At the Proms last night (26/8/22) we heard a performance of Debussy’s La Mer and it reminded me how much I enjoy his music. So here is a Blog article about this amazing French composer.

(Achille) Claude Debussy (22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Born to a family of modest means and little cultural involvement, Debussy showed enough musical talent to be admitted at the age of ten to France’s leading music college, the Conservatoire de Paris. He originally studied the piano, but found his vocation in innovative composition, despite the disapproval of the Conservatoire’s conservative professors. He took many years to develop his mature style, and was nearly 40 when he achieved international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completed, Pelléas et Mélisande.

Debussy’s orchestral works include Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894), Nocturnes (1897–1899) and Images (1905–1912). His music was to a considerable extent a reaction against Wagner and the German musical tradition. He regarded the classical symphony as obsolete and sought an alternative in his “symphonic sketches”, La mer (1903–1905). His piano works include two books of Préludes and two of Études. Throughout his career he wrote mélodies based on a wide variety of poetry, including his own. He was greatly influenced by the Symbolist poetic movement of the later 19th century. A small number of works, including the early La Damoiselle élue and the late Le Martyre de saint Sébastien have important parts for chorus. In his final years, he focused on chamber music, completing three of six planned sonatas for different combinations of instruments.

With early influences including Russian and far-eastern music, Debussy developed his own style of harmony and orchestral colouring, derided – and unsuccessfully resisted – by much of the musical establishment of the day. His works have strongly influenced a wide range of composers including Béla Bartók, Olivier Messiaen, George Benjamin, and the jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans. Debussy died from cancer at his home in Paris at the age of 55 after a composing career of a little more than 30 years.

The music I have selected here is all orchestral (apart from the wordless female chorus in Nocturnes) and includes some of the most beautiful and most evocative music ever written.

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894)

The composition was inspired by the poem L’après-midi d’un faune by Stéphane Mallarmé. It describes the sensual experiences of a faun who has just woken up from his afternoon sleep and discusses his encounters with several nymphs during the morning in a dreamlike monologue. The poem is a stunningly beautiful work in its own right and this comes across even if, like me, you speak little or no French. 

It is one of Debussy’s most famous works and is considered a turning point in the history of music. Pierre Boulez considered the score to be the beginning of modern music, observing that “the flute of the faun brought new breath to the art of music.”

Debussy’s work later provided the basis for the ballet Afternoon of a Faun choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky and a later version by Jerome Robbins.

https://youtu.be/EvnRC7tSX50 (Conducted by Leonard Bernstein)

Nocturnes (1897–1899)

The Nocturnes were inspired by a set of paintings from the 1870s by American artist James McNeill Whistler. These artworks, also entitled Nocturnes, are studies in light and shade that offer an impression of landscapes and objects.

In fact, Debussy knew Whistler and several other artists – Toulouse-Lautrec and Gaugin among them – and was a great admirer of the work of J.M.W. Turner, whose canvases show a proto-impressionistic feeling for light similar to that found in Whistler’s Nocturnes. Debussy went to London in 1903 to see Turner’s paintings, and once described the artist as “the greatest creator of mystery in art.” Debussy provided an introductory note to the Nocturnes that reveals the influence of these painters’ sensibilities on his own thinking, with its reliance on light, mystery, and impression to characterize his music. He wrote:

“The title Nocturnes is to be interpreted here in a general and, more particularly, in a decorative sense. Therefore, it is not meant to designate the usual form of the Nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests. ‘Nuages’ (Clouds) renders the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones lightly tinged with white. ‘Fêtes’ (Festivals) gives us the vibrating, dancing rhythm of the atmosphere with sudden flashes of light. There is also the episode of the procession (a dazzling fantastic vision), which passes through the festive scene and becomes merged in it. But the background remains resistantly the same: the festival with its blending of music and luminous dust participating in the cosmic rhythm. ‘Sirènes’ (Sirens) depicts the sea and its countless rhythms and presently, amongst the waves silvered by the moonlight, is heard the mysterious song of the Sirens as they laugh and pass on.”

Debussy composed the Nocturnes between 1897 and 1899; the first two movements received their premiere in Paris, conducted by Camille Chevillard, on 9th December 1900. The first complete performance followed nearly a year later, on 27th October 1901. The work met a cool critical reception, and Debussy revised all three movements over the course of the rest of his life. In the case of “Sirènes,” he struggled especially with the women’s chorus included in the movement, tweaking the music to achieve a smoother blend of voices and orchestra. This instrumental use of voices is just one of the remarkable traits of the Nocturnes, which, at the time of their completion, comprised Debussy’s most ambitious orchestral work to date (La mer followed in 1905 and Images in 1913).

Debussy treats two themes in “Nuages,” one slow-moving and chordal (heard at the beginning of the movement), the other airier and more luminous (introduced by flute and harp). “Fêtes” is a rhythmically-driven depiction of the kind of rustic pleasures enjoyed by Debussy during his childhood in the Bois de Boulogne, a sprawling wooded park on the western edge of Paris. “Sirènes” abandons the thematic and rhythmic underpinnings of the two previous movements, instead relying on an ever-shifting atmosphere to conjure the sounds of the sea and the song of the mythical Sirens. The exoticism of the music stems, in part, from the influence of the Balinese gamelan, an orchestra of metallic percussion instruments that Debussy heard at the World Exposition in Paris in 1899. With “Neptune” from Holst’s The Planets, “Sirènes” is one of the most haunting uses of female voices to conclude a work, a radiant thread added to a gorgeous tapestry of sound.

https://youtu.be/1s4LZbr_h50 (Conducted by Pierre Boulez)

La mer (1903–1905)

Composed between 1903 and 1905, La mer (The Sea) was premiered in Paris in October 1905. It was initially not well received and even people who had been strong supporters of Debussy’s work were unenthusiastic. The work was eventually performed in the US in 1907 and Britain in 1908 and after a second performance in Paris in 1908, it quickly became one of Debussy’s most admired and frequently performed orchestral works.

The first audio recording of the work was made in 1928. Since then, orchestras and conductors from around the world have set it down in many studio or live concert recordings.

La mer was the second of Debussy’s three orchestral works in three sections. The first, the Nocturnes, was premiered in Paris in 1901, and though it had not made any great impact with the public it was well reviewed by musicians including Paul Dukas, Alfred Bruneau and Pierre de Bréville. Debussy conceived the idea of a more complex tripartite orchestral piece, and began work in August 1903. He was usually a slow worker, and although the composition of La mer took him more than a year and a half, this was unusually quick progress by his standards, particularly at a time of upheaval in his personal life. He began composing the work while visiting his parents-in-law in Burgundy but by the time it was complete, he had left his wife and was living with Emma Bardac, who was pregnant with Debussy’s child.

Debussy retained fond childhood memories of the beauties of the sea, but when composing La mer he rarely visited it, spending most of his time far away from large bodies of water. He drew inspiration from art, “preferring the seascapes available in painting and literature…” to the physical sea. Although the detailed scheme of the work changed during its composition, Debussy decided from the outset that it was to be “three symphonic sketches” with the title La mer. In a letter to André Messager, he described the planned sections as “Mer belle aux Îles Sanguinaires”, “Jeu de vagues”, and “Le vent fait danser la mer”. The first of these, inspired by a short story of the same name by Camille Mauclair, was abandoned in favour of a less restrictive theme, “De l’aube à midi sur la mer” (The sea from dawn to midday). The last was also dropped, as too reminiscent of ballet, and the less specific theme of the dialogue between the wind and the sea took its place.

Debussy completed La mer in March 1905 at the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne on the English Channel coast, which he described to his publisher, Durand, as “a charming peaceful spot: the sea unfurls itself with an utterly British correctness.” He arranged the piece for piano four hands in 1905, and in 1909 Durand published a second edition of La mer with the composer’s revisions.

A typical performance of the piece lasts about 26 minutes and is in three movements:

1. “De l’aube à midi sur la mer”
2. “Jeux de vagues”
3. “Dialogue du vent et de la mer”

Usually translated as:

1. “From dawn to midday on the sea”
2. “Play of the Waves”
3. “Dialogue of the wind and the sea”

https://youtu.be/SgSNgzA37To (Conducted by Claudio Abbado)

Images (1905–1912)

Images is an orchestral composition in three sections written between 1905 and 1912. Debussy had originally intended this set of Images as a two-piano sequel to the first set of Images for solo piano, as described in a letter to his publisher Durand as of September 1905. However, by March 1906, in another letter to Durand, he had begun to think of arranging the work for orchestra rather than two pianos.

The three sections are as follows but some conductors, notably Leonard Bernstein, have them played in the order I, III and II:

I. Gigues (1909–1912)

The original title of Gigues was Gigues tristes. Debussy used his memories of England as inspiration for the music, in addition to the song “Dansons la gigue” by Charles Bordes and the Tyneside folk tune “The Keel Row”, which are used as key themes.

II. Ibéria (1905–1908)

Ibéria is the most popular of the three orchestral Images and itself forms a triptych within the triptych. Its sections are:

• Par les rues et par les chemins (Along the streets and along the paths)
• Les parfums de la nuit (The scents of the night)
• Le matin d’un jour de fête (The morning of a festive day) – a procession of a ‘banda de guitarras’

III. Rondes de printemps (1905–1909)

This is one of Debussy’s most modern works. He used two folk tunes, “Nous n’irons plus au bois” and “Do, do l’enfant do” in this movement.

https://youtu.be/jp-C3Lbgo5M (Conducted by Emmanuel Kirivine)