The Composer as Poet: Claude Debussy

 by Maureen Buja

Claude Debussy © Henri Manuel/Getty Images

We think of Debussy as the composer of the dreamworld sound of impressionism. He was an active follower of the symbolist movement, which rejected naturalism, realism, and clear-cut forms in favour of the indefinite and the mysterious. The symbolist poets tried to put music at the centre of their world. Verlaine and Mallarmé worked towards a ‘musicalization’ of poetry.

In his musical language, Debussy always included the extra-musical structural format of poetry. By reversing the relationship between a composer and his poetry, Debussy’s songs were more fluid and adventuresome, in comparison to his instrumental music, which was more restricted by the necessity for fixed keys.

In 1892, he became a poet himself, starting work on his Proses lyriques, a set of four songs to which he wrote the poetry, under the influence of the symbolist poets. He completed the set in 1893. At the same time, he had just finished Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1891-4), the String Quartet (1894), and had started work Pelléas et Mélisande (started 1893, completed 1902).

The title, Proses lyriques, is indicative of the problem that French poets faced. French poetry operated under a set of ‘rules and conventions’ that meant that, read as poetry, the verse would have one set of metrical stresses that would be different when read in an ordinary voice. Composers, faced with this difficulty, that would have been fundamental to their text setting, started to look towards prose for inspiration. We note that Debussy’s major opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, sets a prose text.

Debussy’s abandonment of strict verse forms only lasted until 1902. After the premiere of Pelléas et Mélisande, and with only one exception he returned to verse and abandoned prose texts for the rest of his career.

His setting of the Proses lyriques consists of 4 songs: De rêve (1892), De grève (1892), De fleurs (1893), and De soir (1893). He set another 2 songs as the Proses lyriques, set 2, otherwise known as Nuits blanches (1898): Nuit sans fin and Lorque’elle est entrée. In 1915, he set one more piece of his own poetry: Noël des enfants qui n’ont plus de maisons.

The four poems are full of colour: golden moons, white shivers, gilded leaves (De rêve), white silk, green silk dresses, grey quarrels, white kisses (De grève), green boredom, purple iris, lilies as white jets, black petals of boredom (De fleurs), the blue of my dreams, gold or silver (De soir).

The final song in the set, De soir, is both a commentary on the craziness of a Sunday where everyone heads out to the countryside, the memories of past Sundays, and then finally the night, which comes with velvet steps as the Virgin scatters the flowers of sleep. It’s an extraordinary musing on a weekend day and how it ends.

The 1898 songs, collected under the title of Nuits blanches, are very different in nature: both are tales of disappointed love. The second song, Lorque’elle est entrée (When she first appeared) tells the story of the lover who has fallen out of love and sees his beloved now with different eyes: ‘…deceit was caught in the folds of her skirts; her large eyes glowed with falsehood,’ her sweet words are harsh and wounding in actuality, but nevertheless, when she touches him, he cannot help but feel his desires flare again.

Debussy’s last poem, which he set to music in 1915, is completely different again. It is a Christmas song for a time of war. Noël des enfants qui n’ont plus de maisons (Christmas for children who no longer have houses). It starts with ‘Our houses are gone! The enemy has taken everything, even our beds!’ and leads to the back story of how father went to war, mother has died, and now there are no toys. There’s no daily bread. It closes with: ‘Christmas, listen to us. Our wooden shoes are gone, but grant victory to the children of France!’

No other composers have set these texts – they remain by Debussy for Debussy alone. The problem of French poetry, with its historically strong metres that drove the music, is solved when you move towards prose. Any problems with poets are solved when you’re the poet yourself!

Pure Imagination and Happiness: Debussy’s L’isle joyeuse

by Maureen Buja  

Where is your happy place? Debussy’s 1904 work L’isle Joyeuse seems to kidnap us, fly us through the air, and deposit us in a world of warm breezes, blue skies, perhaps a fluffy cloud or two, and, of course, surrounded by all our friends.

Although those giving only a cursory look at Debussy’s biography pin this work to his elopement with Emma Bardac to the isle of Jersey (after sending his wife back to her parents in Normandy), but the work was written over a year earlier. Debussy, in writing to a performer who sought help on how to approach his music, suggested that he think of the world of the imagined faraway land, such as Watteau’s L’embarquement pour Cythère.

Watteau: L’embarquement pour Cythère, 1717 (Louvre Museum)

The picture is a blend of happiness and sadness: the three pairs of lovers shown in the right foreground, or rather the same couple in three aspects of love: New Love, Familiar Love, and the look back with regret at how it all started. This same mix of joy and regret is in Debussy’s work as well. There’s a ‘smiling ambiguity’ that besets both the painting and the music.

Debussy opens with trills and a cadenza, but it is not that which sets the key: the use of the whole-tone scale has an earlier precedent from its use in the ‘darker moments in Pelléas et Mélisande’.

The work progresses from a small, localised trill to a final gesture, much in the manner of Liszt, that encompasses the whole keyboard. It’s pure imagination and happiness, yet with a bit of a twinge.

Claude Debussy: L’Isle Joyeuse

Odette Gartenlaub

This recording was made in 1961 by the French pianist Odette Gartenlaub. She had studied at the Paris Conservatoire with the leading composers of her time, including Olivier Messiaen, Henri Busser, Noël Gallon and Darius Milhaud. She won the Prix de Rome in 1948 after having to leave the conservatoire in 1941 when the German occupiers banned all Jews from the institution. In 1959, she was a professor of piano at the Conservatoire. Her work at the Conservatoire embraced the new ideas of music practice over music theory.

Performed by

Odette Gartenlaub

Recorded in 1961

Official Website

Debussy’s Wives: Rosalie Texier and Emma Bardac

By Georg Predota

Debussy

As far as women were concerned, Claude Debussy was a bastard! “There was a woman at each crossroad of Debussy’s life,” Marcel Dietschy writes. “Certainly women of all ages seemed fascinated by him, and they attached themselves to him like ivy to a wall.” In turn, he drove two women towards attempted suicides with revolvers, and was completely incapable of selfless love for anyone except his daughter. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Once he had separated from Gaby, he was deadly afraid to be alone. And so he found Rosalie Lilly Texier, a beautiful mannequin, whom he first met in the spring of 1899. “She is unbelievably fair and pretty, like some character from an old legend,” he writes. “Her favourite song is a roundelay about a grenadier with a red face who wears a hat on one side like an old campaigner, not very provoking aesthetically… She does not have much up top.” Gaby warned Lilly of Debussy’s extracurricular activities, and although Lilly hesitated before saying her “I do,” the couple got married on 19 October 1899. Apparently, Debussy had threatened to kill himself if she refused to marry him. Erik Satie witnessed the happy occasion, and Debussy paid for the wedding breakfast with proceeds from a piano lesson he had given that morning. 

Debussy and his wife Lilly

The dedication to “Sirenes” from his Nocturnes reads, “This manuscript belongs to my little Lilly-Lilo. All rights reserved. It is proof of the deep and passionate joy I feel at being her husband.” The couple enjoyed three years of happiness, with Lilly devotedly supportive of Debussy, jealously guarding his privacy and remaining content to live in poverty in his shadow. By all accounts, she was “affectionate, practical, straightforward and well-liked by Debussy’s friends and associates.” However, he soon found her unstimulating and overly possessive. And one slowly increasing source of disappointment was her inability to bear children. By 1903, married life had begun to lose its luster. He secretly admitted that her “voice and shrill laughter grated on his nerves.” At age 30 she was aging prematurely, developing jowls and her eyes becoming ever more “doe-like.” Still childless and sometimes short of money, in his correspondence with others Lilly became “my poor wife.” Debussy was clearly bored with Lilly.    

Debussy and Emma Bardac

Emma Bardac, wife of Parisian banker Sigismond Bardac was no stranger to extra-marital affairs. Her liaison with Gabriel Fauré had inspired the song-cycle La bonne chanson in the early 1890s. Debussy first met her on 1 October 1903, and their friendship developed rapidly during the early months of 1904. Thanking her for some flowers, Debussy wrote “I am made profoundly happy by your thought… Forgive me if I have kissed all these flowers as though they formed a human mouth.” Bardac was sophisticated, a brilliant conversationalist, and an accomplished singer. On 15 July, Debussy put Lilly on a train to her parents in Bichain, and secretly took Bardac to Jersey for a holiday. For all the passion, Debussy still had to tell Lilly that he was moving out. Lilly threatened suicide at least four times, but on the eve of their fifth wedding anniversary, she went to the Place de la Concorde, pointed a revolver at herself and fired. She survived, but the bullet remained lodged in her vertebrae for the rest of her life. Mary Garden reports, “And laying underneath Lilly’s left breast was a round dark hole where the bullet had gone in, without touching anything vital… That little token of her love for Claude Debussy stayed with her until she died in 1932.” Debussy never visited Lilly at the clinic, nor did he pay her bills. By now, he was a public figure and Lilly’s attempted suicide received coverage in every newspaper in the city. The scandal alienated a number of friends, with Fauré refusing to speak to him. By 2 August 1905 his divorce from Lilly was finalized, and since Paris had become unbearable for Debussy and Emma, they left for England.   

Debussy and Chouchou

Before departing, Debussy wrote to a friend, “You should know how many people have deserted me. It is enough to make one sick of everyone called man… Morally, I have suffered terribly… I don’t know, but I’ve often had to smile so that no one should see that I was going to cry.” Emma was by now seven months pregnant, and Claude Emma Debussy — known to all as Chouchou — was born on 30 October 1905 back in Paris. Debussy was besotted with his Chouchou, but life wasn’t entirely idyllic, as Emma’s uncle, the financier Osiris, had disinherited her in his will. The Lilly scandal still haunted them, and it even reached the stage in a thinly disguised melodrama by Henry Bataille called La femme nue. Debussy married Emma on 20 January 1908, but once again, married life was not agreeable. Emma was frequently ill, constantly possessive and extravagant, and far less easy to pacify than the devoted Lilly had been. Debussy frequently retreated to the sanctuary of his study and wrote notes to Emma in preference to actually having a conversation. During a matrimonial crisis in 1910, Emma actually wrote to her lawyer to enquire about a trial separation as she came to despise his “inaction, continued indiscretions, moral cowardice, self-pity and much-vaunted hypersensitivity.” Debussy, of course was acutely aware of his failings as he wrote, “in everyday life I stumble over the smallest pebble, which another man would send flying with a light-hearted kick.” Art, it seems, was his one and only lover.

From Orchestra to Piano: Debussy’s La Mer

by Maureen Buja

With its full title, La mer, trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre (The sea, three symphonic sketches for orchestra), we can understand what Claude Debussy (1862–1918) was trying to show in his 1905 orchestral work.

I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From dawn to midday on the sea)
II. Jeux de vagues (Play of the Waves)
III. Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the wind and the sea)

The three sections let us know that Debussy is capturing different aspects of the sea. The three great influences on his work at the time, Impressionism, Symbolism, and Japonism, all played a role in this work. If we look at the first edition of the work, the cover makes the Japan connection clear as it shows a detail from Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Mount Fuji and all the boats in the water have been removed.

The cover for the full score, published by Durand et Fils in 1905, recoloured the wave from its original blue to ‘various shades of green, blue, tan, and beige.’

First edition cover

The work was given its orchestral premiere in October 1905 by the Orchestre Lamoureux conducted by Camille Chevillard. Early reception of the piece was poor, with audiences expecting rather more of the sea than the ‘agitated water in a saucer’ that the critics reported. It was only later, in 1908, that the work was a success. As conducted by the composer, it was felt that the 1908 concert presented the ‘first real performance of the piece’.

André Caplet, a long standing friend of Debussy’s made a two-piano arrangement of the work, which is used by the duet on this recording. It was published the same year as the premiere.

André Caplet and Debussy

As recorded by the piano duet team of Vaness Wagner and Wilhem Latchoumia, the use of the two keyboards to replace the orchestra gives us a different kind of work. We’re on the top of the waves, rather than in the darker waters that the orchestral version can take us into.

Vanessa Wagner and Wilhem Latchoumia (Photo by William Beaucardet)

The two performers are well aware of the different ways in which they play the piano and see value in the fact that their ‘respective touches, while not necessarily similar, go together very well (VW)’. They take up the challenge of Debussy’s orchestral timbres and how it requires a certain finesse, fluidity, and shimmer to complete the early 20th-century sound on the piano. Latchoumia quotes Debussy: ‘It was Debussy who encouraged pianists to look for a mellow sound that would make you forget the instrument has hammers. I think that sums up the way we should approach French music’.

The pianists deliberately chose to use André Caplet’s version of La mer for 2 pianos rather than Debussy’s version for 1 piano 4 hands. Even Debussy thought Caplet’s version was better than his!

Wagner and Latchoumia’s recording presents the best of French music at the turn of the century with the trio of Debussy, Satie, and Ravel, but in works that are often more famililar in the orchestra versions. Ravel’s La Valse, Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune are given in their piano transcriptions. Works so familiar heard in a new guise can be so rewarding.

Debussy, Ravel, Satie: Piano Twins
Vanessa Wagner and Wilhem Latchoumia
La Dolce Volta LDV 120

Official Website

10 Pieces of Classical Music About Childhood

by Emily E. Hogstad  

Classical music sometimes has a reputation of being solely for elderly people. If that’s true (spoiler alert: it’s not), it’s certainly strange how many pieces of classical music are about childhood and youth.

Today we’re looking at classical music inspired by childhood.

© soundgirls.org

Robert Schumann: Kinderszenen (1838) 

Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen (“Songs from Childhood”) is a set of thirteen pieces for solo piano about childhood.

Robert was twenty-eight at the time he wrote these pieces, and he was dating the nineteen-year-old piano superstar Clara Wieck.

For a variety of reasons, Clara had always been mature for her age, and at one point she observed that Robert was “like a child.” Robert, amused, decided to embrace his childlike nature, took her idea, and ran with it.

The pieces in this collection include Blind Man’s Buff, Knight of the Hobbyhorse, and, most famously, Dreaming (better-known by its German title, Träumerei). 

Teresa Carreño: Mi Teresita (ca 1885) 

Teresa Carreño was one of the most famous women composers of her generation, and Mi Teresita (“My Little Teresa”) is one of her most famous works.

It’s a waltz that was written for her third child, Teresita, who had been born in 1882. (As a bit of trivia, Carreño had six children in all: one by French violinist Émile Sauret, three by Italian baritone Giovanni Tagliapietra, and two more by German pianist Eugen d’Albert.)

Teresita would become a concert pianist like her mother.

Amy Beach: Children’s Carnival (1894) 

In 1894, twenty-seven-year-old American composer Amy Beach wrote six charming piano pieces for young players. She called the works Children’s Carnival.

The Carnival portrayed different stock characters often found in commedia dell’arte or pantomime, such as the meddling merchant Pantalon, the street-smart and gossipy maid Columbina, and her nimble, quick-thinking love interest, Harlequin.

Beach portrays each character with sweet and satisfying innocence.

Claude Debussy: Children’s Corner (1906-08) 

In January 1905, Claude Debussy’s married mistress Emma Bardac became pregnant. That spring, both Debussy and Bardac divorced from their respective spouses.

In October 1905, their little daughter Claude-Emma, whom they nicknamed Chouchou, was born. Debussy found Chouchou to be delightful beyond words.

Debussy with his daughter Chou-Chou

To celebrate his love for her, he wrote a six-movement suite of piano pieces called Children’s Corner. The work’s translated dedication reads, “To my dear little Chouchou, with tender apologies from her father for what follows.”

Children’s Corner portrays various scenes from childhood, including a serenade for a doll, a lullaby for an elephant, and a portrait of dancing snow.

John Alden Carpenter: Adventures in a Perambulator (1914)  

John Alden Carpenter was a composer born in Illinois in 1876. He studied music as a young man but chose not to make his living in music, instead joining the family shipping business as vice-president.

In 1914, he composed an orchestral portrait of his baby daughter Ginny’s day, perhaps taking inspiration from Richard Strauss, who, in 1903, had immortalized his own wife and baby in a tone poem called Symphonia Domestica.

Baby in Perambulator

Carpenter provided an incredibly detailed description of Ginny’s day from her perspective:

Every morning – after my second breakfast – if the wind and the sun are favorable, I go out. I should like to go alone, but my will is overborne…

Almost satiated with adventure, my Nurse firmly pushes me on, and almost before I recover my balance I am face to face with new sensation. The land comes to an end, and there at my feet is The Lake…

We pass on. Probably there is nothing more in the World. If there is, it is superfluous. There IS. It is Dogs!

Read more about Adventures in a Perambulator.

Florence Price: “To My Little Son” (ca 1915) 

Sometime around 1915, composer Florence Price set a melancholy poem by Julia Johnson Davis to music.

In your face I sometimes see
shadowings of the man to be
And eager dream of what my son shall be
in twenty years and one…

This was an especially poignant song for Price to set, as she lost a baby boy in infancy.

Edward Elgar: Nursery Suite (1931) 

Nursery Suite is one of the last pieces of music that Elgar ever wrote. In 1930, a 73-year-old Elgar told a friend that he’d recently found a box of music in manuscript dating from his youth.

His friend suggested that he work them up into something to celebrate the recent birth of Princess Margaret. He agreed, and by the following year he produced a sweet little orchestral suite with movement titles like “The Sad Doll” and “The Merry Doll.”

Elgar expanded the dedication: the final work was dedicated to Princess Margaret, Princess Elizabeth (the future Elizabeth II), and their mother, the Duchess of York.

Sergei Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf (1936) 

Peter and the Wolf was commissioned by the director of the Central Children’s Theatre in Moscow. She wanted Prokofiev to write a special symphony for children.

Peter, the work’s protagonist, plays in a meadow, listening to a whole menagerie of animals symbolised by various instruments.

Peter’s grandfather warns him of a gray wolf who might come to attack him. On cue, the wolf makes an appearance. Luckily, with the help of his animal friends, Peter is able to catch it.

Hunters come out of the forest, ready to kill the wolf, but Peter convinces them to put the wolf in a cage and bring it to a zoo instead. They do so in triumphant formation. At the last minute, a quacking comes from the wolf’s stomach: he has eaten the duck whole!

The work has proven to be incredibly popular and enduring, and it is often used even today as an introduction to the orchestra and orchestral instruments.

Benjamin Britten: The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (1945) 

In the mid-1940s, composer Benjamin Britten was commissioned to score an educational documentary called Instruments of the Orchestra.

The main theme comes from another famous British composer: Henry Purcell‘s incidental music to Aphra Behn’s Abdelazer.

Each section shows off a different part of the orchestra, helping young listeners (of all ages!) to appreciate the uniqueness of each one.

Interestingly, there is a version with narration and another one without.

Samuel Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947) 

Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is for orchestra and soprano soloist. It is a nostalgic portrait of the narrator’s childhood.

The lyrics are from a 1938 prose poem by James Agee, describing the summer before his father died in a car accident:

On the rough, wet grass of the back yard, my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there….They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near…

Barber’s music beautifully captures the uneasy poignancy of Agee’s words.

Conclusion

So there you have it: ten pieces of classical music about childhood and youth.

Did you have a favorite piece of classical music as a child? Is it still a favorite now? Let us know!

Debussy Arabesque No.1 - Inga Fiolia

The famous #Debussy Arabesque no.1 - played by Inga Fiolia at the Trinitatis Church Cologne A multiple prizewinner of international competitions and described in the international press as a “poet on the piano with remarkable maturity”, German-Georgian pianist Inga Fiolia has a bright future. Since giving her first performance with an orchestra at the age of seven, she has shown a phenomenal ability as a soloist, accompanist and interpreter of a wide variety of styles, from the Baroque to the 21st century compositions. Inga Fiolia studied at the Central Music School of Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and the Cologne Musikhochschule with Alexey Nasedkin, Rudolf Kehrer and Vassily Lobanov. She is the youngest follower of the Neuhaus piano tradition, which included Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels. As a soloist she has collaborated with orchestras including the Brandenburg State Opera Philharmonic (Mendelssohn Concerto No. 1), the Brussels Philharmonic (Rachmaninov Concerto No.2), the Georgian State Chamber Orchestra (Bach No. 5) and National Philharmonic (Haydn D major, Beethoven No. 1), the Bergische Symphoniker and the South Westphalia Philharmonic (Liszt No.2). She received the Solti Award and German Piano Magazine´s “Piano News prize” and has also performed for major TV and radio stations including ZDF, ARTE, Classica TV, SWR, Deutschlandradio, WDR, as well as on Georgian TV. Her performance of Scriabin’s Preludes and Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto was released on the DVD “Stars of tomorrow, presented by Rolando Villazon” (Unitel Classica, 2015). She released two recordings of Mikhail Glinka´s piano works: “Piano Variations” (2017), “Dances” (2018) and Sulkhan Tsintsadze´s “24 Preludes” (2019) on Naxos´ Lable Grand Piano. In 2019 she made her U.S Debut at Lincoln Center in New York, a Debut at the Klavierfestival Ruhr with works by Ravel, Debussy (CD Edition Klavierfestival Ruhr), Schubert and Glinka and has performed Chopin´s 1. Piano Concerto with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra. In 2020 she made her reloaded arrangements of Beethoven‘s best Piano pieces, that were premiered and recorded live at Ruhr Piano Festival with the Sting‘s percussionist Rhani Krija (Album Release in 2022).

Lullaby of Tears Claude Debussy: Berceuse héroïque

by Georg Predota , Interlude

The Battle of the Somme was fought between 1 July and 18 November 1916. One of the largest and most brutal engagements of the First World War, almost one million men were wounded or killed! Among them was the young British composer George Butterworth, who was shot through the head by a sniper in August 1916. Butterworth was one of thousands of well-educated soldiers that chronicled their personal experiences through words, art and music. The writers Robert Graves, JRR Tolkien and Edmund Blunden left a legacy of poetry, memoirs and fiction that helped future generations to understand the reality of war. The same is true for Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst and Maurice Ravel.

The Battle of the Somme © dailymail.co.uk

Ravel had hoped to help his country as an aviator, but was considered too old and too short. As such, he served as a driver on the Verdun front, and he memorializes six of his dead friends in Le tombeau de Couperin. Arnold Schoenberg, entirely immersed into his reorganization of traditional tonality, was first drafted into the Austrian Army at age 42. He served for almost a year before a petition for his release was granted. One year later, he was called to active duty again, but given his advanced age, was assigned light duties in and around Vienna.

Claude Debussy © super-conductor.blogspot.com

Claude Debussy, meanwhile, was fighting his own personal battle against colon cancer. He dejectedly wrote, “My age and fitness allow me at most to guard a fence…but, if, to assure victory, they are absolutely in need of another face to be bashed in, I’ll offer mine without question.” Just a couple of years earlier, Debussy had hoped for a quick end to hostilities, but was eventually drawn into a well-organized propaganda campaign protesting the violation of Belgian neutrality by the Germans. King Albert’s Book: A Tribute to the Belgian King and People from Representative Men and Woman Throughout the Word was published in November 1914, and included contributions by Edward Elgar, Jack London, Edith Wharton, Maurice Maeterlinck, among numerous others. Debussy contributed the Berceuse héroïque, a short improvisatory piano piece full of melancholy and discretion that the composer explained “has no pretensions other than to offer an homage to so much patient suffering.”

As the war entered its second year, life for Debussy and his family became a real challenge. Shortages of food and fuel, and a steady escalation of cost made it increasingly difficult to earn a living. “It is almost impossible to work,” Debussy wrote, “to tell the truth, one hardly dares to, for the asides of the war are more distressing than one imagines. I am just a poor little atom crushed in this terrible cataclysm.” Yet, Debussy took heart and began to compose more than he had in years. These works, among them En Blanc et Noir for two pianos, Douze Études composed and dedicated to Chopin, the Sonata for flute, viola and harp and the Cello Sonata are strongly affected by the war. Debussy wrote to a friend, “these works were created not so much for myself, but to offer proof, small as it may be, that French thought will not be destroyed…I think of the youth of France, senselessly mowed down…What I am writing will be a secret homage to them.” The Sonata for violin and piano of 1916/17 was Debussy’s last completed composition, and below his name proudly appeared the telling signature “musicien français.”

Debussy’s last surviving musical autograph, a short piano piece, was presented as a form of payment to his coal-dealer, probably in February or March 1917. The bombardment of Paris as part of a final German offensive commenced on 23 March 1918, two days before Debussy’s death. By that time, the composer was too weak to be carried into the shelter. Yet his perception of war had fundamentally changed. “When will hate be exhausted?” he wrote, “or is it hate that is the issue in all this? When will the practice cease of entrusting the destiny of nations to people who see humanity as a way of furthering their careers?”

On My Music Desk…… Claude Debussy – La cathédrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral)

by Frances Wilson, Interlude

Atmospheric, mysterious and dramatic, this quintessential example of “musical impressionism” is captivating to play and to hear. In less than 6 minutes of music, Debussy tells a remarkable story and creates a vivid aural, and visual, portrayal of the mythical cathedral of Ys, on the coast of Brittany, Northwest France in the Bay of Douarnenez France, which was said to rise from the waves, complete with bells chiming, priests chanting, and its organ playing, before sinking back into the water. Only distant bells are faintly audible as a memory – was it real or just a mirage? It’s one of my most favourite piano works by Debussy and a piece which I have been playing since I was a child (despite not having sufficiently large hands for some of the big chords and stretches!). Debussy enjoyed playing this piece himself too and even left a recording on a piano roll.

La Cathedrale engloutie – Escher
(Brigham Young University Museum of Art)

In this piece, composed in 1910 and included in Book 1 of the Preludes for piano, Debussy demonstrates his mastery of not only the piano miniature form in creating such a potent narrative in just a few pages of music, but also his deep appreciation of the instrument’s sonic palette. His music is often compared to the paintings of Claude Monet, in which ‘impressions’ of a scene or landscape are rendered through a limited palette and short brush strokes applied over a pale-coloured ground or ‘base’, which create remarkable luminosity, texture and colour blends. This has led to a misconception in the interpretation and performance of Debussy’s music in which some performers “blur” the sounds, often with over-use of the sustaining pedal.

In fact, Debussy disliked the term “impressionist”, and any temptation to employ “impressionistic” pedalling is misguided. Monet and other Impressionist painters did not blend their colours but in fact separated them – it is this separation which creates the remarkable effects of light, when viewing their paintings at a distance. Similarly, when playing and, more specifically, pedalling Debussy’s piano music, “separation” or definition of individual timbres is required; if anything, his music demands an almost Mozartian clarity.

Le Mont-Saint-Michel

Debussy did not give this prelude, nor the others in the two books, a title on the opening page. Instead each one was assigned a number, with the title placed at the end of the piece, allowing pianists to form their own individual, intuitive impressions of the music before the composer reveals his intent.

Like Monet’s pale ground on which he built his paintings, Debussy’s employs a “ground” in the opening section of the music in the form of whole-bar chords in open fifths. Over this, another chordal figure, also in open fourths and fifths, which recalls the harmonies and timbres of gamelan music, which Debussy encountered at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1889, and also the simple harmonies of early Medieval liturgical music. The opening direction Profondément calme sets the scene, while the secondary direction Dans une brume doucement sonore (“in a soft mist of sound”) should not be taken as an excuse to depress the pedal fully. The arc of the phrases is perhaps suggestive of the cathedral’s gradual emergence from the sea, and indeed the overall structure of the entire piece suggests an arch form.

A key change into B Major signals a shift in the narrative. Here the cathedral begins to emerge more distinctly from the mists and waves: this is portrayed through an arpeggiated figure in the bass which evokes the rolling movement of the sea. Chords continue in the right hand: this is the sound of the organ growing louder as the cathedral emerges. By bar 28, the organ is heard in all its grandeur, with dense fortissimo chords in treble and bass. This is the climax of the music and here we can imagine the cathedral fully visible, its organ playing in glorious full volume. The weight and power of the organ is further emphasised by the tolling of a single bell, deep in the bass. At bar 41 the cathedral begins to retreat and by bar 47, the organ is heard distantly as the water subsumes the building, but bursting forth again, momentarily, at bars 59-62.

In the closing section of the piece another rolling figure in the low bass represents the sea while the organ is heard faintly, also in a lower register. One senses its magnificence, even if obscured by the water. Finally, in the final measures, the cathedral’s bells are heard distantly in haunting pianissimo.

In the video below, created by the piano department of the London College of Music, a process known as “hyper production” was used to create a “layered” performance of the piece. The score was divided into separate elements, such as “bells” or “monks’, which then informed the treatment of each element in the recording process to create a more intense and colourful sound when played back through a 3D Audio speaker array (like surround sound). It’s certainly an interesting approach – though the result may not to be everyone’s taste – and I think it is instructive as it clearly highlights and differentiates the individual motifs of the music.

The entire piece is remarkably graphic, with a clarity and layering of contrasting voices and timbres which calls for extremely precise yet highly expressive playing. Managing the climactic episode is an exercise in control to portray the full grandeur of the organ, and the monumentalism of the cathedral itself as it rises from the waves and swell of the ocean.

Debussy Arabesque No.1 - Inga Fiolia

The famous #Debussy Arabesque no.1 - played by Inga Fiolia at the Trinitatis Church Cologne A multiple prizewinner of international competitions and described in the international press as a “poet on the piano with remarkable maturity”, German-Georgian pianist Inga Fiolia has a bright future. Since giving her first performance with an orchestra at the age of seven, she has shown a phenomenal ability as a soloist, accompanist and interpreter of a wide variety of styles, from the Baroque to the 21st century compositions. Inga Fiolia studied at the Central Music School of Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and the Cologne Musikhochschule with Alexey Nasedkin, Rudolf Kehrer and Vassily Lobanov. She is the youngest follower of the Neuhaus piano tradition, which included Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels. As a soloist she has collaborated with orchestras including the Brandenburg State Opera Philharmonic (Mendelssohn Concerto No. 1), the Brussels Philharmonic (Rachmaninov Concerto No.2), the Georgian State Chamber Orchestra (Bach No. 5) and National Philharmonic (Haydn D major, Beethoven No. 1), the Bergische Symphoniker and the South Westphalia Philharmonic (Liszt No.2). She received the Solti Award and German Piano Magazine´s “Piano News prize” and has also performed for major TV and radio stations including ZDF, ARTE, Classica TV, SWR, Deutschlandradio, WDR, as well as on Georgian TV. Her performance of Scriabin’s Preludes and Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto was released on the DVD “Stars of tomorrow, presented by Rolando Villazon” (Unitel Classica, 2015). She released two recordings of Mikhail Glinka´s piano works: “Piano Variations” (2017), “Dances” (2018) and Sulkhan Tsintsadze´s “24 Preludes” (2019) on Naxos´ Lable Grand Piano. In 2019 she made her U.S Debut at Lincoln Center in New York, a Debut at the Klavierfestival Ruhr with works by Ravel, Debussy (CD Edition Klavierfestival Ruhr), Schubert and Glinka and has performed Chopin´s 1. Piano Concerto with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra. In 2020 she made her reloaded arrangements of Beethoven‘s best Piano pieces, that were premiered and recorded live at Ruhr Piano Festival with the Sting‘s percussionist Rhani Krija (Album Release in 2022).

Playlist: Water Games

by Frances Wilson, Interlude

‘Water games’ is one translation of Jeux d’eau by Maurice Ravel, others being Fountains and Playing Water.

Shipwreck

Each is equally apt: in this piece Ravel brilliantly evokes “the splashing of water and by the musical sounds of fountains, cascades and rivulets” (Ravel) through shimmering figurations, cascading arpeggios and other fluid textures. It’s a masterpiece of Impressionism and was the well-spring for other water-inspired piano music by Ravel, namely Une barque sur l’océan from Miroirs and Ondine from Gaspard de la Nuit. 

Fountain in Villa d’Este, Tivoli

But the forerunner of these pieces was undoubtedly Franz Liszt’s Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este, which, like Jeux d’eau, evokes the sparkling play of fountains and the fluidity and brilliance of water. The Villa d’Este boasts an extraordinary system of fountains, with some fifty-one fountains and nymphaeums, 398 spouts, 364 water jets, 64 waterfalls, and 220 basins, fed by 875 metres of canals, channels and cascades, and all working entirely by the force of gravity, without pumps.

Reflections on water

Debussy was also a master of depicting water in music. Reflets dans l’eau (Reflections in the Water). Here Debussy imitates not just the sounds of water – droplets and burbles, splashes and raindrops – but also reflections, the pictures that float upon the surface.

n. The Lone Wreck, from The Tides by English composer William Baines, is a dramatic tone poem which paints a haunting picture of an abandoned ship deep in the ocean, complete with the calls of sea birds.

Night gondola in Venice, Italy

The Barcarolle, or “boat song”, inspired by the songs of Venetian gondoliers, seeks to portray the rocking motion of the sea and the rise and fall of waves. Chopin’s Barcarolle is perhaps the most famous work in this genre. Mendelssohn’s Venetian Gondolier’s Song in f-sharp minor from his Songs Without Words is dark and atmospheric, suggesting nighttime on the Venetian lagoon.

Liszt was also adept at portraying the motion of the ocean. In his Legende No. 2, St. Francis of Paola walking on the waves, the waters roll and bubble beneath the saint’s feet as he crosses the Straits of Messina.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Britten transports us to more serene waters in Sailing from his Holiday Diary suite. The wind gets up in the middle section, tossing the boat about, before calm is restored.