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M. J. Neves: The Dehumanization of Art.

Ortega y Gassets Vision of New Music
IRASM 43 (2012) 2: 365-376
The Dehumanization of Art.
Ortega y Gassets Vision
of New Music
Maria Joo Neves
Quinta de Perogil, 55
8800-217 TAVIRA
Portugal
E-mail:
filosofiamjn@gmail.com
UDC: 78.01 ORTEGA Y GASSET
Original Scientific Paper
Izvorni znanstveni rad
Received: October 23, 2011
Primljeno: 23. listopada 2011.
Accepted: July 15, 2012
Prihvaeno: 15. srpnja 2012.
The end of the 19th century was a period of im-
portant scientific, social and cultural changes which
also lead to a disruption of traditional aesthetic values.
The new artistic creations provoked diso rientation in
a public which was left without valid frame of refer-
ence for the unconventional artistic productions
which then started to appear in all disciplines, be it
music, painting, theatre etc. In consequence the new
art was highly unpopular. For the Spanish philoso-
pher Jos Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) unpopularity
was an essential characteristic of the new art. While
romanticism quickly conquered the people and
turned into the popular style as such, very appreciat-
ed by everybody, the new art by nature was anti-
popular and incomprehensible to the crowd.
The essay The Rebellion of the Masses (1926) re-
fers to Mallarm, who recalls a reduced public
listening to a refined musician [presumably Debussy].
Ortega comments that public underlined with its
scarcity the multitudinous absence.
1
The philoso-
1
Jos ORTEGA Y GASSET, La Rebelin de las Masas, Revi-
sta de Occidente, Madrid 1972, 65. Debussy composed his Prlude
Abstract - Rsum
In the beginning of last
century a wave of new
artistic creations provoked
disorientation in the
audience which was left
without a valid frame of
reference for the unconven-
tional artistic productions.
In consequence the new
music was highly un popular.
According to Ortega y
Gasset, while the
expression of personal
feelings and emotions was
the subject of music writing
of Romanticism, the music
of Debussy heralded a new
era which requests the
listener to acquire a
spiritual distance allowing
only for a minimal inter-
ference of sentiments. In
this consists the desired
dehumanization of art
which I intend to analyse
here choosing the musical
innovations of Debussy as
a starting point.
Keywords: Dehumaniza-
tion of art Ortega y
Gasset Debussy
Modernism Musical
aesthetics
M. J. Neves: The Dehumanization of Art.
Ortega y Gassets Vision of New Music
IRASM 43 (2012) 2: 365-376
366
pher also treats the subject in his book Espaa Invertebrada (1921), in an article
titled Masas (Masses) published in the newspaper El Sol in 1926, and in two con-
ferences given in Buenos Aires (1928). The idea of a dichotomy between elites and
masses and acknowledgement that new music is indicated only for limited audi-
ences was adopted by the musicologist and critic Adolfo Salazar:
Debussy, like Mallarm, even like Rossetti, inevitably is an author for a reduced
audience. For the big mass, greedy for love stories, a work like La Demoiselle lue
would be too demanding for their narrow capacity to sustain attention.
2
The Spanish philosopher makes an important distinction between the not
liking of a specific piece of art and lack of understanding. Incomprehension
implies a feeling of humiliation and, not infrequently, rage. This is the main reason
for the rejection of the New Art by the large majority of the public: they do not
approve because they do not understand. For Ortega, the New Art not only
implies a clear break with the previous aesthetic tradition but he would also go
much further and divide the population into two classes: the chosen few and the
common people, putting aside the wrong assumption of equality of all men.
Ortega points out some new aesthetic parameters which may cast some light
on the New Art, so unaccessible to the public at large. In particular he refers to a
tendency towards purification which consists in nothing less than the elimination
of the human. While the expression of personal feelings and emotions was the
subject of music writing from Beethoven to Wagner which basically produced
only spiritual contamination, the New Music of Debussy heralded an era which
requests the listener to acquire a spiritual distance which allows only for a minimal
interference of sentiments. The following scene illustrates his concept: Imagine a
man dying in his bedroom, his wife, the doctor, a journalist and a painter being
present. In this example the painter is supposed to be the most dissociated and the
least spiritually involved. He reaches the aesthetic level. It is emotional distance
towards the drama taking place that allows the painter to deal with the formal
elements: the contours of the humans, the play of light and shadow, the shades of
colors etc. The essay Musicalia presents a similar example with Pedro, sad at his
wifes death, the compassionate Paulo and the artist Juan, who maintains a
laprs-midi dun faune based on the poem of Mallarm, one of many collaborations between the
composer and symbolistic poets of his time. This piece was first performed in Spain in 1905 by the
Lamoureaux Concerts of Paris, who played in Barcelona La Mer and the above mentioned Prlude. One
year later the Orquesta Sinfnica de Madrid, directed by Enrique Fernandz Arbs, performed the
composition. In the six performances the audience was constantly divided between furious protestors
and enthusiastic supporters. It was this split of opinion which Ortega had in mind when he refers to
the dichotomy between elite and mass.
2
Adolfo SALAZAR, La Dmoiselle lue y el Simbolismo. Orquestra Filarmnica. Otras obras, El
Sol, Madrid, 28. 02. 1929.
M. J. Neves: The Dehumanization of Art.
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367
IRASM 43 (2012) 2: 365-376
spiritual distance between himself and the situation, remaining merely an
observer. Only Juan is in condition to reach the aesthetic level. The majority of
people, however, would react like Paulo. For them the object that induces aesthetic
delight is all the same as in normal, everyday life: human passions, in this specific
case, the empathy and the subsequent contagion produced by the pain of Pedro.
As the aesthetic contemplation does not request a spiritual attitude any different
from normally shows that we deal with a fake aesthetic judgment. Ortega goes
even further, establishing parallels between aesthetic access levels and certain
composers:
I cannot put into words with more clarity and emphasis the differences between the
romantic music and the new music, between Schumann and Mendelssohn on one
hand and Debussy and Stravinsky on the other. Pedro, the unhappy widower, is
Mendelssohn, Juan could be Debussy while in Pablo the compassionate friend I
recognize the public which rejoices in the compositions of the first one.
3

The common people which are incapable of reaching the level of pure
aesthetics which the new music requires, commit, in the understanding of the
philosopher, nothing less than artistic terrorism:
To prefer Mendelssohn to Debussy is a subversive act; it promotes the weaker and
violates the higher. The respectable public that applauds the wedding march and
boos the Iberia of the excellent modern composer commits an act of terrorism.
4
The philosopher protests against the method of pleasing the public by com-
bining the unpopular Debussy with other, widely known works to guarantee a
successful performance and a cheerful audience. Apparently, this was quite
common practice, as we can see from the following critique:
The Philharmonic Orchestra presented yesterday to its public an early piece of
Debussy [La Dmoiselle lue], a performance of remarkable sacrifice as both choirs
and soloists had been enlarged, and even more noteworthy because it was clear that
the performance would not create much acclaim. In order to balance the result, the
3
J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, Musicalia, El Espectador III (1921), 12, in Biblioteca Virtual de Jos Ortega
y Gasset Http://idd00qaa.eresmas.net/ortega/biblio/biblio.htm Ortega reduces the aesthetics of
romanticism to Gefhlssthetik due to the immediate expression of the subjectivity of the composers,
although other important aesthetical currents existed at the same time. We do not know if this reduc-
tion is due to ignorance or if he only tried to make the contrast between the old art, and the new style,
starting to emerge with Debussy, even more striking.
4
Ibid. Ortegas style, always very clear, has never been as aggressive as when he talks about the
new art, as we can observe in the following examples: (...) what I called dehumanization and repul-
sion by all that is alive Ortega y Gasset, La Deshumanizatin del Arte, Revista de Occidente, Alianza
Editorial, Madrid 2009, 46; () it is the essence of art to create a new objectivity born out of the pre-
vious breaking and destruction of the real objects (...) the crushing of reality. Ibid., 171-72; (...) tradi-
tional art was repulsive to them(...). With these youths you have to do one of two things: execute them
or try to understand them. Ibid., 20. Emphasis added by the author.
M. J. Neves: The Dehumanization of Art.
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368
program included the complete series of pieces which form the theatre music com-
posed by young Mendelssohn for The Summernights Dream. An easy and extremely
sweet piece whose icing is even excessive for the taste of the regular visitor of the
Price Concert Hall, who craves for sweet so much (...).
5
In order to further understand the spiritual attitude artistic contemplation
requests, Ortega uses the image of looking into the garden through the window.
The majority of people is incapable of adapting the eye to the glass, which stands
for transparency. Instead they drown in the human destinies which are repre-
sented in the artistic object. In line with this train of thought, Ortega establishes
spiritual distance as his classification criterion.
Aesthetic pleasure must exclusively rely on the form of the representation,
independent of its content. Perhaps Aristotle was the first philosopher who dealt
with that problem. His Poetics poses the question of whether it was possible to feel
pleasure in the contemplation of repulsive images like cadavers.
6
Viewing corpses
in reality most likely will produce sentiments of horror, shock, fear, or disgust, but
hardly pleasure. But even when there is no potential for pleasure in anything the
aesthetic object represents, the form, the technique of presentation may be
delightful. The Spanish philosopher approaches the issue from a different angle.
Being confronted with a public excited about artistic works in the romantic style,
he doubts that it is legitimate to qualify this delight as aesthetic.
From Beethoven to Wagner, the subject of music was the expression of personal
emotions. The music artists composed big sound-buildings in order to house their
auto biographies within them. Art was more or less an act of confession. Aesthetic
pleasure was nothing else but contamination... From Beethoven to Wagner all music
was melodramatic.
7

This contamination, clarifies Ortega, is not spiritual but mechanical, is being
produced automatically and confirms the human weakness in which the subject,
instead of taking pleasure in an artistic object, takes delight in himself. On the
other hand, art cannot consist in psychic infection as that is an unconscious
process. The mechanization works unconsciously but in unconsciousness the
faculty of judgment does not operate. According to Immanuel Kant,
8
the feeling
of aesthetic pleasure derives from an act of judgment about an object, a judgment
5
A. SALAZAR, La Dmoiselle lue y el Simbolismo. Orquestra Filarmnica. Otras obras, El Sol,
Madrid, 28/02/1929.
6
ARISTOTLE, Potica, 1448 b, 9.
7
J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, La Deshumanizacin del Arte, ed.cit., p. 31.
8
We found that little note on the aesthetics of Kant of interest because the Spanish philosopher
continued his studies between 1905 and 1908 in Leipzig, Berlin and Marburg where he became a
disciple of the Neokantian Hermann Cohen. As he states himself: The work of Kant contains the
decisive secrets of modern times, both its virtues and its limitations. J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, Kant
Reflexiones del Centenario 1724-1924, Revista de Occidente, April-May, 1924, 3.
M. J. Neves: The Dehumanization of Art.
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IRASM 43 (2012) 2: 365-376
with feelings, but always a judgment. Any aesthetic appreciation derives from
intelligence, allied with the feeling of pleasure, never from emotions alone. This is
a new spiritual condition where the faculty of knowledge, in its new use, creates,
aligned with a purely subjective feeling, a new quality of judgments. The satisfac-
tion or the artistic joy appear as an effect of consciousness, which we acquire from
the pure form in which aesthetic objects consist, from its organic and immanent
causality; we are in front of the perception of all finalities without end or pure
forms that build the object, which produces in us the specifically artistic pleasure.
In a more colloquial way the Spanish philosopher says: art is contemplation, not
pushing.
9
Exactly that specific feature of aesthetic judgment constitutes for Kant
the a priori principle and therefore the condition of possibility of that way of judg-
ing: the pure form of conformity to ends.
10
All true aesthetic appreciation requires
this contemplative posture but with reference to the new music there is not any
meaningful access to any piece without that attitude. Either the listener is capable
of realizing the necessary spiritual distance, or he simply remains outside the
realm of artistic pleasure which here does not occur through human elements but
exclusively and only through essentially aesthetic elements. For that reason
Ortega converts Debussy and Stravinsky into the new paradigms:
The music of Debussy or Stravinsky invites us to take the contrarian view. Instead of
paying attention to the sentimental echo of the music in ourselves, we direct the ear
and all our attention to the sound itself and to what is happening, what is really there
in the orchestra. We receive one sound after the other, we taste it, appreciating its
color and we could even say, its shape. This music is something external to ourselves:
it is a distant object, perfectly localized outside of ourselves and in front of it we feel
like pure contemplators. We enjoy the new music concentrating towards the exterior.
It is the music that interests us, not its resonance within ourselves.
11
According to the Spanish philosopher, the most original of the new art,
represented by Debussy, is that it has a tendency towards the form. In order to
succeed, a cleaning from all human content was necessary and this tendency for
elimination of the human in art was called dehumanization by the philosopher.
From the moment in which the human elements diminish because they only
enjoyed the content but not the form of the composition the ordinary people are
incapable of aesthetic delight. The empathy with the contents disguised the inca-
pacity which revealed itself, therefore the justified unpopularity of the new art.
With the temporal distance our eyes allow, we verify that Europe registered
tremendous changes at the turn of the century. Big international expositions
9
J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, Musicalia..., 13.
10
The 11 of Immanuel KANTs Kritik der Urteilskraft is dedicated precisely to this issue: Das
Geschmacksurteil hat nichts als die Form der Zweckmigkeit eines Gegenstandes (oder der
Vorstellung desselben) zum Grunde.
11
J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, Musicalia..., 13.
M. J. Neves: The Dehumanization of Art.
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370
allowed for contacts with artistic creations from far away which inspired many
young artists because of their exotic character. Ortega wrote: The painter, instead
of going more or less towards reality, went against it. He has proposed to himself
to deform it, to break its human aspect, to dehumanize it. Traditional painting
created the illusion that we could deal with the represented objects.
12
The
description illusive is necessary because it points to the problem discussed in
the previous paragraph about wrong aesthetic enjoyment produced by human
content in artistic works. With the new dehumanized painting, it becomes impos-
sible to deal with, even in an illusory way. The subject is obliged to come out of his
natural attitude and has to improvise another way
13
to deal with the things. In
visual arts, specially when they are figurative, it is more easy to distinguish form
from content, but what happens with music? In music form and content seem
inseparable. It was Hanslick
14
who pointed out that the one and only object in
music are the sonority forms in movement, therefore the music does not present
anything outside of itself: no object, no feeling, no copying of nature, no concep-
tual content, etc. As the musicologist demonstrates, exactly the same sound can
express opposite emotions: vitality and joy or hate and rage, it is all due to the
dynamics of the sound and not to any definite emotional content that obviously
does not exist.
With reference to musical compositions it was also essential to purge the pri-
vate feelings and equip them instead with objectivity. This was the heroic achieve-
ment of Debussy. For that reason, according to Ortega, the dehumanization of
music started with Debussy. But let me pose the question if dehumanization is
really the appropriate term. At the time of the prestigious Rome Award, Debussy
proposed to leave the descriptive aspects of music aside and to turn to its human
aspects. With reference to his piece Printemps (Spring) inspired by Botticellis
painting, he wrote:
This one has the title Printemps, not anymore the Spring in its descriptive sense but
the human side. I wanted to express the slow and painful genesis of beings and things
in nature, increasingly unfolding and ending in incredible joy of being reborn in a
new life of another kind.
15
I agree with others who find the attribute dehumanization inappropriate.
Apart from its appealing, attention-gathering quality, which created a lot of publicity,
12
J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, La Deshumanizacin del Arte, ed. cit., 27. Once again verbal aggressiveness:
to go against; to deform; to break.
13
According to Ortega, passions and feelings belong to a distinct psychic environment, they are
secondary emotions that provoke in our interior artist ultra-objects. These feelings are specifically
aesthetic.
14
See Eduard HANSLICK, Do Belo Musical, ed. 70, Lisbon 2002.
15
Jean BARRAQU, Debussy, Seuil, Paris 1962, 64.
M. J. Neves: The Dehumanization of Art.
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IRASM 43 (2012) 2: 365-376
the term devalues the meaning of what is precisely at stake. The philosopher got
caught up in contradictions as pointed out by Ciriaco Morn: How can Ortega call
art dehumanized which in his own words is a new way to feel existence?
16
This
new way to feel existence is refined and elegant, implies dissociation and an analy-
sis of primary material, instead of being carried away emotionally. The new specta-
tor is an intelligent one, who rejoices in the artistry of the object quite independent
from its content and, finally, a spectator who authentically realizes the aesthetic
experience. According to Ortega the new style has the following characteristics:
When we analyze the new style we find in it certain tendencies which are
intimately connected. They have a tendency towards
1. dehumanization of art
2. avoiding living forms
3. creating a work of art which assumes to be nothing else but art
4. considering art as a game and nothing else
5. essential irony
6. eluding all falseness and therefore leads to scrupulous realization
7. art, having no transcendency at all
17
We find that the dehumanized art realizes itself through itself and not through
any object outside of itself the arts artistry and that it is not transcendent. All
the rest lucidness, irony etc. are the means to arrive at that goal.
18
About artistry
we have dealt with above, may it suffice at this point to speak about non-transcen-
dency. In the previous century music or poetry had been elevated even above
religion, being in charge of saving mankind of temporal misery while the artist
was half-way between the human and the divine. Now, on the contrary, despite
being dedicated to his art, the artist considers his work as non-transcendent. Art
lost the seriousness and solemnity it had before. For Ortega art is essentially
irrealization or even de-realization, because one of the components of an aesthetic
object consists in the fragmentation of reality. The essence of art aims at the
creation of a new objectivity which is achieved at the cost of the annihilation of the
16
Ciriaco MORRN ARROYO, Las dos Estticas de Ortega y Gasset, in Centro Virtual Cervan-
tes, 439. Http://idd00qaa.eresmas.net/ortega/biblio/biblio.htm For Taruskin, French modernism en-
deavoured to minimize and ideally eliminate everything the Germans wanted to maximize. He ex-
pressed the view that Ortegas term dehumanization is more adequate than the the battle of
frivolousness and pretension, the way musicologists and critiques normally proceed to describe
French and German music in the late 19th and early 20th century. Frivolous were the French because
they dared to restore decorative values, searched for pleasure and beauty instead for the sublime as
well as their ironic touch; the Germans were pretentious because of the weight and transcendency
they attach to works of art. See Richard TARUSKIN, Getting Rid of Glue, in Music in the Twentieth
Century, The Oxford History of Western Music, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010, 60.
17
J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, La Deshumanizacin del Arte, ed. cit., 20, 21.
18
Morrn reduces the seven criteria of Ortega for dehumanization to three: elimination of human
forms; artistic art; lack of transcendency. See C. MORRN ARROYO, op. cit., 440.
M. J. Neves: The Dehumanization of Art.
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372
real objects. In consequence the term style refers to the genuine manner each artist
de-realizes the things. For the Spanish philosopher the best and foremost com-
poser to musically de-realize the reality was Debussy:
We have to remove all private feelings from music, purify it in exemplary objectiva-
tion, this was the heroic deed of Debussy. After him it is possible to listen to music
serenely, without drunkenness and without crying. It is the conversion of the subjec-
tive into objective. Debussy dehumanizes the music and therefore the new era of the
of sound art starts with him.
19
We very much doubt that the philosopher, who was not a specialist on music,
would come to this conclusion all by himself. It is more than likely that Ortega
was well aware of the conference Introduction to the New Music of de Falla in
the Ateneo of Madrid in 1915 where he specifically refers to Debussy as the reno-
vator of the musical art:
From these efforts to liberate itself from old routines the new music was born: the
music free from chains and strange tutelage, which exists because of itself and for
itself, which strives to realize that ideal, that was unconscious / or unknown to the
primitive manifestations of tone artistry (...) I referred to Claude Debussy because we
can assert, without fear of being caught lying, that his work definitely achieved the
movement of innovation in the art of sound
20
One year later the magazine Revista Musical Hispanoamericana which was co-
edited by the eminent musicologist Adolfo Salazar, a defender of musical
modernism and former student of Bartolom Perez Casas, Manuel de Falla e
Maurice Ravel, published the conference materials.
In 1915 Salazar launched the Sociedad Nacional de Msica for the promotion of
contemporary chamber music, in the same year Bartolom Perez Casas created
the Orquesta Filarmnica de Madrid which performed on March 18 Debussys La
Mer. Under the direction of Perez Casas Debussy was performed more than 50
times between 1915 e 1936. Salazar, who was the music critic of the newspaper El
Sol from 1918 to 1936, possessed a vast musical knowledge. More than once his
texts assume the character of teachings. As a professed defender of the new music
and great admirer of Debussy he contributed to the sensitizing of the public. He,
no doubt, was the principal educator of aesthetic judgment in Spain. His reviews
were not limited to the appreciation of the presentation, always very detailed
about the interpretation, but went further. He analyzed the concert programs, the
reactions of the audience and dared to point out the way, he believed, the orches-
19
J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, La Deshumanizacin del Arte, ed. cit., 34.
20
Manuel de FALLA, Introduccin a la Musica Nueva, Revista Musical Hispanoamericana, Madrid,
December 1916, 2-5.
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tras should proceed. Like the words of de Falla, the reviews of Salazar left a foot-
print in Ortegas thinking. Let us look at some examples:
It was Debussy who in LAprs-midi dun faune discovered the new musical con-
tinent (...)
21
(...) it is impossible nowadays to compose as if Debussy did not exist.
22
As I repeatedly said before Debussy for me is the most modern and the most ad-
vanced musician (...)
23
Over many years the articles of Adolfo Salazar in El Sol kept Ortega y Gasset
informed about the currents of modern music. The philosopher also chose El Sol
for the publication of his thoughts on musical aesthetics the essay Musicalia
in 1921. Without much musical background, the philosopher grasped the essence
of the musicological discussion while the jury was still out
24
and defended the
new music against booing audiences and devastating criticism of new aesthetic
expressions. On the other hand, as has been shown in the beginning of this article,
his thoughts also gained influence in the musicological realm.
In conformity with Ortega, Debussy himself confirms that he intends to write
his compositions in total distance from himself,
25
as if he could reach a pure form
of contemplation free from the subject that contemplates. The composer almost
strips himself of all what is his own, of everything that constitutes his biography,
his private life, his fears and anxieties, his preferences, his loves, in order to be
simply and exclusively a disposable instrument in the service of the contempla-
tion of nature. From the beginning he attaches titles to his compositions which
refer to the natural elements and this habit continues in his mature work like La
Mer (The Sea) or Nuages (Clouds). Nevertheless, as the composer indicates, his
works lack descriptive character or any program. The advocates of programatic
music believe that music should describe or even imitate external objects. Its
aesthetic value would be subordinate to the quality of that imitation. With
Debussy, however, titles have an inspiring character but are neither descriptive
nor directed to emotion, nor are they sentimental representations. They are evo-
cations of the essential. Intuition and communion with nature transform art itself
21
A. SALAZAR, Russia y la Revolucin Musical, Espaa, Madrid, 21. 02. 1920.
22
A. SALAZAR, Las conferencias del Instituto Francs, El Sol, Madrid, 21. 04. 1920, 15.
23
A. SALAZAR, Orquestas Filarmnica y de Cmara - Cuarteto Rafael. Obras Nuevas, El Sol,
Madrid, 04. 04. 1933.
24
For a number of musicologists, Debussys innovations would not survive the fashion, con-
demned to sink into oblivion: (...) this music of Debussy is a transitional phenomenon (...).Luis
VILLALBA, Debussy. La Msica Nueva, Arte Musical, n. 45, Madrid, 15. 11. 1916, 3.
25
Excelsior, 11 February 1911. Interview accorde Henri Malherbe loccasin du Martyre de
Saint Sebastien; in S. JAROCINSKI, Debussy. Impressionisme et Symbolisme, 111.
M. J. Neves: The Dehumanization of Art.
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374
into a cognitive instrument. Through its intuitive capacity art reveals the essence
of things. For the composer nature is the true school, not the conservatoire nor
the textbooks of composition.
26
Intuition assumes a fundamental role in the
process of musical creation because music must be composed for the ears, not for
paper.
27
Nature is the true inspiring muse for those who contemplate her
attentively. Nevertheless, the method to connect with that inexhaustible source of
inspiration is not descriptive, but imaginative. It is the faculty of imagination,
clearly supported by all the knowledge and techniques his owner possesses that
freely organizes the elements or impressions
28
it receives. Music is not only capable
of expressing nature, but does that better than any other art, because its asseman-
ticity allows for comprehension without fixation on one aspect only. It is not a
question of direct imitation, but a sentimental transposition of what is invisible in
nature. Despite their pretensions of official translators, the painters and sculptors
cannot give us the beauty of the universe but only a random and always fragmen-
tary interpretation. They can only grasp one of its aspects, only one at a time. Only
the musicians have the privilege to capture all the poetry of night and day, of
heaven and earth, rebuild the atmosphere and give rhythm with immense palpi-
tation.
29
This idea of synergies had been expressed already by Baudelaire: The
perfumes, colours and sounds answer to one another.
30
In my opinion, the syner-
gies and analogies are also related to the will to clarity which Ortega so enthusi-
astically and frequently expressed: (...) art should be all plain clarity, midday,
intellect,
31
an idea Debussy subscribes to: The French forget too easily the
qualities of clarity and elegance which are their own, and let themselves be
influenced by German slowness and weight.
32
One of the artistic elements which precisely confers clarity and elegance is
the arabesque. The arabesque appears as much in music as in visual arts, it is well
patent with Debussy or Gustav Klimt and establishes itself as abstract, autono-
mous, free from imitations because its value resides in its pure form. It is the
esteem of the ornament itself, its esthetic autonomy, the form for the form, which
makes sense by itself and does not represent anything outside of itself. The
26
Ibid.
27
Len VALLAS, Les ides de Claude Debussy, Paris 1927, 30. Cf. S. JAROCINSKI, op. cit., 112.
28
Est-ce une renascense de la musique religieuse?, Excelsior, 11 February 1911. Interview accorde
Henri Malherbe loccasin du Martyre de Saint Sebastien; in S. JAROCINSKI, op. cit., 111.
29
Claude DEBUSSY, Revue Musicale, S.I.M., November, 1913; in S. JAROCINSKI, op. cit., 111.
30
Charles BAUDELAIRE, Correspondances; in P. ROBERTS, Images, The Piano Music of Claude
Debussy, Amadeus Press, Oregon 1996, 73. The connections among the arts, for Baudelaire, were the
inevitable result of the connection among all things. Ibid.
31
J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, La Deshumanizacin del Arte, ed. cit., 31. Philosophy also participates in
the same imperious quest for clarity: Philosophy is an enormous appetite of transparency and a
decided will of midday. J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, Qu es Filosofia, Revista de Occidente, Alianza Editorial,
Madrid 1995, 45.
32
C. DEBUSSY, El Sr. Corchea y otros escritos, Alianza Editorial, Madrid 1987, 259.
M. J. Neves: The Dehumanization of Art.
Ortega y Gassets Vision of New Music
375
IRASM 43 (2012) 2: 365-376
arabesque is not a spot, it is a well delineated, well defined line. Debussy melodies
are extremely concise and clear, similar to Japanese prints with precise contours,
refined and stylish. The abstract character of the arabesque implies a lack of
defined symbolic values. This lack of definition, the absence of fixations is welcome
and allows to move towards pure beauty. In visual arts the arabesque proudly
assumes its ornamental role of illustration. Furthermore, it empowers the painting
to live its two-dimensional character as an artistic piece on simple surface without
any pretension of three dimensions.
In concluding, we can confirm that there existed a happy experience of artistic
affinity in the vanguards between music, painting and literature. It was this spirit
which, as was well observed by Ortega, created a rupture with traditional art. One
of the tools that worked this rupture was the attempt to eliminate the private
feelings from the content of works of art, and the subsequent tendency for
abstraction.
The philosopher called this a movement towards the dehumanization of art,
although the will of objectivity, stylizing or refining reality are equally ways of
expression and realization of human existence. Imagination, liberated from the
restrictions which the codes had imposed on her, opens to new horizons and new
possibilities of configurations, and the art ploughs into new territory. Conscious
of the novelty and strangeness of which he forms a part himself and aware of the
cultural changes, the composer states: the century of airplanes deserves the
music of its own.
33
Composer and philosopher adopt a similar attitude: neither
of them voices any judgments on taste.
34
Only consciousness makes the radical
difference and the notion that they reached a point of no return.
33
L. VALLAS, Les ides de Claude Debussy, Paris 1927, 39; in S. JAROCINSKI., op. cit., 123.
34
I have been exclusively moved by the joy of trying to comprehend and neither by anger nor
enthusiasm. I searched to discover the sense of the new artistic objectives. J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, La
Deshumanizacin del Arte, ed. cit., 53.
M. J. Neves: The Dehumanization of Art.
Ortega y Gassets Vision of New Music
IRASM 43 (2012) 2: 365-376
376
Saetak
Dehumanizacija umjetnosti.
Vizija nove glazbe Ortege y Gasseta
Poetkom 20. stoljea val novih umjetnikih djela izazvao je dezorijentaciju u slua telj-
stvu koje je ostalo bez vrstog referentnog okvira za nekonvencionalnu umjetniku pro-
dukciju. To je imalo za posljedicu injenicu da je nova glazba bila krajnje nepopularna.
Pre ma panjolskom filozofu Josu Ortegi y Gassetu, dok je izraavanje osobnih osjeaja i
emocija bilo predmetom komponiranja glazbe u razdoblju romantizma, Debussyjeva je
glazba najavila novu eru koja od sluatelja zahtijeva duhovni odmak, doputajui tek mini-
malno uplitanje osjeaja. U tome se sastoji eljena dehumanizacija umjetnosti koju anali-
zira ovaj lanak izabravi kao polazinu toku Debussyjeve glazbene inovacije.