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Home , Claude Debussy, La mer (Debussy), Nocturnes (Debussy)

Quad City PROGRAM NOTES Masterworks I: French Moderns

By Jacob Bancks Associate Professor of Music Augustana College

CLAUDE (1862-1918) creature with goat’s legs and man’s head Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude and torso; not a “fawn”, or baby deer). If you to the Afternoon of a Faun) can imagine your everyday, waking life be- ing like a dream where every desire is frus- Instrumentation: 3 flutes, 2 , English horn, trated, and that falling asleep is your only 2 , 2 , 4 horns, percussion, 2 gateway to fulfillment, you might be on your harps, and strings. way to understanding the beauty of Mal- Premiere: December 22, 1894, , Gustave larmé’s poem. Doret conducting.

QCSO Performance History: Harry John Brown Did I love a dream? conducting in 1953; Charles Gigante conduct- ing in 1960; James Dixon conducting in 1969, My doubt, mass of ancient night, ends 1976, 1982, and 1990; Mark Gibson (guest) extreme conducting in 1998; Mark Russell Smith con- In many a subtle branch, that remaining ducting in 2008. the true Woods themselves, proves, alas, that I In 1886 Jean Moréas wrote an article in Le too Figaro articulating the ideals that were ani- Offered myself, alone, as triumph, the mating a new generation of poets. This Sym- false ideal of roses. bolist Manifesto included the exhortation to artists that their core ideas should be hidden If Mallarmé’s goal, in line with the Symbolist behind “sumptuous lounge robes of extra- Manifesto, was to write sensuous and evoc- neous analogies.” This was essential, he be- ative poetry that carefully obscured his cen- lieved, because “consists in tral idea, he was clearly highly successful. never approaching the concentrated kernel of the Idea in itself.” In other words, what- Incidentally, his poem also abounds in spe- ever animating idea sits at the core of a Sym- cifically musical imagery. For example, bolist work of art must be carefully ob- scured, like a concealed relic. The great twin reed we play under the azure ceiling, It is difficult to imagine a more perfect ex- That turning towards itself the cheek’s ample of this than Stéphane Mallarmé’s The quivering, Afternoon of a Faun, a poem written from Dreams, in a long solo, so we might the viewpoint of a sexually eager, pro- amuse foundly confused faun (i.e., a mythic The beauties round about by false notes generation prior to Debussy’s, said the work that confuse… “has a pretty sonority, but one does not find in it the least musical idea… Debussy did not For a composer of ’s artistic create a style; he cultivated an absence of disposition, this poetry was irresistible. The style, logic, and common sense.” In con- “great twin reed,” the “long solo,” and trast, , Debussy’s younger most especially the “false notes that con- contemporary, posited that Prelude had in it fuse” suggested a new kind of orchestral “more musical substance… than in the won- music, one that embodied the murky quali- derfully immense Ninth Symphony by Bee- ties of Symbolist poetry, but with the added thoven.” Later iconoclasts like Igor Stravin- “sumptuous lounge robes” of wordless mu- sky and pointed to the work’s sic. musical materials (obscure modulations, un- expected juxtapositions, and vivid orches- The core of Debussy’s tone poem is a recur- tration) as the root of their own modernist ring flute solo (perhaps inspired by Mal- musical projects. In this sense, the work is larmé’s description of a “sonorous, empty most certainly a prelude, not just to Mal- and monotonous line”) which is not so much larmé’s poem, but to the musical develop- developed in a classical sense as mysteri- ments of the 75 years to follow. ously transformed and re-contextualized in its various iterations throughout the piece. Things to Listen for in Debussy was famously skeptical of “devel- Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun opment” in the nineteenth century, Ger- ¯ There’s no way you’ll miss the lus- manic sense: he detested Wagner’s leitmo- cious, haunting flute solo at the piece’s tifs, and once famously remarked that the beginning, and in its many later in- development section of a Brahms symphony stances. Note that this first version fits was the prime opportunity to step out for a almost entirely in the instrument’s low- cigarette. So, if we are most accustomed to est octave, its least powerful range. We hearing short, simple motives lucidly extrap- rarely hear the flute this low because it olated across long periods of time (in, for is so easily buried by other instruments. example, a Brahms symphony), for De- Debussy has to be very careful about bussy’s work we have to adjust our ears to how he accompanies a solo like this! In- hear more arcane, musically ambiguous mo- terestingly enough, it’s the same range tives appear and reappear in puzzling, unex- of pitches in the ’s high register pected ways. In other words, for Debussy that Stravinsky uses to begin The Rite of and other Symbolists, good art was not a Spring, a work which owes much to De- reasoned argument, but rather an incanta- bussy. tion. ¯ The solo’s end is marked with a harp glissando, its most iconic gesture and Being the first piece of its kind both in ex- (befitting the faun) itself a dreamy “illu- pressive arc and harmonic invention, in its sion”. Because of the unique construc- reception Prelude confounded traditional- tion of the harp, what sound to our ears ists and inspired modernists. Camille Saint- like arpeggios are actually a series of Saëns, the leading composer of the

2 QCSO Program Notes 2018-19, Masterworks I seven-note scales with various repeated ¯ For all its ambiguity, the flute solo pitches. ends in a triadic manner (i.e., imitating a ¯ Though Debussy is indeed artful at major triad, the least ambiguous har- crafting every moment of sound, note monic entity). The closing words of Mal- how he also makes stunning use of si- larmé’s poem seem entirely fitting: lences. “Farewell... I go to see the shadow you ¯ You will notice whenever the flute have become.” solo returns that something subtle changes about how it feels. Sometimes CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918) the notes of solo itself are different, but more often it is the harmonic context

that changes, particularly the lowest Instrumentation: 3 flutes (third flute doubling bass note in the orchestra. piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 3 ¯ Clearly if we left everything to the bassoons, 4 horns, 3 , 3 , “sonorous, empty and monotonous , , percussion, 2 harps, female line” of the flute, this piece could never chorus, and strings. get going, so Debussy uses the other Premiere: December 9, 1900 (first two move- ments only) and October 27, 1901 (complete woodwind soloists to move things work), Lamoureux Orchestra, Paris, Camille along. He begins with the somewhat Chevillard conducting. scatterbrained (who has figures QCSO Performance History: Harry John Brown in both the all-half-step chromatic scale conducting in 1951; Charles Gigante conduct- and all-whole-step ), ul- ing in 1959; James Dixon conducting in 1965, timately entrusting the with the 1970, 1978, and 1987. middle section’s more stable theme, clearly (for a moment at least) in the key Like all modernists, Debussy was eager to of E major. forge a path toward the new, the unex- ¯ After a third section with longer me- pected, and the unexplainable. But modern- lodic lines over pulsing triplets in the ism has frequently paired this forward-look- woodwinds and horns, the flute solo re- ing spirit with an equally-emphatic rejection turns, but this time at a slightly higher of precedent. In short, it is a line of thinking pitch level. both bewitched by the future and haunted ¯ The oboe again plays foil to the se- by the past. Case in point: Debussy spent a rene flute with a foolhardy, herky-jerky, tortuous decade writing and revising his trill-and-grace-note-laden solo, which only , Pélleas et Mélisande, desperate the flute and English horn eventually to avoid any indebtedness to operatic cli- come to imitate. chés, as epitomized in the works of Richard ¯ The final section is marked with a Wagner. As soon as Debussy thought he shockingly sparse orchestral texture: had succeeded in exorcising his opera’s two solo violins, a set of “antique cym- nineteenth century demons, he bemoaned bals” or crotales (sounding like a hyper- that “the ghost of old Klingsor” (the nefari- charged ), and the solo flute ous wizard in Wagner’s ) “kept ap- and solo in octaves. pearing in the corner.”

QCSO Program Notes 2018-19, Masterworks I 3 Opera was not the only genre in which De- descriptions, and he was reportedly inspired bussy attempted to transcend musical his- by the works of American painter James tory. He wrote, for example, two books of MacNeill Whistler. In the second movement, piano preludes, a genre loaded with histori- Fêtes (“Festivals”), Debussy’s description is cal baggage from its many Baroque and Ro- downright psychedelic: his music “gives us mantic manifestations. And when he re- the vibrating, dancing rhythm of the atmos- named his orchestral work Three Scenes at phere with sudden flashes of light. There is Twilight to the more succinct Nocturnes (lit- also the episode of the procession (a daz- erally, “night pieces”), he likewise set out to zling fantastic vision), which passes through avoid the nineteenth century trappings of the festive scene and becomes merged in it. that genre as well. In a program note, he But the background remains resistantly the was careful to declare that his title was “not same: the festival with its blending of music meant to designate the usual form of the and luminous dust participating in the cos- , but rather all the various impres- mic rhythm.” Finally, Sirenes (“Sirens”) both sions and the special effects of light that the evokes Homer’s Odyssey and predicts his word suggests.” This is, of course, a very later orchestral work : “the sea and Symbolist sentiment: hidden inner ideas its countless rhythms and presently, concealed with “sumptuous lounge robes.” amongst the waves silvered by the moon- Unsurprisingly, the work of another Symbol- light, is heard the mysterious song of the Si- ist poet, Henri di Régnier, helped to inspire rens as they laugh and pass on.” Here, as in this work. Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Debussy betrays another impulse inherent in Of course, the nocturne wasn’t the only : amid the desperate attempt to genre Debussy was flouting here. Although escape the past, we end up going even Nocturnes is a multi-movement work for or- deeper into history. chestra, one dare not liken it to a symphony. Each of the three movements is carefully cir- Things to Listen for in cumscribed to connect musically only with Nocturnes itself, and the scenes the music describes First movement: Nuages (Clouds) are, unlike in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantas- ¯ Notice the near-constant, unvaried, tique, completely independent from one an- and unsyncopated quarter notes that other. In this spirit, it should be unsurprising persist throughout most of the move- that at the world premiere, only the first two ment. These provide a kind of blank movements were played, with the third be- background in front of which the more ing added a year later. varied solos are set. ¯ Like the flute in Prelude, the English In his own program note, Debussy de- horn has a solo that provides a recurring scribed the character of each movement. motif uniting the entire movement. This The first, Nuages (“Clouds”), “renders the is a favorite trick of Debussy’s: to leave immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, a musical element unchanged in itself solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in but to transform its context throughout grey tones lightly tinged with white.” This is a piece. one of Debussy’s most painterly musical

4 QCSO Program Notes 2018-19, Masterworks I ¯ The movement’s middle section has a death with the sweetness of their song. sparkling theme which is doubled on There is a great heap of dead men's flute and harp. This theme is composed bones lying all around, with the flesh still in the primeval, universally-singable rotting off them.” So remember, this pentatonic mode. music is meant to be both beautiful and ¯ The last clouds of the movement float dangerous! through the bassoons and low strings; ¯ On that note, the singing is so fresh the flute recalls its earlier pentatonic and surprising that it can be easy to miss solo, though this time its last note falls the other, equally intriguing musical lay- outside the scale. ers. Listen especially for the rhythmic un- Second movement: Fêtes (Festivals) derlay; all kinds of conflicting rhythms ¯ Motion in the bass from 5 to 1 (known are going on throughout the entire or- as a “perfect fourth”) is one of classical chestra. music’s most fundamental ingredients. ¯ If you’ve ever sung in a choir, you At the beginning of Fêtes, Debussy know you have to breathe at some mimics this but chooses a much more point. Debussy achieves the effect of mysterious and dissonant interval, the near-constant singing over some pas- “”. Historically composers ap- sages by seamlessly dovetailing the dif- proached and resolved care- ferent sections of the choir; one is al- fully, but for Debussy the tritone be- lowed to rest while the other continues comes expressive independent of how it the same musical lines. is resolved. ¯ The first section ends in an intense CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918) fanfare. ¯ In the middle of the movement, low rumbles in the harp, timpani, Instrumentation: Solo flute strings and muted trumpets might be Premiere: December 1, 1913, , flute. the “procession” Debussy described in QCSO Premiere. his program notes. ¯ One might expect a big, triumphant One genre for which Debussy had few if any end to this festival. But of course, De- precedents to break was music for unac- bussy always aimed to defy musical ex- companied woodwinds. For nearly all pieces pectations. for flute preceding Syrinx, instrumental ac- Third movement: Sirenes (Sirens) companiment (at least harpsicord or piano) ¯ Debussy’s most innovative device in provided help to the solo flute by clarifying the entire work is the chorus of wordless the underlying harmony and keeping the voices. Obviously, he is depicting the rhythmic momentum moving forward. “A captivating musical temptresses of flute singing on the horizon must at once Homer’s Odyssey: “If any one unwarily contain its emotion!” wrote Debussy, articu- draws in too close and hears the singing lating the unique challenge of writing for a of the Sirens, his wife and children will single-line, unaccompanied instrument. never welcome him home again, for they “The line or melodic pattern cannot rely on sit in a green field and warble him to any interruption of color.”

QCSO Program Notes 2018-19, Masterworks I 5 Originally titled Flûte de Pan, the work is (1839- (surprise!) another nod to ancient mythol- 1881) ogy: in Ovid’s telling, the nymph Syrinx Pictures at an Exhibition turned herself into a river reed to avoid the Orchestrated by MAURICE RAVEL (1875- advances of the god Pan, who promptly 1937) fashioned her into a flute. The piece was written as incidental music for a play on Instrumentation: 3 flutes (second and third flute mythic themes by ; it was re- doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (third oboe dou- portedly performed from the wings of the bling English horn), 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, theatre between acts. alto , 2 bassoons, , 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, tim-

pani, percussion, 2 harps, celesta, and strings. Things to Listen for in Premiere: October 19, 1922, Paris, Serge Kous- Syrinx sevitzky conducting. ¯ The piece may not feel like it’s in a QCSO Performance History: Harry John Brown key, but when you hear the flute line conducting in 1952; James Dixon conducting coming to a rest, it’s probably on the in 1965, 1974, 1980, and 1989; Donald pitch B-flat. Schleicher conducting in 2005; Mark Russell Smith conducting in 2013 and 2017 (QCYSE ¯ Debussy frequently switches be- Side-by-Side). tween different pitch collections, includ-

ing pentatonic and chromatic scales. Because of their shared nationality, similar This adds an extra air of otherworldly affinities, and mutual gift for brilliant orches- mystery, since ordinary panpipes are tration, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel fashioned to use only one scale (think of are often linked in the study of music history. Mozart’s The Magic Flute, in which the Debussy’s love of mythic topics so clearly panpipes played by the bird-catcher Pa- evidenced on this program were shared by pageno contain only the first five notes Ravel (recall his ballet Daphnis and Chloe, of the major scale). performed by the QCSO in March 2017), ¯ In Syrinx the flute goes even lower and the two clearly admired each other’s than in Prelude to the Afternoon of a work. But a close examination of both their Faun; the lowest pitch is a D-flat just music and their artistic temperaments above middle C, which is very nearly the demonstrates many sharp differences be- lowest pitch the flute can play. tween them. ¯ The form, as in many of Debussy’s

short pieces, is a simple ABA. Debussy, ever-tortured by his efforts to ¯ You might notice the last pitch is very forge new musical paths, seemed to find pungent and somewhat unexpected: ra- Ravel’s music too facile and easygoing. In a ther than ending on the B-flat which has 1907 letter to a friend, Debussy criticized been central throughout, Debussy ends Ravel for his perceived lack of seriousness. on a quizzical B-natural. “What irritates me is his posture as a ‘trick- ster,’ or better yet, as an enchanting fakir, who can make flowers spring up around a chair,” wrote Debussy. “Unfortunately, a

6 QCSO Program Notes 2018-19, Masterworks I trick is always prepared, and it can astonish only once!” Mussorgsky wrote Pictures at an Exhibition in memory of his close friend, painter Viktor And Ravel had misgivings about the older Hartmann, who died unexpectedly in 1873. master too. In an article published a decade The exhibition referred to in the title was a after Debussy’s death, Ravel acknowledged memorial to Hartmann in St. Petersburg fol- his debt to the older composer, but then ad- lowing his death. Like much of his music, mitted, “Nevertheless, I started the reaction these piano pieces have a rough, exuberant, against him in favor of the classics because I and untutored edge that earned him both craved more will and intellect than his music criticism and praise during his lifetime. By contained.” Ravel’s time Mussorgsky was a revered fig- ure in Paris, thanks to a major revival of his Ravel’s gesture toward “the classics” and his opera hosted there in 1908. desire for “more will and intellect” both point toward neoclassicism, or a wide- Anyone curious about how Ravel actually spread, post- trend whereby went about the task of orchestrating can rely composers re-engaged eagerly with music on the testimony of Ravel’s friend and biog- of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nine- rapher Alexis Roland-Manuel. “I saw–this teenth century (recall Hindemith’s Sym- was a great privilege–how he orchestrated,” phonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Carl recalled Roland-Manuel. “Of course it Maria von Weber and Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, wasn’t his own music, but it was nonetheless both major neoclassical works heard at the very interesting. He attentively examined QCSO last season). As you might have the passage he was working on; he wrote, guessed, the neoclassical impulse was more distributing the instruments like any other or less anathema to Debussy, who used old orchestrator. Then, very often, he went to forms and modes of expression only to the piano and isolated an instrumental mock them; Ravel’s work, on the other hand, group. He needed, he said, to hear what is full of neoclassical minuets, pavans, and one group was doing in relation to the oth- waltzes. In short, though Ravel was a ers… He said that he used the piano far younger man, he cared more for the com- more when orchestrating than when com- posers who preceded him than Debussy did. posing the first drafts of his own works.”

In this light, the idea of orchestrating a piano Roland-Manuel also shared the origin of one suite written by the nineteenth century Rus- of Ravel’s most distinctive instrumental sian composer Modest Mussorgsky was a choices. When trying to decide with which project Debussy might have detested, but instrument to place the melody in Mussorg- that Ravel embraced with great enthusiasm. sky’s second piece, “The Old Castle”, Ravel Commissioned by the conductor Serge asked his friend for a suggestion, and Ro- Koussevitzky for premiere with the Boston land-Manuel proposed the clarinet. “A clar- Symphony in 1922, Ravel’s was neither the inet? That would intrude!” said Ravel. So he first nor the last of Mussorg- assigned the melody to a saxophone. sky’s suite, but it has been by far the most well-known and revered.

QCSO Program Notes 2018-19, Masterworks I 7 Things to Listen for in the piece’s outer sections. Listen for the Pictures at an Exhibition change in the middle section, where the Promenade horn brings in the first long tones, later ¯ Though Mussorgsky uses a very imitated by the strings in harmonics. steady quarter note beat, the number of No. 6, Samuel Goldenberg and a beats per measure changes quite fre- Schmuÿle quently. Try to count along (1-2-3-4) to ¯ Here Mussorgsky gave Ravel a single see how irregular the meter actually is. melody. Rather than assigning it to only No. 1, The Gnome one instrument, he gives it to all of the ¯ In some cases, Ravel imitates the pi- strings, plus the “dark” woodwinds ano (e.g., in the opening gesture). At (English horn, clarinets and bassoons). other times, like when the high strings No. 7, The Marketplace (Important slide between pitches, he uses tech- News) niques that are impossible on the piano. ¯ This music has constant motion. No. 2, The Old Castle Strings and percussion, of course, can ¯ Notice that the entire movement is play more or less constantly, but the underlaid by one, long, single pitch (G- other half of the orchestra has to sharp). This is called a pedal tone, after breathe. Watch the winds and brass: the pedals on the organ. There are very Ravel brings them in and out, both sav- few pedal tones as long as this one! ing them from exhaustion and creating Promenade a magical, constantly-evolving texture. ¯ The promenade’s first, brief return is No. 8, Catacombs; With the Dead in a somewhat more stark and less regal Dead Language than its earlier version. ¯ Notice the constant change of color No. 3, Children Quarreling After Play between the horns and trombones, with ¯ Listen to how the flute doubles the help from the clarinets and bassoons. oboes quick notes at the opening; ¯ Having had their moment, the brass sometimes Ravel doubles at the same mostly rest for this movement’s eerie note, and sometimes an octave above. second section. No. 4, Cattle No. 9, The Hut on Hen’s Legs ¯ The and basses play nearly con- ¯ Meant to ferociously depict a witch’s stantly for this movement. Watch them house, listen for the slower middle pas- near the end: Ravel instructs them to put sage, where Ravel utilizes smaller their mutes on one by one rather than all groups of instruments. at once. This allows the sound to be No. 10, The Great Gate of Kiev. dampened gradually and uninterrupted. ¯ The glorious closing music requires Promenade no explanation; just note that, though ¯ Notice how the character of this Hartmann created the plans for it, the promenade bridges the somber mood “Great Gate of Kiev” was never built. of No. 4 to the giddiness of No. 5. No. 5, Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks ¯ Imitating the piano’s staccato, Ravel uses almost exclusively short sounds in

8 QCSO Program Notes 2018-19, Masterworks I