The language of Debussy is often praised for its subtle use of duplication – a process halfway between repetition and transformation. Strategies of camouflage, adaptation, fusion appear to be the sources of the innovative language of the composer and have formed the subject of several studies: we think of André Schaeffner, Nicolas Ruwet, or more recently Sylveline Bourion.
This phenomenon of duplication in mind, we propose to study a few scores of a contemporary ‘secondary musician’ of the French master, Frederick Delius, English composer born like Debussy in 1862. We’ll deliver some analytical reflections based on paradigmatical analysis, not in order to show once again Debussy’s superiority but to acknowledge the generalization of this method in the music of the time and to demonstrate the singularity of certain proposals.