La cathédrale engloutie

One of the classics of musical impressionism, La Cathédrale engloutie was first published as the ninth of Debussy’s first book of Préludes in 1910. It is based on legends surrounding the sunken city of Ys off the Brittany coast and its cathedral which is said to emerge from sea at the lowest of low tides. It finds its ecclesiastical atmosphere initially in the parallel fourths and fifths of 12th-century organum, its structure in the gradual materialisation of the bell tower, its climax in the massively sonorous triads of an archaic chorale, its ending in shrouded echoes of earlier material.