Five Preludes

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Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Five Preludes

arranged by Colin Matthews (b.1946)

Minstrels (Book I, No.12)

Feuilles mortes (Book II, No.2)

Général Lavine – excentric (Book II, No.6)

Le vent dans la plaine (Book I, No.3) –

La fille aux cheveux de lin (Book I, No.8)

Colin Matthews’s orchestrations of Debussy’s 24 Preludes – created over a period of five years following a commission from the Hallé Orchestra in 2001 – are among the most imaginative, as well as the most accomplished, scores of their kind. They are not straight transcriptions. In theory it would be quite possible to write note-for-note orchestral arrangements of the piano originals but that would not make authentic orchestral music. “It has been fascinating,” Matthews has said, “to find ways of transcribing textures which are at first sight wholly pianistic into orchestral music which, I hope, would be just as difficult to translate back to the piano.” Of the five Preludes to be performed on this occasion (three from Debussy’s Book I, published in 1910, the others from Book II, published two years later) Feuilles mortes might just be restored to the piano from Matthews’s score, while Le vent dans la plaine and La fille aux cheveux de lin certainly could not.

Minstrels is one of several examples of Matthews making explicit those sounds which Debussy could only imply. The black-face minstrels he encountered busking on an English street in Eastbourne when he was working on La Mer in 1905 would almost certainly have had a trumpet, as we hear, and various bits of percussion, not least a side drum. Although such groups were among the earliest exponents of jazz in Europe, as Debussy clearly appreciated, they also had a line in close harmony, offering congenial material for sentimental strings in this case. They are celebrated here not so much for their musicianship, however, as for their clowning, as the wittily grotesque scoring for bassoon among others acknowledges.

The title of Feuilles mortes (Dead Leaves) is thought to derive from a poem by the composer’s friend Gabriel Mourey beginning ‘Under the cold and melancholy autumn wind’. Its chilly sonorities lend themselves so readily to orchestral treatment that Matthews has been able to write an almost literal transcription and entirely idiomatic music for strings at the same time.

Général Lavine – excentric is the equivalent in Book II to Minstrels in Book I and another indication of Debussy’s amused interest in the jazz idiom. In this case it is a cake-walk as performed by the American clown Edward Lavine, ‘the main who has soldiered all his life’, at the Théâtre Marigny on the Champs Elysées in 1910. With the military allusions presented by the trumpets (which are also entrusted with two brief references to ‘The Camptown Races’) and a little additional colour here and there, the orchestral version offers a particularly vivid caricature.

Le vent dans la plaine (The wind on the plain) and La fille aux cheveux de lin (The girl with flaxen hair) represent the most radical departures from the original in the whole set of 24. Le vent dans la plaine , a breezy piece suggested by a line from Charles-Simon Favart, is discreetly extended by a development absent from the original and is almost half as long again. As for La fille aux cheveux de lin , “What to do with such familiar music?” Matthews asked himself. “I made several failed attempts at it, before deciding to slow it to half speed and score it for strings and harps. This gives it a weight which is admittedly at odds with the simplicity of the original, but – played without a break after Le vent – it seemed to make an appropriate coda to the set.”

Gerald Larner © 2008

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