Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Piano Works, Vol. 4 Preludes, Books 1 (1910) and 2 (1911-13) Debussy was born in 1862 in St Germain-en-Laye, the son of a...
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Piano Works, Vol. 4
Preludes, Books 1 (1910) and 2 (1911-13)
Debussy was born in 1862 in St Germain-en-Laye, the son of
a shop-keeper who was later to turn his hand to other activities, with varying
success. He started piano lessons at the age of seven and continued two years
later, improbably enough, with Verlaine's mother-in-law, allegedly a pupil of
Chopin, In 1872 he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he abandoned the plan
of becoming a virtuoso pianist, turning his principal attention to composition.
In 1880, at the age of eighteen, he was employed by Tchaikovsky's patroness
Nadezhda von Meck as tutor to her children and house-musician. On his return
to the Conservatoire he entered the class of Bizet's friend Ernest Guiraud and
in 1883 won the second Prix de Rome and in 1884 the first prize, the
following year reluctantly taking up obligatory residence, according to the
terms of the award, at the Villa Medici in Rome, where he met Liszt. By 1887
he was back in Paris, winning his first significant success in 1900 with Nocturnes
for orchestra and going on, two years later, to a succès de scandale
with his opera Pelleas et Melisande, based on the play by Maurice
Maeterlinck, a work that established his position as a composer of importance.
Debussy's personal life brought some unhappiness in his first
marriage in 1899 to a mannequin, Lily Texier, after a liaison of some seven
years with Gabrielle Dupont and a brief engagement in 1894 to the singer Therèse
Roger. His association from 1903 with Emma Bardac, the wife of a banker and
a singer of some ability, led eventually to their marriage in 1908, after the
birth of their daughter three years earlier. In 1904 he had abandoned his wife,
moving into an apartment with Emma Bardac, and the subsequent attempt at suicide
by the former, who had shared with him many of the difficulties of his early
career, alienated a number of his friends. His final years were darkened by
the war and by cancer, the cause of his death in March 1918, when he left unfinished
a planned series of chamber music works, only three of which had been completed.
As a composer Debussy must be regarded as one of the most important
and influential figures of the early twentieth century. His musical language
suggested new paths to be further explored, while his poetic and sensitive use
of the orchestra and of keyboard textures opened still more possibilities. His
opera Pelleas et Melisande and his songs demonstrated a deep understanding
of poetic language, revealed by his music, expressed in terms that never overstated
or exaggerated.
Debussy's poetic sensibility and his delicate use of keyboard
nuances, developed from Chopin, is shown clearly enough in the two books of
Preludes, the first completed in 1910 and the second in 1913. These were
published with titles given only at the end of each piece, suggesting that they
were not absolutely essential to the performer. 'Danseuses de Delphes' (Dancers
of Delphi), a title that suggests the influence of Satie, was inspired by a
caryatid seen at the Louvre. Marked Lent et grave, the mystery of Delphi
is solemnly evoked in a series of chords that make clear the static nature of
the dancers at the oracle. This is followed by 'Voiles' (Sails), which
carries the direction Dans un rythme sans rigeur et caressant, a characteristic
depiction of a calm and distant seascape, although the title may also mean 'Veils',
makes typical use of Debussy's original harmonic idiom. The third Prelude,
'Le vent sur la plaine' (The wind on the plain), offers a
delicate tissue of sound, reaching a climax before finally dying away to a sustained
final note. 'Les sons et les parfums tournent dans I'air du soir' is
suggested by Baudelaire's poem 'Harmonie du soir' (Evening Harmony):
Voici venir les temps où vibrant sur sa tige
Chaque fleur s'evapore ainsi qu'un encensoir;
Les sons et les parfums tournent dans I'air du soir;
Valse melancolique et langoureux vertige!
(Here comes the time when, quivering on its stem,
every flower goes away to vapour like a censer;
sounds and scents turn in the evening air;
sad waltz and languorous dizziness!)
The poetic association with Baudelaire suggests the mood of
the piece, with its the final distant horn-call. 'Les collines d'Anacapri'
(The hills of Anacapri) is allusive in its depiction, while 'Des pas sur
la neige' (Footprints on the snow) offers a cold, snow-covered landscape,
suggested by the recurrent rhythmic figure, which, as the composer directs,
should be the musical equivalent of a sad and frozen countryside, an image that,
in language at least, must suggest Verlaine's 'Dans le vieu parc, solitaire
et glace / Deux formes ont tout à I'heure passe' (In the old park,
lonely and frozen, two forms have just passed), the last of the Fêtes galantes
that Debussy had set on various earlier occasions.
The mood changes with the stormy 'Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest'
(What the west wind has seen), followed by the gently expressive portrait
of 'La fille aux cheveux de lin' (The girl with flaxen hair), one of
the most familiar of the Preludes, variously transcribed. 'La serenade
interrompue' (The interrupted serenade) opens with a passage suggesting
the preparation of the guitar for playing, an introduction to what follows,
with rapidly repeated notes evoking the same instrument and the country with
which it is generally associated. 'La cathedrale engloutie' (The submerged
Cathedral) returns to medieval France, with harmonies and modal writing derived
from early organum, a device used at the opening of Pelleas. The
textures evoke through the sea-mist the mystery of the ancient cathedral of
Ys, its chant and the sound of its bells, drowned now beneath the waves that
have engulfed it long since, according to legend. A mood of a very different
kind is embodied in 'La danse de Puck' (Puck's dance), capricious and
light-footed, presumably inspired by the Robin Goodfellow of Shakespeare's A
Midsummer Night's Dream rather than Kipling's creation, although it seemed
that Debussy was also familiar with the latter. The first book ends with 'Minstrels',
inspired, it has been said, by a black street-band that Debussy had heard
in Eastbourne in 1905.
It seems that Debussy was determined to complete two books
of twelve Preludes each. He seems to have regarded these as of uneven
quality, a judgement in which others have concurred, and was apparently not
happy to have them played one after the other. Nevertheless these pieces do
make two effective and coherent wholes, whatever the composer's original intentions,
with the heart of each book at its very centre. The second set opens with 'Brouillards'
(Mists), in which some have seen the counterpart of paintings by Whistler
or even by Turner. 'Feuilles mortes' (Dead leaves) is marked lent
et melancolique (slow and melancholy) and is autumnal in its colours. The
atmosphere is at once lightened by 'La Puerta del Vino' (The Wine Gate),
a habanera suggested by a postcard from Manuel de Falla showing the Alhambra
gateway of the title. Debussy's wide terms of extra-musical association appear
again in 'Les Fees sont d'exquises danseuses' (The Fairies are exquisite
dancers), its title apparently quoted from J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan in Kensington,
a book given to Debussy's daughter Emma-Claude, known as Chou-Chou, with
illustrations by Arthur Rackham. It was the illustration that gave the Prelude
its title and character. 'Bruyères' (Heaths), calm and gently expressive,
paints a picture of the open country, while 'General Lavine - eccentric',
offers a cake-walk, depicting the American clown Edward Lavine, who appeared
at the Marigny Theatre in the Champs-Elysees in 1910 and 1912.
'La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune' (The terrace
of the audiences of moonlight) adapts a newspaper account of the coronation
of King George V as Emperor of India, endowing the words of the report with
an air of oriental mystery. With 'Ondine', the mermaid whose love of
a mortal, who betrays her, brings him disaster, is again inspired by an Arthur
Rackham illustration to a translation of Friedrich de la Motte Fouque's fairy-story
Undine. 'Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq. P.P.M.P.C.' is a tribute
to Samuel Pickwick, the subsequent letters presumably standing for 'Perpetual
President Member of the Pickwick Club'. The English national anthem is
heard at the low register, as the piece opens, although what follows suggests
the intrusion of Sam Weller in livelier adventures. 'Canope', very calm
and gently sad, makes subtle use of the piano resonances implicit in the overtone
series. It is followed by 'Les tierces alternees' (Alternating thirds),
the only Prelude with a title that only indicates its musical substance,
a study in rapid thirds. The book ends with 'Feux d'Artifice' (Fireworks),
a display of piano fireworks, suggesting a celebration in some city park, which
allows, before the end, the distant sound of a fragment of 'The Marseillaise'
to be heard.
Keith Anderson