Revisiting Debussy's Relationships with Otherness: Difference, Vibrations, and the Occult

To commemorate the centenary of Debussy's death, this article proposes a new perspective on the composer's relationship to Otherness. While many have argued for the influence of japonisme and Javanese music on his oeuvre, here I look at experiences, influences, and ideas that shaped these and similar encounters, together with their implications. I argue that symbolism was not alone in motivating Debussy's resistance to overt mimesis and ambivalence about assimilation; Japan's evolving political identity between 1868 and 1904 may also have played a role. I examine what Debussy may have learned from, or at least shared with, Edmond Bailly, Robert Godet, Victor Segalen, and Louis Laloy. These connections draw particular attention to contemporary conceptions of sound, as promoted in esoteric philosophy, and especially nature's relationship to the arts through 'vibrations'—ideas later implicit in Vladimir Jankélévitch's philosophical approach, here re-evaluated after the 2012 colloquy in the Journal of the American Musicological Society. They offer intriguing historical foundations for today's 'sound studies' research.