En blanc et noir (1915)

Avec emportement

Lent. Sombre

Scherzando

Debussy’s title refers, of course, to the black and white keys of the two pianos. But in that sense it would have been no less appropriate to his next and last major piano work, the Douze Etudes – which was written in the same rented house overlooking the Channel at Pourville in 1915. So it must have had more than the obvious associations for him. Indeed, as we know from the composer’s letters to his publisher Jacques Durand, the piano duos were at one time to be called Caprices en blanc et noir, in tribute to the black and white Caprichos etchings of Francesco Goya. This fact, taken with the war-time circumstances in which the three pieces were written and the patriotic quotations heading two of them, has led to an unduly dark interpretation of Debussy’s inspiration here. He did, after all, drop the Caprices part of the title as unsuitable. Later – explaining that he had scored them for two pianos because all the decent orchestral musicians were serving in the war – he compared them to the “greys” of Velázquez, which is more to the point.

It is true that the first of the En blanc et noir pieces is headed by a quotation from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette: “Qui reste à sa place/Et ne danse pas/De quelque disgrâce/Fait l’aveu tout bas” (Whoever stays in his place and does not dance, of some disgrace he makes a whispered confession) – which is usually taken as a rebuke to those who were not fighting for their country. True too, it is to be played “avec emportement” (angrily). But how does one sustain anger in this mercurial piece in C major which, vehement though it is in places, so seductively flirts with waltz rhythms? This, surely, is Debussy – terminally ill and quite unfit for military service but bursting with creative energy – joining the dance. It begins impetuously but melodiously and within seven bars the dynamic level falls to piano. After a few more bars the tempo is relaxed for a capricious scherzando episode. The opening theme makes the first of its several rondo-like reappearances to intoduce a melody swinging headily in 2/4 against the prevailing 3/4. It is this idea which eventually, releasing its potential energy on the last page, secures the unmistakably jubilant ending.

There can, on the other hand, be no doubt about the patriotism and often dark sentiment of the second piece. Preceded by a quotation from Villon’s Ballade contre les ennemis de la France, dedicated to the memory of Lieutenant Jacques Charlot (Jacques Durand’s nephew killed in action in March 1915) and headed “lent” and “sombre,” it clearly declares its intentions and does not contradict them. After an ominous introduction echoing with the rumbles and bugle calls of war, there is a peaceful episode of French song and ethereal piano colouring Messiaen might have thought of. It doesn’t last of course and Gallic innocence is displaced by Tuetonic aggression symbolised by the Lutheran chorale “Eine feste Burg.” But, as a radiant episode marked Joyeux indicates and as a recall of the French song episode and what Debussy describes as a “modest carillon sounding a pre-Marseillaise” confirm, the enemy is firmly repulsed.

The last piece is nowhere near as clear in its expressive intentions. It is preceded by a quotation (in 15th-century French) from Charles d’Orléans, “Yver, vous n’este qu’un vilain” (Winter, you are but a rogue) – which is the first line of a rondel Debussy had set 17 years earlier as an unaccompanied chorus. The dedication (to Stravinsky) offers no interpretative clue in this case, although the Scherzando heading suggests that it will not be the darkest of the three movements. In fact, it is an elusive inspiration in the lightest of grays. An exquisitively sensitive study in scoring in the two-piano medium, it seems at various points in its ternary structure nearer to the Douze Etudes of the near future - Pour les cinq doigts, for example, or Pour les degrés chromatiques – than its contemporaries in En blanc et noir.