Fêtes (from Nocturnes)

Animé et très rythmé - modéré mais toujours très rythmé

Debussy didn’t think much of Berlioz. Had he known, however, that the dedicatee of the Corsaire Overture, the London critic James William Davison, had compared Berlioz’s orchestral colouring to the late canvases of Turner, he would surely have been impressed. While he might not have liked British critics, Debussy admired much about this country, not least Turner, whom he described as “the finest creator of mystery in art” and who, with Whistler and the French impressionists active in Paris in the composer’s own day, was a major influence on his miraculous merging of the arts of painting and music.

There is no music closer to painting than Debussy’s Nocturnes. As the composer said, they have to do ‘not with the customary form of “nocturne” but with everything that the word suggests of impressions and special effects of light.’ In other words, they derive not so much from Frédéric Chopin, one of Debussy’s favourite composers, as from James McNeill Whistler, one of his favourite artists, who painted or etched several highly evocative “Nocturnes.” This transformation of the normal condition of music to something akin to impressionist painting was neither quickly nor easily achieved. Debussy was thinking on lines related to the Nocturnes as early as 1892 when he was sketching Trois Scènes au crépuscule (Three Twilight Scenes), a title he borrowed from a series of poems by Henri de Régnier. Two years later he claimed to be well advanced in the composition of three Nocturnes which would explore restricted orchestral colours “like, for example, a painter’s study in grey.” But neither of those early projects got very far and it was only in 1897 that he started on the definitive Nocturnes, which he completed two years later.

If the most impressionistic of the three Nocturnes (Nuages, Fêtes, Sirènes) is the first, Fêtes – a brilliantly illuminated study in red, gold and silver – is scarcely less painterly. Set in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, it is “a torchlight procession in the woods.” Enlarging on that description, Debussy went on to explain how “from afar, through the trees, I saw lights approaching and the crowd running towards the path where the parade would pass. Then the horsemen of the garde républicaine, resplendent, their weapons and their helmets lit up by the torches, and the bugles sounding their fanfare. Finally, everything getting dark again, receding into the distance…” The nocturnal experience falls neatly into a ternary construction with the jigging crowd making way for the brilliantly suggestive march in the middle section.

Gerald Larner ©2008

Animé et très rythmé - modéré mais toujours très rythmé

Debussy didn’t think much of Berlioz. Had he known, however, that the dedicatee of the Corsaire Overture, the London critic James William Davison, had compared Berlioz’s orchestral colouring to the late canvases of Turner, he would surely have been impressed. While he might not have liked British critics, Debussy admired much about this country, not least Turner, whom he described as “the finest creator of mystery in art” and who, with Whistler and the French impressionists active in Paris in the composer’s own day, was a major influence on his miraculous merging of the arts of painting and music.

There is no music closer to painting than Debussy’s Nocturnes. As the composer said, they have to do ‘not with the customary form of “nocturne” but with everything that the word suggests of impressions and special effects of light.’ In other words, they derive not so much from Frédéric Chopin, one of Debussy’s favourite composers, as from James McNeill Whistler, one of his favourite artists, who painted or etched several highly evocative “Nocturnes.” This transformation of the normal condition of music to something akin to impressionist painting was neither quickly nor easily achieved. Debussy was thinking on lines related to the Nocturnes as early as 1892 when he was sketching Trois Scènes au crépuscule (Three Twilight Scenes), a title he borrowed from a series of poems by Henri de Régnier. Two years later he claimed to be well advanced in the composition of three Nocturnes which would explore restricted orchestral colours “like, for example, a painter’s study in grey.” But neither of those early projects got very far and it was only in 1897 that he started on the definitive Nocturnes, which he completed two years later.

If the most impressionistic of the three Nocturnes (Nuages, Fêtes, Sirènes) is the first, Fêtes – a brilliantly illuminated study in red, gold and silver – is scarcely less painterly. Set in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, it is “a torchlight procession in the woods.” Enlarging on that description, Debussy went on to explain how “from afar, through the trees, I saw lights approaching and the crowd running towards the path where the parade would pass. Then the horsemen of the garde républicaine, resplendent, their weapons and their helmets lit up by the torches, and the bugles sounding their fanfare. Finally, everything getting dark again, receding into the distance…” The nocturnal experience falls neatly into a ternary construction with the jigging crowd making way for the brilliantly suggestive march in the middle section.

Gerald Larner ©2008

Box copy

"Have you heard of Debussy and of his nocturnes?” a friend asked Whistler shortly before the artist’s death in 1903. “After reproaching you in every way for having borrowed from the language of music to apply it to painting, now music comes in search of inspiration from your painting. What a turnaround! How things come full circle!"