Kontradykcyjne wektory oddziaływania impresjonizmu rezonującego w muzyce francuskiej połowy XX wieku – postimpresjonistyczna „estetyka labiryntu”. Portrety kompozytorskie Charles’a Koechlina i Florenta Schmidta

Abstract

Herein article has been entirely based on the French documentation and written as result of the author’s many years of research study in the field of French culture and music. The studies have brought to revealing more and more cards, which has occurred in terms of these two not particularly widely known composers in Poland: Charles Koechlin and Florent Schmitt. These two artists complemented and developed the Claude Debussy’ output. At times they redirected his composer’s interest into other spheres, thus getting influenced by other trends, producing slightly magic creations, fascinating with their sound and aesthetic conveyance. The core of this presentation is to precisely define the genesis of the two contrary creative worlds characteristic for the French postimpressionism of those two not widely known characters. The author also strives to sketch the opposition of these two creative standpoints, a line drawn in the form of expressionistic impressionism, coloured with the touch of German influence, and a line of classicist, typically Gallic, modally determined and paradoxically, contrapuntally; the common element for these two aesthetic spheres is their sensitivity to oriental infiltrations. The author derives her conclusions from a deep analysis of the works composed by Koechlin and Schmitt. Both composers, despite their metamorphoses, at the same time likewise and differently fit well into the picture of romantic isolation: Charles Koechlin, devoted to „shadows of the past”, and Florent Schmitt – absorbed in the dramatic narration, while „social interaction” only partially determined their art. Axioms of tradition did not loose their meaning with those artists, but got evolved, revalued, even in their most contractive dimensions, even in the canon of the French everlasting classicism. In the final part, the author proposes to recognise Gerard Denizeau with the epithet „aesthetician of labyrinth”, which was used by the author to name the art of the second half of the twentieth century; this Gallic labyrinth of the postimpressionist art, built on contradictory assumptions, does not have a single, proper way out, and its multiple pathways remind of the courtly French style gardens with their principle of „game” and illusion. When looking at these processes in a universal way we can notice that the music is a part of the nature, that each power has its reversal, and reversals of both power are opposite. The above drawn picture also arguments that each direction has two reversals, that each action resonates in reaction, usually binary-oriented.