Images - Book 1 (1905)

Mouvement: animé

Images was a significant title for Debussy. He first applied it to the set of three piano pieces he dedicated to Yvonne Lerolle in 1894 but, presumably because he felt that he had it in him to write something more worthy of such an evocative title, he decided against publishing them in that form. In 1905, having in the meantime discovered a whole new vocabulary for translating visual impressions into piano music in Estampes, he returned to the idea in his first book of Images. Although he was pleased with them at the time, however, it was only in 1907 in the second book of Images that Debussy finally achieved what he had envisioned thirteen years earlier.

Reflets dans l’eau (Reflections in the Water) is different from the other movements in the first book of Images in that, like all three movements in the second book, it is inspired by a visual impression. It begins in a tranquil pool of D flat major, the rippling arpeggios of which set off harmonic vibrations from the three-note motif just below the surface. Twice the tranquillity is disturbed - the first time by a cadenza based on a series of minor thirds, the second time by a whole-tone scale rising up from the bass. Each time the three-note melodic reflection disappears and is replaced by a more agitated image in a variety of rhythmic shapes until the D flat major tonality is restored.

Debussy had incorporated Yvonne Lerolle’s Sarabande in his suite Pour le piano in 1901. Inspired this time by his admiration for Rameau, he drew on the associations of the baroque sarabande once again for a central slow movement. In spite of its unadorned beginning in the Dorian mode, however, it is far from being a pastiche, the poised grace of its outer sections offset by the harmonic complications, rhythmic displacements and melodic inversions of the middle section.

Mouvement, its title clearly implies, is not a visual impression either. Even so, it is related by its keyboard figuration not only to the Toccata of Pour le piano but also to Jardins sous la pluie in Estampes. By virtue of the mechanical drive of its outer sections, anticipating Prokofiev at one heavily syncopated point, and its spontaneously inspired middle section - not to mention its evaporation at the end - it surpasses both of them.

Mouvement: animé

Images was a significant title for Debussy. He first applied it to the set of three piano pieces he dedicated to Yvonne Lerolle in 1894 but, presumably because he felt that he had it in him to write something more worthy of such an evocative title, he decided against publishing them in that form (they were first published as a set under the title Images oubliées in 1977). In 1905, having in the meantime discovered a whole new vocabulary for translating visual impressions into piano music in Estampes, he returned to the idea in his first book of Images, which he did not hesitate to send to his publisher as soon as he completed it.

Interestingly, however, although he was very pleased with them at the time and although Reflets dans l’eau is certainly very different from anything in the Yvonne Lerolle’s Images, the Hommage à Rameau is not entirely unlike her Sarabande and the new Mouvement is a kind a of toccato equivalent to the Trés vite at the end of her set. It was only in 1907 in the second book of Images that Debussy finally achieved what he had envisioned thirteen years earlier.

Reflets dans l’eau (Reflections in the Water) is different from the other movements in the first book of Images in that, like all three movements in the second book, it is inspired by a visual impression. Even without the title, any of Debussy’s contemporaries familiar with his songs and Ravel’s piano music up to that time, would have recognised its watery setting in the rippling right-hand arpeggios in the opening bars. Given the title, the first reflection is surely the three-note theme held in the left hand just under the surface. A change in the wind or in the light, signalled by a cadenza rising on a chain of minor thirds, reveals a different reflection, a quietly expressive melody in dotted rhythms in the left hand. The opening image is restored to be displaced this time by a rising whole-tone scale and an increasingly vivid view of the second reflection in a variety of different shapes. A coda gently reviews both themes and secures an ending even more tranquil than the beginning.

Debussy had incorporated Yvonne Lerolle’s Sarabande in his suite Pour le piano in 1901. Inspired this time by his admiration for Rameau, he drew on the assocations of the baroque sarabande once again for a central slow movement. In spite of its unadorned beginning in the Dorian mode, however, it is far from being a pastiche, the poised grace of its outer sections being offset by the harmonic complications, rhythmic displacements and melodic inversions of the middle section.

Mouvement, its title clearly implies, is not a visual impression either. Even so, it is related by its keyboard figuration not only to the Toccata of Pour le piano but also to Jardins sous la pluie in Estampes. By virtue of the mechanical drive of its outer sections, anticipating Prokofiev at one heavily syncopated point, and its spontaneously inspired middle section – not to mention its evaporation at the end – it surpasses both of them.