290
like I gotta travel on.” Clayton expanded
the chorus, David Lazar and Larry Ehrlich
wrote new verses, and the Weavers
recorded it in 1958 as “Done Laid Around,”
possibly adding more verses themselves.
When country singer Billy Grammer
recorded it in 1960 for Monument
Records, his version, entitled “Gotta Travel
On,” became a Number 4. This led to a
recording contract for Clayton on
Monument, but he would only make two al-
bums for the Nashville label in his lifetime.
An even more significant event for Clayton
took place in 1961, when he and Bob Dylan
met for the first time in Greenwich Village.
Clayton took to Dylan’s songwriting and
singing almost immediately; Dylan later
praised Clayton as “a medium” for the bal-
lads he performed: “He’s not trying to per-
sonalize it, he’s bringing it to you.” For a
time, Clayton was part of Dylan’s growing
inner circle in the early 1960s, but their re-
lationship soured when Dylan released
“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” which
borrowed heavily from a song on Clayton’s
first Monument album, “Who’ll Buy You
Ribbons (When I’m Gone).” Clayton sued
Dylan for copyright infringement, but since
Clayton’s song itself had public domain ori-
gins, the suit was dismissed. Clayton took
the dissolution of their relationship hard; a
closeted homosexual, he may have had
feelings for Dylan that went beyond their
mutual admiration for each other’s talents,
and what Clayton saw as a betrayal only ex-
acerbated his growing substance abuse
problems. (Clayton had bright blue eyes
and some believe that the song “It’s All
Over Now, Baby Blue” was Dylan’s harsh
dismissal of Clayton’s affections.) In the
mid-1960s, his life spiraled out of control,
and on 30 March 1967, Clayton electro-
cuted himself in the bathtub of his New
York apartment.
Like Paul Clayton, the author Bob Colt-
man came up in the 1950s as a performer
MUSIC IN FRANCE
Déodat de Séverac: Musical Identity in Fin-de-Siècle France. By Robert F.
Waters. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008. [xiv, 274 p. ISBN: 9780754641056.
$114.95.] Illustrations, music examples, bibliography, index.
Déodat de Séverac (1872–1921) has suf-
fered the fate of many other fine second-
Notes, December 2009
of folk songs. Currently, Coltman is a con-
tributing author to folksong journals such
as the John Edwards Memorial Foundation
( JEMF) Quarterly. His writing style is more
conversational than scholarly, perhaps
(“[Clayton] was diligent. Whimsical.
Stubborn. Merry. Driven. Brilliant. In the
end, mad,” [p. 5]), but the biography is
well researched, Coltman having inter-
viewed a number of people who knew
Clayton, including Barbara Souza, a cousin
on Clayton’s mother’s side and now agent
of Clayton’s estate. Coltman’s description
of the Charlottesville and Greenwich
Village folk music scenes in which Clayton
lived is vivid and engaging. The book’s em-
phasis on Clayton’s homosexuality and his
inability to accept it may strike some as hav-
ing been overplayed rather than illuminat-
ing. The discography is useful, especially in
its listing of non-commercial recordings,
but equally fascinating is the appendix of
Clayton’s copyrighted songs, divided into
original compositions, hybrids (like “Gotta
Travel On” and “Who’ll Buy Your
Ribbons”), and traditional songs (such as
“Pharoah’s Army Got Drownded,” which
was his version of the spiritual “Mary Don’t
You Weep”). Concurrent with the publica-
tion of this book in 2008 was the release of
Clayton’s Monument tracks by the Omni
Recording Corporation (Paul Clayton, Folk
Singer! [Omni 120], his seven Folkways
albums are available for download via
the Smithsonian Folkways Web site (http://
www.folkways.si.edu/ [accessed 19 August
2009]). While there may not be many who
have been longing for a book-length biog-
raphy of Paul Clayton, now that a very good
one exists, there may be more people dis-
covering the songs and voice that I have
respected for over twenty years.
Morris S. Levy
Northwestern University
tier composers who generated a certain
amount of excitement during their life-
Book Reviews
times, but quickly faded from public con-
sciousness after their deaths. His music was
praised by such luminaries of fin-de-siècle
French music as Claude Debussy, Gabriel
Fauré, and Vincent d’Indy, but it is seldom
performed or studied today. This is alto-
gether unfortunate, for Séverac’s works
draw together several of the elements that
helped make this period in French musical
and cultural history so fascinating. He was
highly influenced by Debussy’s style, yet
never lost his enthusiasm for the music of
rural southern France, the land of his birth.
In his later years, he was increasingly drawn
to the music of the Catalan region that
straddles the border of France and Spain,
and his enthusiasm for its unique culture
was shared by musicians and artists such as
Isaac Albéniz, Pablo Picasso, Georges
Braque, and Juan Gris. And like so many
French composers of the time, Séverac’s ca-
reer can be seen through the lens of
French national politics and his work as an
artistic manifestation of his political ideals.
Séverac thus provides a wonderful illus-
tration of the diverse influences on French
musicians of this period, and there could
be no better focus for a study of the musi-
cal consequences of one of the central
philosophical and political debates of
Third Republic France: how the nation
should address, in both political and cul-
tural terms, its long-standing and conflict-
ing impulses toward centralization and
regionalism.
Robert F. Waters has taken up the task of
addressing these interesting and related
topics. Through an examination of
Séverac’s writings, letters, and music as well
as the literature pertaining to the concept
of regionalism in late-nineteenth-century
France, he offers an introduction to the
composer’s life and music and, at the same
time, a study of the role played by regional-
ist ideas in fin-de-siècle French music.
The book, illustrated by many music ex-
amples (and one photograph), is organized
into several distinct sections. After a brief
introduction, there is a short biographical
sketch and an extended chapter dealing
with the most important figures and ideas
involved in the conflict over regionalism.
This is followed by a survey of Séverac’s
works through 1909, divided into chapters
devoted to organ music, song, piano music,
etc. The third and final section is devoted
291
to Séverac’s relationship with Catalan mu-
sic. There is a discussion of Catalan politics
and music followed by a chapter devoted to
Séverac’s music after 1909, much of which
incorporated elements of Catalan music.
In theory, this organizational scheme
might seem logical, but the execution of
the various sections lessens their effective-
ness. The biographical sketch is rather
short and somewhat disjointed. After
a chronological recounting of the com-
poser’s early years, it breaks into a series of
subject-based sections devoted to his in-
volvement with various Parisian musical so-
cieties, his thoughts on Richard Wagner,
and his relationships with Claude Debussy
and Maurice Ravel. The chronological
thread is then picked up again with
Séverac’s departure from Paris and his
move to Céret, in French Catalonia.
The same compartmentalized approach
is taken in the much more extensive exami-
nation of the question of regionalism.
Waters devotes large sections of this chap-
ter to the ideas of various figures involved
in the debate, including Jean Charles-Brun,
Charles Maurras, Maurice Barrès, and
Frédéric Mistral. He weaves in discussion of
Séverac’s relationship with each of these
figures and refers often to the composer’s
1907 graduation thesis from the Schola
Cantorum, which apparently criticized the
narrow focus of the Paris Conservatoire.
One is not exactly sure of this, however, for
although the thesis is frequently men-
tioned, there is no detailed discussion of its
contents. In general, this chapter is rather
confusing in its layout, and the reader too
frequently feels lost in the intricacies of the
various arguments presented. In some
cases, one feels that sections might have
been pared down to greater effect, as when
the author offers a brief and totally unnec-
essary summary of the events that collec-
tively became known as the Dreyfus Affair
(pp. 45–46). (Few, if any, readers of this
book will be unfamiliar with the events or
issues involved in l’Affaire.) Waters is not
the first author to stumble while navigating
the thickets of French politics and its rela-
tionship to musical life, and he certainly
won’t be the last. One can’t help but won-
der, however, whether these complicated
arguments might have been more effec-
tively presented had a different organiza-
tional model been followed.
292
The same might be said for the section
devoted to the music Séverac composed
during his Paris years. While an “annotated
catalogue” approach might have been ap-
propriate for a typical life-and-works study,
it does not best serve the author’s desire
to emphasize the influence of regionalist
ideas and folk music on Séverac’s composi-
tions. While Waters certainly discusses such
influences when they apply to various
works, his point is somewhat weakened by
the format of this section.
The introduction to Catalan politics and
music and the chapter devoted to Séverac’s
Catalan works follow similar models of
organization, although in this section the
scheme is not as problematic, largely be-
cause of the more limited focus. Overall,
this volume has the look and feel of a dis-
sertation, with its numerous sections within
chapters, each devoted to a single sub-topic
and treated almost as a separate entity. One
regrets that the study was not re-imagined
in such a way that a continuous and clear
narrative thread could be more consistently
maintained.
Whatever flaws might exist in the book’s
organization scheme, the quality of the
writing and editing is even more damaging
to its clarity and effectiveness. The text is
replete with all manner of grammatical and
stylistic flaws. Some sentences are gratingly
simplistic. “Séverac’s background as an
organist dates to his childhood” (p. 84).
“Séverac’s unpublished works date as far
back as his youth” (p. 153). “The instru-
ment is in the key of B flat and is heard a
whole step lower than written” (p. 176).
Others contain phrases that lack a logical
relationship to each other. “Bordes traveled
to Barcelona soon after he wrote this letter,
as well as subsequent visits from other musi-
cians from the Schola Cantorum seven
years later” (p. 182).
There are awkwardly worded phrases:
“The Schola Cantorum also developed
many outposts, but according to Bordes,
each had its own autonomy” (p. 62, n. 56);
“Another figure who championed support-
ing peasantry, régionalisme and rootedness
was the Provençal regionalist poet Frédéric
Joseph-Etienne Mistral” (p. 63); “The ori-
gin of the gathering began” (p. 66, n. 73).
And there are further sentences that are
desperately in need of rethinking and re-
finement: “His carefree nature of not writ-
Notes, December 2009
ing down various works that he improvised
at the piano was another issue” (p. 163);
“They therefore associate the rediscovering
of each other to feelings embodied by
home” (p. 116).
Frequently, one finds questionable word-
ing, especially in the choice of verbs: “In
a way, Séverac wanted to sanction folk mu-
sic and pastoral life to the urbane Paris
community” (p. 201); “Examples transpire
throughout the song” (p. 106); “The organ
on which Séverac practiced . . . contained
three keyboard manuals” (p. 84); “Letters
written by Alfred Cortot to Blanche Selva
after Séverac’s death cite that some of
his best music went with him to the grave”
(p. 153).
Such inaccuracies are not only annoying
but often contribute to confusion as well.
In his discussion of Séverac’s interactions
with cobla musicians, for example, Waters
writes that the composer’s interest in the
folk instruments prompted him to “devise
notation” for them (p. 204). One immedi-
ately thinks that Séverac might have experi-
mented with some kind of new notation to
better represent the sound of these instru-
ments or, perhaps, to make it more easily
readable to untrained cobla musicians. It
later becomes clear, however, that Séverac
merely transcribed the music into standard
notation. And one cannot help but lament
the negative impact this lack of clarity
sometimes has on the author’s presentation
of sometimes complicated political and
philosophical arguments, especially in the
chapter on regionalism.
Some French passages could have been
translated more accurately. For example,
an excerpt from a letter by Séverac reads:
“Le Bon Dieu continue à faire son métier.
La Nature reprend sa vie and le Soleil
chante au dessus des nuages . . .” Waters
translates this as “God continues his work.
Nature embodies his life and the sun sings
above the clouds . . .” (p. 82), while a more
accurate (and logical) translation would be,
“God [or, perhaps, the Good Lord] contin-
ues his work. Nature resumes her life and
the sun sings above the clouds . . .” The ti-
tle of a Séverac song, Renouveau, is trans-
lated as “Spring” when “Renewal” or
“Revival” would be more accurate (p. 100).
There are considerable problems with
footnotes. One finds examples of notes that
have been reversed (p. 75, n. 102–3). There
Book Reviews
are instances in which a single note seems
to have been divided into two for some rea-
son (p. 76, n. 104–5), or when two separate
notes have been mistakenly combined into
one (p. 94, no. 42). (In this latter case, the
first half of the note actually relates to a
sentence that occurred two pages earlier!)
And some notes have no logical relation-
ship to the text they accompany (p. 192,
n. 75).
Many of the problems that so mar this
book—and those listed above are only a
small sample—could have been corrected
by the active intervention of a good copy
editor. Perhaps the fact that such a flawed
manuscript could find its way into print
speaks to the alarming rise in costs for aca-
demic publishers and an environment in
which copy editing is increasingly seen as a
luxury. Whatever the cause, it is painfully
evident that the publisher exercised little, if
any, editorial control over this project.
The research presented in this book is
both considerable and impressive, and the
specialist will certainly find some useful in-
formation here. Unfortunately, problems
in organization, writing, and editing have
greatly diminished the value and usefulness
of a study that could have contributed
much to our knowledge and understanding
of the myriad forces shaping French music
at the turn of the twentieth century.
Michael Strasser
Baldwin-Wallace College
Debussy’s Late Style. By Marianne
Wheeldon. (Musical Meaning and
Interpretation.) Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2009. [ix, 170 p. ISBN
9780253352392. $34.95.] Music exam-
ples, bibliography, index.
Writers on music, and indeed many per-
formers, have commented on the special
qualities and originality of Claude
Debussy’s last works, with varying degrees
of sympathy, understanding, or plain bewil-
derment, comparing their inner-directed
refinement and rarefied atmosphere to the
last works of Beethoven. In this short book,
Marianne Wheeldon examines Debussy’s
late style from several standpoints: the his-
torical and cultural context of Debussy’s
late works, his idiosyncratic reinvention of
the sonata form as an emblem of French
293
national pride, his preoccupation with
specifically pianistic problems, and the ef-
fects of failing health and World War I on
his state of mind. A final metacritical chap-
ter discusses the impact on the musical
world of Debussy’s last compositions them-
selves, which even today have never
achieved the popularity of his earlier works.
The year 1914 was one of darkness for
Debussy the composer. His score for the
Diaghilev-Nijinsky ballet Jeux, a large-scale
effort and one of his finest accomplish-
ments, had been poorly received at its pre-
miere the year before. Already seriously ill
with cancer that had appeared five years
earlier, Debussy was haunted by awareness
of frustrated inspiration and decreased pro-
ductivity, and had to reach back to unpub-
lished fragments, composed in 1900 to ac-
company recitations from Pierre Louÿs’s
Chansons de Bilitis, expanding them into the
six Épigraphes antiques for piano, four hands
in July 1914. The outbreak of war a month
later depressed him still further, and his
only other composition from that year was
the Berceuse héroïque for piano (also orches-
trated) commissioned for a charity album
honoring King Albert and the war dead of
the Belgian army.
Nevertheless this otherwise barren year
set the stage for Debussy’s final period of
evolution as a composer, which included,
in 1915, a last brave burst of brilliant
creativity—a heartening example to com-
posers everywhere that even in the aware-
ness of world catastrophe and approaching
death one could grow and evolve, and to
produce works of remarkable richness and
originality.
Chapter 2 covers Debussy’s works moti-
vated by the war. Three of these were short
piano pieces, of which the Berceuse héroïque
is the most substantial. Another short piano
piece is examined in detail because it is a
recent discovery: “Les soirs illuminés par
l’ardeur du charbon,” which Debussy gave
to his coal dealer early in 1917 in lieu of
payment for a delivery. (The title is a line
from Baudelaire’s “Le balcon,” which
Debussy had set in 1888 as no. 1 of his Cinq
poèmes de Baudelaire; the piece itself has
brief echoes of “Les sons et les parfums
tournent dans l’air du soir” [Préludes, book
1, no. 4, 1910], whose title in turn is from
Baudelaire’s “Harmonies du soir,” no. 2 in
Debussy’s cycle.) For another charity