3 Preludes (1907-1912)

Le vent dans la plaine

La cathédrale engloutie

La Puerto del Vino

When Debussy published his 24 piano Preludes – 12 of them in a first book in 1910 and 12 more in a second book two years later ­ – he was following a tradition initiated by J.S. Bach, who twice compiled sets of preludes and fugues in all of the 24 major and minor keys. Among those who followed him before Debussy’s intervention, all of them allocating a prelude to each of the 24 key, were Chopin, Busoni, and Scriabin. Debussy, however, had no interest in covering the whole range of keys. While he chose to complete the traditional total of 24, his aim was to persuade the piano to express visual images, poetic thoughts, literary, theatrical and real-life caricatures.

Le vent dans la plaine (from Book I) is an allusion to a line quoted at the head of Verlaine’s “C’est l’extase langoureuse” which Debussy had set to music in the Ariettes oubliées in 1887 and which he resets here in a different way. The wind rustles the grasses and dances in dotted rhythms round a central section of melody in parallel fifths placed low in the left hand and recalling perhaps the under-water rolling of pebbles in Verlaine’s poem.

La Cathédrale engloutie (also from Book I) is based on legends surrounding the sunken city of Ys off the Brittany coast and its cathedral which is said to emerge from sea at the lowest of low tides. It finds its ecclesiastical atmosphere initially in the parallel fourths and fifths of 12th-century organum, its structure in the gradual materialisation of the bell tower, its climax in the massively sonorous triads of an archaic chorale, its ending in shrouded echoes of earlier material.

La Puerta del Vino (from Book II) was inspired by a picture postcard, sent to Debussy by Manuel de Falla from Granada, depicting a gateway in the wall of the Alhambra. It would be a mistake, however, to hear it as a mere study in local colour, idiomatically authentic though it is in its habanera rhythm, its guitar figuration, its gypsy-scale modality and the flamenco decorations applied to the melodic line. There is a dark, brooding quality in the stubborn repetitions of the habanera motif in the left hand and, in spite of the light which occasionally illuminates the scene, a veiled threat of violence allied to the familiar dance steps. Debussy himself referred to its “brusque contrasts between violence and impassioned sweetness.”