Four Preludes

IXX …La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune

XX …Ondine

XXII …Canope

XXIV …Feux d’artifice

“Naming a subject,” said Mallarmé - a poet who had as much influence in informing Debussy’s aesthetic as any musician - “means suppressing three-quarters of the enjoyment of a poem, which is made up of guessing bit by bit; suggesting it, that’s the dream.” It was in the same spirit that in his twenty-four Preludes - published in two books of twelve each in 1910 and 1913 respectively - Debussy headed each piece only with a Roman numeral and withheld the title until the end.

The central Prelude of Book II, La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune, was the last to be written. Inspired by a misreading of a report in a newspaper - which, in detailing the arrangements for the coronation of George V as Emperor of India, actually referred to a “terrace for audiences in the moonlight” and not “of the moonlight” - it seems to be a meditation on the poetic idea of on an audience gathered to contemplate the moon. Certainly, it is based on a phrase from the nursery song Au clair de la lune which is introduced in the opening bar and a variant of which becomes the theme of the translucent waltz which occupies the middle section.

Interestingly, the Au clair de la lune motif which is the basis of La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune occurs in also in the middle section of Ondine - presumably to illuminate the nocturnal adventures of the seductive water sprite who emerges from her natural element at the beginning and returns to it at the end.

Canope, is Debussy’s ode to an ancient (Etruscan or Egyptian) funerary urn. He apparently owned two of these objects himself - complete, no doubt, with their much-prized head-shaped covers. Whether or not the heads reminded him of Mussorgsky, that composer does come to mind in the opening processional, before the evocation of prophetically blue-tinged lamentations on a flute and the entry of exotic percussion sounds in the middle section.

Feux d’artifice is the only overtly virtuoso Prelude in the whole set: the title is no doubt intended to imply “fireworks” of that kind as well as those which are customarily displayed in France on 14 July - to the accompaniment, Debussy indicates near the end, of the Marseillaise. While it reverts to Lisztian devices here and there, it is also a daringly adventurous piece, directly prophetic of Bartok’s studies in “night music” and of much in the piano writing of Olivier Messiaen.

arranged by Colin Matthews (born 1946)

Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest

Feuilles mortes

La Danse de Puck

Feux d’artifice

Colin Matthews’s orchestrations of Debussy’s 24 Preludes are among not ony the most accomplished scores of their kind but also the most imaginative. 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 four Preludes to be performed on this occasion - all except La Danse de Puk written at an early stage in a long-term project commissioned by Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra in 2001 - Feuilles mortes might just be restored to the piano from Matthews’s score and so, give or take a few bars, might La Danse de Puck. Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest and Feux d’artifice certainly could not.

Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest (What the West Wind Saw) - from Debussy’s first book of piano Preludes, published in 1910 - was inspired by an account of the adventures of the West Wind, the “wild boy” who “smacks of the sea,” in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Garden of Paradise. It is a virtuoso piano piece featuring such essentially keyboard devices as whirling arpeggios, tremolandos, trills, toccata figuration, rumbling dissonances… most of which would make no sense transferred literally to the orchestra. So, while the harmonies of the first five bars of the orchestral version (before the entry of the chorale theme on trombones and tuba) are implied by Debussy’s introductory arpeggios, the material is actually Matthews’s own. Another creative intervention is a series of horn calls in the central climax of the piece.

Feuilles mortes (Dead Leaves) - from the second book of Preludes, published in 1913 - evidently presented fewer problems, since there is nothing in this beautifully scored little piece that is not in the original. The title is thought to derive from a poem by the composer’s friend Gabriel Mourey, beginning “Under the melancholy and chilly autumn wind.” Certainly, like the poet’s, Debussy’s dead leaves symbolise a greater loss than the decay of autumn.

Anyone attempting to reconstruct the piano original from the orchestral version of La Danse de Puck would end up with a piece not only two bars longer than Debussy’s but also richer in texture. Whereas Debussy begins by presenting Puck’s little dance tune harmonically unadorned, Matthews accompanies his pirouetting flutes with syncopated figures on clarinets and violins, anticipating material that actually appears in the piano score a few bars later and in a different context. Even so, Debussy’s vision of Shakespeare’s sprite - inspired perhaps not directly by A Midsummer Night’s Dream but by an Arthur Rackham illustration - is faithfully reflected in every detail. A tiny tone poem, it introduces what must be Oberon with a magical off-key horn call just after Puck’s first entry, sustains a more melodious horn theme under an aerial ostinato on harps and celesta in the middle section, and is discreetly extended by a receding echo on distant brass before taking flight on the celesta.

Matthews’s version of Feux d’artifice (Fireworks), a piano piece as spectacular as any 14th July celebration, confirms that in situations like this fidelity is not always best served by literal translation. Apart from adding his own material - in the opening bars, for example, only the celesta ostinato and detached xylophone octaves derive directly from the piano score - he not only executes the occasional excision but also makes a tiny implant. The brief piano cadenza is necessarily rewritten. The overall effect, however, from the flickering beginning to the explosive climax and the distant echo of the Marseillaise, is as Debussy conceived it.

Gerald Larner ©2006