5 Preludes for piano

from Book 1 (1910)

La sérénade interrompue

from Book 2 (1913)

La puerta del vino

Les fées sont d¹exquises danseuses

Canope

Feux d¹artifice

Few Debussy Preludes do not have signs of human life and most of those that do are animated by dance rhythms of some kind. Book 1, which begins with Danseueses de Delphe and ends with Mnstrels, is particularly rich in this respect. One of the most colourful examples is La sérénade interrompue, a little comedy set in Andalusia and comparable in many respects to Ravel’s (somewhat earlier) Alborada del gracioso. Debussy’s serenader introduces himself with rasgueado strumming on his guitar to introduce himself, gives somewhat uncertain but expressive voice to his song, is briefly interrupted and starts again, now reaching a climax of flamenco passion – but only to be interrupted again, this time by the distant sound of a march from Le Matin d’un jour de fête in Debussy’s Ibéria, which angers him so much that, after one last try, he quietly goes away.

There is another Spanish scene in Book 2, La Puerta del Vino, which 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, and miss the brooding quality in the stubborn repetitions of the habanera motif in the left hand and the (pre-Lorca) threat of violence allied to the familiar dance steps. Similarly, although the title “Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses” derives from a line in J.M.Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, it should not be linked exclusively to the Arthur Rackham illustration “Fairies are exquisite dancers” that goes with it. A brilliantly mobile, freely flexible dance on feet that rarely touch the ground, it covers a range of fairy allusions from Shakespeare’s Puck to Weber’s Oberon.

It is true that there is not much life in Canope, Debussy’s ode to an ancient (Etruscan or Egyptian) funerary urn. Even so, the opening succession of triads, recalling the Promenade from Mussogsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, could be interpreted as a ritual procession, just as the chromatically inflected melody in the right hand could be taken as a lament distantly echoing from an antique flute. Feux d’artifice is certainly lively. The virtuoso climax to Book 2, it evokes the animation, the iridescent colours and irregular explosions associated with a fireworks display by means of correspondingly pyrotechnical keyboard techniques    – but with no hint of a human presence until the 14th July echo of the Marseillaise (“Formez vos bataillons… Marchons, marchons”) in the very last bars.