Cello Sonata (1915)

Debussy was never again to be as happy as he was in the summer and autumn of 1915, when he was staying at Pourville near Dieppe on the Normandy coast. Here in the villa Mon Coin he took refuge from worries about his health and depression over the progress of the War and experienced such a sustained surge of creativity that even he was surprised by it. He completed the two-piano score En blanc et noir that he had started in Paris and, in the course of three months, wrote the Cello Sonata, the twelve Études for piano and the Sonata for flute, viola and harp. Like En blanc et noir, the two Sonatas were written in reaction to the War but in a less direct way. They were the first in a projected series of six such works to be modelled on the French sonata of the pre-classical period, when French music was French and had not yet fallen under German influence.

The baroque background to the sonatas – only three of which weere completed before the composer’s death – is nowhere more evident than in the keyboard introduction to the Cello Sonata, which sounds like the opening of a French overture in D minor. The piano is reckoning, however, without the cello, which proves to have ideas of its own and transforms the formal opening gesture into something far more personal and poetic. Immediately conceding that the string instrument has the more interesting voice, the piano discreetly accompanies the cello as it introduces the second main theme, a plaintive melody drooping through more than two octaves. The central climax is based on a passionately expressive A-string version of the initial baroque gesture which, as the plaintive melody is recalled in a reflective closing section, is revealed to be the source of that theme too.   

Although Debussy decided against the title he was at one time thinking of attaching to the work, “Pierrot fâché avec la lune” (Pierrot vexed with the moon), it could appropriately be applied to the central Sérénade. In a fantastic nocturnal scenario the cello plays all the parts, stumbling in the dark over awkwardly placed piano notes, offering a guitar-style pizzicato prelude, testing its voice with the bow on a false harmonic, breaking into song but meeting with a variety of increasingly vexatious frustrations. It also takes part in a brief dance episode in the Vivace middle section and, as the opening tempo is restored, vaguely recalls one or two gestures from the previous movement.

The similarly Spanish-coloured Finale, which follows without a break, is rondo based on the high-spirited cello material – a sustained singing line and a tuneful pirouette –    introduced over eager piano rhythms in the opening bars. The episodes between the two reappearances of the twin rondo themes are concerned with more or less distant echoes of motifs from the first movement, one of which is briefly but poetically exposed on the A-string between the abrupt exchanges of piano and cello chords that close the Sonata.

Debussy was never again to be as happy as he was in the summer and autumn of 1915, when he was staying at Pourville near Dieppe on the Normandy coast. Here in the villa Mon Coin - with its view of the sea and its not too orderly garden - he took refuge from worries about his health and depression over the progress of the War and experienced such a sustained surge of creativity that even he was surprised by it. He completed the two-piano score En blanc et noir that he had started in Paris and, in the course of three months, wrote the Sonata for cello and piano, the twelve Études for piano and the Sonata for flute, viola and harp.

Like En blanc et noir, the two Sonatas were written in reaction to the War but in a less direct way. They were the first in a projected series of six such works to be modelled on the French sonata of the pre-classical period - in the same patriotic spirit as Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin, which also found its war-time inspiration in the period when French music was French and had not yet fallen under German influence. The title page that was specially designed for the Sonatas in pastiche eighteenth-century style says it all: Six Sonates pour divers instruments composées par Claude Debussy, Musicien Français. In fact, he had time to complete only three of them: the Violin Sonata, Debussy’s last completed work, was written just a year before his death.

The baroque background to the Sonatas is nowhere more evident in any of them than in the keyboard introduction to the Cello Sonata, which sounds like the opening of a French overture in D minor. The piano is reckoning, however, without the cello, which proves to have ideas of its own. By the ostensible means of a few virtuoso flourishes - which are actually designed to disguise the subtle thematic thinking behind them - the cello transforms the piano’s formal gesture into something far more personal and poetic. Immediately conceding that the string instrument has the more interesting voice, the piano discreetly accompanies the cello as it introduces the second main theme, a plaintive melody drooping through more than two octaves, and joins it in an obscurely motivated crescendo of obsessively repeated figuration. The central climax is based on an passionately expressive A-string version of the initial baroque gesture which, as the plaintive melody is recalled in a reflective closing section, is revealed to be the source of that theme too.

Although Debussy decided against the title he was at one time thinking of attaching to the work, “Pierrot fâché avec la lune” (Pierrot vexed with the moon), it could appropriately be applied to the central Sérénade. In a fantastic nocturnal scenario the cello plays all the parts, stumbling in the dark over awkwardly placed piano notes, offering a guitar-style pizzicato prelude, testing its voice with the bow on a false harmonic, breaking into song but meeting with a variety of increasingly vexatious frustrations. It also takes part in a brief dance episode in the Vivace middle section and, as the opening tempo is restored, vaguely recalls one or two gestures from the previous movement.

The similarly Spanish-coloured Finale, which follows without a break, is rondo based on the high-spirited cello material - a sustained singing line and a tuneful pirouette - introduced over eager piano rhythms in the opening bars. The episodes between the two reappearances of the twin rondo themes are concerned with more or less distant echoes of motifs from the first movement, one of which is briefly but poetically exposed on the A-string between the abrupt exchanges of piano and cello chords that close the Sonata.

“I like its proportions and, in the best sense of the word, its almost classical form,” the justly delighted composer told his publisher. The Cello Sonatas was first performed by Albert Salmon with Debussy at the piano in Paris on 22 April 1917.