifts in genre and form from his previous output. Etudes and sonatas replace ballets, incidental music, and evocative preludes. Though Wheeldon's survey unpacks the distinct qualities of this music, the book is not concerned with musical style in itself (despite its deceptively simple title) but rather stylistic codes: what and how Debussy's last works signify within the cultural context of war-torn France. Wheeldon frames Debussy's compositional choices within a culture of intensifying patriotism that is concerned with national history and sceptical towards the cosmopolitanism of the previous decades. She says, ‘With the outbreak of war, there was a new imperative for composers to expunge foreign influences from their music, to abandon the experimentation that had characterized the pre-war years, and instead to capture the gravitas appropriate to the wartime effort in Paris’ (8). Noting Debussy's heightened consciousness of public perception within this conservative atmosphere, Wheeldon points up the ways in which he purged his music of foreign associations, wrote works with a nationalistic, even militaristic, rhetoric, and attached signs of French heritage to his scores. She paints a vivid picture of Debussy as an engaged artist, who trades – sometimes ambivalently – on the attitudes and imagery of a country at war, and, conscious of his own mortality, aims to cement his public image as the archetypal Musicien Français for posterity.

In discerning Debussy's place in the political landscape of early twentieth-century France, Wheeldon adds layers of musical and cultural insight to previous studies by Anya Suschitzky and Jane Fulcher.Footnote ² A decade ago Suschitzky demonstrated how Debussy construed the pre-revolutionary figure of Jean-Philippe Rameau as a symbol of French stylistic heritage. According to Suschitzky, Rameau provided a means for Debussy to configure himself as both the antidote to Wagnerian influence and the successor to an established tradition.Footnote ³ The same theme of French identity via the pre-Romantic past appears regularly throughout Wheeldon's book, but whereas Suschitzky focused on Debussy's pre-war activities (i.e., his critical writings and involvement in editing Rameau's Les fêtes de Polymnie) Wheeldon observes references to the eighteenth century in the generic titles and cover art of Debussy's published sonatas and his allusions to the French keyboard tradition in Douze études. She complements Suschitzky's reading of Debussy's prose and editing practice by emphasizing the semiotics of this imagined heritage in music of the war years, the apex of anti-German fervour. Jane Fulcher's study of Debussy's wartime nationalism is another obvious predecessor of Wheeldon's book. Using Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of dialogism in art, Fulcher discerned ways in which Debussy adopted the propagandist rhetoric of French purity in his public statements, but nuanced, ironized, and personalized the prevailing discourse in many of his late compositional choices. Though Wheeldon largely avoids Fulcher's politicized rhetoric, she, like Fulcher, demonstrates a keen eye for signifiers of Debussy's ambivalence towards the atmosphere of wartime nationalism, and she often reflects on the opposition between public messaging and personal creativity in the late works. But Wheeldon's book-length study surpasses Fulcher's essay in its attention to musical detail. Though suggestive, Fulcher's observations about the late style are quite general, and Wheeldon brings a music-theorist's eye for structural strategy to her cross-disciplinary inquiry.

Each of the middle chapters in Debussy's Late Style focuses on a different genre that distinguishes the composer's final output. Chapter 2 explores Debussy's pieces written for specific occasions within this period. Though the works are quite diverse, Wheeldon classifies them broadly as ‘monumental’ and ‘trivial’ (39), distinguishing pieces intended for public impact through performance and publication from those written for private purposes. Berceuse héroïque exemplifies the former category, as it was commissioned for a book whose profits would benefit the Belgian Fund in the wake of the German invasion. The song ‘Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maison’ also aims to elicit a patriotic response through its propagandistic emphasis on the casualties of war: that is, the loss of family, church, home, and school. Debussy's private occasional works are those that he donated to charity or gave as gifts. For example, he sent Les soirs illuminés par l'ardeur du charbon to a coal merchant in lieu of payment during the winter of 1917, and he donated the miniature Pièce pour l'oeuvre du ‘Vêtement du blessé’ to a war relief organization for auction.

Wheeldon does emphasize the biographical value of these works, which help us ‘gauge which events of the war were foremost in Debussy's mind at that particular point in time’ (53), but her discussion is noteworthy not for the way that it documents the motivations of Debussy's music, but for the communicative role that it ascribes to musical style within such contexts. Writing of the Berceuse, she suggests that its ‘title and dedication alone would qualify Debussy's composition as occasional, since they situate the work within a specific time, place, and atmosphere. Yet the music also enacts its occasion with a program that conveys its wartime setting’ (21, emphasis added). Her subtle point is that the occasional work is not defined solely by its circumstances, but also by the discourses that it enters through the access point of musical style. The Berceuse's stylistic components – funeral and march topics, clarion calls, quotation of the Belgian national anthem – speak the language of the cultural moment through transparent symbolism intended to reflect the Belgian plight. However, Wheeldon shows us that the Berceuse does not maintain its public language right through to its conclusion, which contains a series of enigmatic changes in harmony and rhythm that render the actuality of the narrative ambiguous. She describes this ‘process of dissolution’ (24) aptly as leaving ‘the realm of the public occasional work’ (27), implying that despite the work's dedication and purpose, its power to communicate within its context is compromised by a shift in rhetoric foreign to the inspiring occasion. Defining occasional works by their musical language as well as their inspiration gives Wheeldon special insight into the patent convergences and the subtle dissonances between cultural messaging and musical material.

Chapter 3 demonstrates how Debussy aimed to bolster his reputation as the heir of his nation's stylistic lineage in Douze études by placing his own compositional voice among references to the history of French pianism, namely the figures of Chopin – the dedicatee of the collection – and Couperin. After assessing the viability of surface-level comparisons between Chopin and Debussy's etudes made by Robert Godet as a point of departure, Wheeldon turns to an intertextual reading of ‘Pour les sixtes’ and Chopin's Nouvelle étude. She observes how Debussy's etude makes a salient reference to Chopin's work near the conclusion of the arch form through metric, registral, dynamic, and harmonic shifts that ‘transport this passage into a different timbral world’ (65), producing the effect of an intentional quotation. Wheeldon heightens the significance of the Chopin dedication by showing that Debussy does not simply adopt Chopin's techniques in a generic way, but rather foregrounds his predecessor's presence strategically in a directed process of reprise. Wheeldon also infers stylistic tributes to Couperin, whom Debussy invokes implicitly in the preface to the work. She notes Debussy's nod to eighteenth-century keyboard practice in the idiomatic ornamentation from the opening of ‘Pour les agréments’ and the prohibition of thumbs, superimposition of black note and white note ‘manuals’, and the single affect of ‘Pour les huit doigts’. Wheeldon is rightly interested in Debussy's interpretation of the past rather than a nebulous conception of his influences, treating Debussy's simple – and often naïve – references to Couperin as charged symbols of French heritage rather than authentic absorptions of technique. In the conclusion Wheeldon traces the emergence of Debussy's own voice in the collection. She interprets the pre-war modes of composition that manifest themselves in the fourth sonorities of ‘Pour les quatres’, the popular music idioms of ‘Pour les notes répétées’, and the focus on piano timbre and resonance in ‘Pour les sonorités opposées’ as signifiers of Debussy's own contributions to the heritage sketched in other etudes.

Wheeldon's analysis of ‘Pour les sonorités opposées’ traces a narrative logic similar to Berceuse héroïque, maintaining that the etude sheds the historical contingency and direct representations of its occasional predecessor as it absorbs the language of the Berceuse into an abstract context.Footnote ⁴ Her reading of the etude as a transformation of the Berceuse model is brilliant, but her conclusion that Debussy's revisions of the wartime imagery – for instance, his use of excessive performance directions underneath the symbolically-charged clarion calls – helped him distance his work on the intricacies of timbre from potent war associations is too dichotomous. Though she notes the potential for programmatic interpretation of the etude, Wheeldon avoids discussing how the remnants of the public discourse may have taken part in the collection's symbolic statement about Debussy's legacy; rather, she construes inevitable associations with the occasions of war as problems to be fixed. But could it be that Debussy did not so much distance himself from wartime rhetoric as choose a more subtle manifestation of its symbolism to validate the emergence of his own compositional voice, just as Chopin and Couperin provided a culturally sanctioned historical frame in which to situate his work? It strikes me that Debussy's gestures towards the musical language of the Berceuse still engage with the wartime context, albeit more discreetly and with different representational goals. Wheeldon's argument could be enriched by imagining the convergence of personal and public styles in the etude not as a troubling opposition to be resolved by the composer but as a strategic trope within a work that declares Debussy's place in history from the perspective of contemporary circumstances.

Wheeldon sketches a different type of engagement with stylistic heritage for the cyclic sonatas in Chapter 4. Though the movement titles, score design, and gestural content of these chamber works demonstrate a desired affiliation with eighteenth-century predecessors once again, Debussy employs cyclic procedures that suggest a kinship with the more recent formal models of Franck and d'Indy. Wheeldon demonstrates how Debussy emulated Franck's cyclic approach in his early string quartet – perhaps to bring attention and validation to his music near the beginning of his career – but she suggests that his adjustments to the technique in the late works may represent an intentional distancing from d'Indy's political interpretation of cyclic method. To support her hypothesis, she turns to the third movement of the Cello Sonata, which recalls in its final measures a thematic segment heard only once in the first movement. Wheeldon claims that Debussy's emphasis on the wrong theme breaks d'Indy's cardinal rule of recognizability and thus disguises its cyclic nature, but one could easily come to a different conclusion. The segment appears in the first movement interposed between statements of the primary theme as a transition from one to the next, occurring over the same accompaniment as the preceding bars. Insofar as its initial appearance marks the climactic moment of the first movement, the thematic recurrence in the finale could be construed not as an act of misdirection but as a hazy gesture towards the apotheosis of the primary theme itself, a vague memory of a previous context. The finale bears out this reading as it states the theme without accompaniment in a suddenly slow tempo that creates the focusing effect of quotation or recollection in the form of a brief cadenza. The Cello Sonata may not hide its formal model so much as render the recollection simultaneously familiar and elusive. Wheeldon's reading of the Violin Sonata is closer to my reading of the cello sonata. After examining a unifying link between figuration and cadential material in the Intermède and Finale, she points to the elusiveness of the primary cyclic theme in the finale: it first appears as a ‘ghostly reminiscence’ (105) played sur la touche at the beginning of the movement, then it is ‘left hovering in the listener's imagination’ (109) later in the work as the piano reproduces its accompaniment without thematic recall. It would seem that the formal strategies of these recollections may not be as diverse as the two analyses suggest. Though Wheeldon's interpretations of cyclic design are certainly suggestive and creative, the reader cannot help but wonder in the end whether Debussy's choices were really aimed at d'Indy at all. She notes at various points in the essay that Debussy never renounced cyclic procedures and that he may have chosen to use them in the late sonatas because he viewed them as ‘an intrinsic part of his compositional style’ (112). One might question then whether Debussy's revisions represent anxious swerves away from a prominent cultural figure or novel reinventions of personal techniques, or both? Wheeldon's comparison of the Franckian string quartet and the more ‘circumspect’ late sonatas (95) is enlightening, but it leaves a twenty-two year gap that cries out for a more robust conception of Debussy's unique cyclic procedures throughout his career, especially in the decade prior to the war. Expanding the frame of reference could build a stronger hermeneutic foundation for (or a powerful criticism of) Wheeldon's argument.

The shift, in the final chapter, to the posthumous reception of the late style is logical and necessary; if Debussy coded his final works with signs of French heritage and cultural awareness in order to bolster his legacy, did they fulfil their purposes? To answer this question, Wheeldon looks to a special edition of the Revue musicale from 1920 dedicated to Debussy's life and works. The volume, which was published just two years after the composer's death, contains eight articles on his career written by French authors, six essays on his influence in other countries written by international figures, and a collection of ten compositional tributes entitled Tombeau de Claude Debussy. What comes as a surprise in these essays and works is the degree of ambivalence towards the composer's legacy and the lack of significance accorded the late works. Wheeldon highlights a defensive tone in the essays on influence as half of the authors guard their own national traditions and post-war sensibilities by diminishing Debussy's achievements even as they acknowledge his influence within their borders. Though the articles written by French authors are quite positive towards Debussy in general, they rarely mention the late works, and those that describe the final period in detail often treat the change in style as a creative decline linked with the composer's illness. Wheeldon infers a similar bias towards Debussy's prewar works in the Tombeau, which privileges an earlier stylistic identity for Debussy by invoking characteristics of his middle period and making references to specific works. Several of the pieces bear mythological titles, which according to Wheeldon elevate Debussy's earlier affinities above the contemporary politics of the late works through association with a timeless Greco-Roman identity. This link between Debussy and Classical antiquity (as opposed to the association with eighteenth-century classicism cultivated in his wartime compositions) would manifest itself over a decade later in the monuments of Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which connect Debussy visibly to the ancient imagery of his pre-war works. In the end, we are left with an ironic juxtaposition of the public image that Debussy aimed to construct for himself and the reputation that was assembled for him after his death. The conflict that Wheeldon draws between Debussy's intended and posthumous identities offers a potent reminder that reputations are caught up in larger networks of shifting hermeneutic perspectives that lie ultimately beyond the control of an individual.

Debussy's Late Style is truly multidimensional as it successfully maps the semiotic goals and cultural terrain of Debussy's final works. Though at times her study could benefit from problematizing the neat frame of her argument, as I have suggested above, Wheeldon's study is compelling in the way that it assesses Debussy's negotiation of his historical and political moment with an acute awareness of historical context, structural strategy, and intertextual correspondences. Her book should open up new avenues of inquiry into the representational goals of Debussy's music and the continuous transformation of his post-war reputation.