Although music theorists aim to make their theories as accurate, broad, consistent, and simple as possible, they are also keen to apply them to situations or phenomena for which those theories were not originally intended. By casting the empirical net ever wider, theorists can not only test the limits of their work, but they can also open up new avenues of research. Such extensions are signs of the theory's fruitfulness. And so it is for Schenkerians. There would seem to be two main ways in which Schenkerians can achieve these goals. First, they can apply their methods to music that lies outside Schenker's original core sample. This is not a difficult step to take because Schenker focused his attention on pieces by a fairly narrow range of composers, from Bach to Brahms; it is quite easy to think of other composers whose music has many of the same tonal properties. Second, they can use their explanations of a work's harmony and voice leading to illuminate other aspects of its composition. In fact, Schenker's own analyses often provide crucial insights about a work's thematic, rhythmic, and formal structure.

This chapter tackles both of these issues by offering Schenkerian analyses of two early songs by Claude Debussy: “C’est l’extase langoureuse” from the Ariettes oubliées (1887, 1903) and “La mort des amants” from the Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire (1887–89). I have chosen these pieces for two reasons. For one thing, although Schenker dismissed Debussy for delighting in “the mediocrity of French taste,” both songs have highly cultivated tonal structures. They clearly demonstrate Debussy's intimate knowledge of functional monotonality. For another, by focusing on a pair of songs, we can show how Schenkerian analysis sheds light not only on Debussy's tonal practices, but also on other aspects of his compositional technique. For convenience, the chapter has four main parts. Part 1 considers some of the methodological problems that arise when Debussy's music is analyzed from a Schenkerian perspective. We will see how, in principle at least, the theory deals with parallel chords, dissonant prolongations, non-functional successions, extreme chromaticism, modal/exotic inflections, incomplete structures, and parenthetical passages/interpolations.