Chansons de Bilitis (1897)

La Flûte de Pan

La Chevelure

Le Tombeau des Naïdes

When Pierre Louÿs published his Chansons de Bilitis in 1895 he claimed that the poems were “translated from the Greek” - a pretence which was taken seriously by many of his contemporaries but not by Debussy, who was well aware that the poems attributed to Bilitis, alleged contemporary of Sapho, were by Louÿs himself. What attracted him to the poems was not so much their classical associations as their sensualism combined with some very clear parallels with his own artistic interests. Louÿs’s La Flûte de Pan, for example, has much in common, in subject matter if not in quality, with Mallarmé’s L’Après-midi d’un Faune. As in his Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un Faune, Debussy sets the scene with a flourish of panpipes, although in this case they are tuned in the Lydian mode. The obvious parallel to La Chevelure is the voluptuous episode in the third act of Pelléas et Mélisande, where Mélisande lets down her hair to Pelléas from her window in the tower. Le Tombeau des Naïades is contrastingly bleak. If it has a parallel elsewhere in Debussy’s work it is with the then unwritten Des pas sur la neige in the first book of Préludes, which also proceeds on a dragging rhythmic ostinato in icy minor harmonies.

La Flûte de Pan

La Chevelure

Le Tombeau des Naïdes

When Pierre Louÿs published his Chansons de Bilitis in 1895 he claimed that the poems were “translated from the Greek” - a pretence which was taken so seriously by his contemporaries that a party of antiquarians set off for Greece in search of authentic traces of Bilitis, alleged contemporary of Sapho, and her manuscripts. The fact is, of course, that the poems were written by Louÿs himself. He had found his inspiration not in Lesbos but in Biskra where he had fallen for a dancer called Meriem ben Atala: “amber-skinned, firm-fleshed, her figure was round but still almost childish, for she was barely sixteen,” recalled André Gide who was with Louÿs at the time.

    As an intimate friend of the poet, Debussy knew all about this. Indeed, he had met Meriem’s sister Zohra whom Louÿs had brought from Biskra to live with him in Paris. Questions of Greek authenticity were of little importance to the composer. What attracted him to the poems was their erotic quality, certainly, but also some very clear parallels with his own artistic interests. Louÿs’s La Flûte de Pan, for example, has much in common - in subject matter if not in quality - with the Mallarmé poem which had inspired Debussy’s Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un Faune in 1894. His treatment of La Flûte de Pan is different above all in that its affectation of antiquity requires an equivalent gesture in the music. As in the Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un Faune , the panpipes makes their entry in the first bar but here they are tuned in the Lydian mode, characteristics of which persist and mingle intimately with whole-tone elements until the sound of the frogs breaks the spell.

    The obvious parallel to La Chevelure is an episode in the third act of Pelléas et Mélisande which Debussy was writing at much the same time - the scene where Mélisande lets down her hair to Pelléas from her window in the tower. But this is an account of a dream recollected in tranquillity and precious to Bilitis not so much for her lover’s passion - powerfully expressed though it is - as for the “frisson” inspired in her by his tenderness and represented in the piano part by the quietly dissonant harmonies which both evoke the memory of the dream and dissolve it.

Le Tombeau des Naïades, written nine months later than the other two in March 1898, is contrastingly bleak. If it has a parallel with anything else in Debussy’s work it is with the then unwritten Des pas sur la neige in the first book of Préludes: it could well be that Louÿ’s footsteps in the snow coincided in Debussy’s mind with an image that was already there and would find its definitive realization in the piano piece eleven years later. The song begins like the Prélude with an ostinato rhythm on icy minor harmonies but with the entry of Pan the temperature rises and, although the ostinato reappears near the end, it is finally deflected into the major.