Nuit d’étoiles (1880)

Romance: Voici que le printemps (1884)

Beau soir (1880)

Mandoline (1882)

Nuit d’étoiles was the first of Debussy’s works to appear in print. Written in 1880, it was published two years later with a dedication to

Mme Moreau-Sainti, a singing teacher who employed him as piano accompanist in her classes. Evidently preferring not to take up the precise musical assocations of La dernière Pensée de Weber, as Banville’s poem is actually entitled, Debussy changed its name and set it as a kind of serenade. The melodious refrain echoing Banville’s “triste lyre qui soupire” is accompanied by arpeggiated piano chords in a choice variety of rhythmic figurations.

It was at Mme Moreau-Sainti’s singing classes the Debussy met an amateur but not unaccomplished, married but not unsusceptible soprano called Marie-Blanche Vasnier. Between 1881 and 1884 he wrote more than twenty songs for Mme Vasnier and, on leaving for Italy as the winner of the Prix de Rome, he presented them to her with a loving dedication in a leather-bound volume. Both the Bourget settings - the charmingly tuneful Voici que le printemps and the poetic Beau soir with its poetic message rising through the piano part - are included in the Vasnier collection. So is Mandoline, the first of Debussy’s twenty Verlaine settings and, in its blend of modal and diatonic harmonies matching the poet’s ironic view of the rococo scene before him, the most prophetic of his early songs.

Romance: Voici que le printemps (1884)

Beau soir (1880)

Mandoline (1882)

Nuit d’étoiles was the first of Debussy’s works to appear in print. Written in 1880, it was published two years later with a dedication to Mme Moreau-Sainti, a singing teacher who employed him as piano accompanist in her classes. It might have been a menial job for an ambitious Conservatoire student but, as we shall see, he did have reason to be grateful to the Moreau-Sainti singing classes.

    The title of the song Nuit d’étoiles is not the same as that of the poem on which it is based: in Théodore de Banville’s 1846 collection Les Stalactites, it is headed La dernière Pensée de Weber (Weber’s Last Thought), which indicates some kind of musical inspiration behind it. Debussy’s response was to cut it and set it as a serenade with a refrain which, echoing Banville’s “triste lyre qui soupire,” is accompanied by arpeggiated piano chords in a variety of rhythmic figurations. The anticipation in the piano introduction of a theme later to be associated with Mélisande is all the more interesting in view of the similarly anctipatory reference to    “notre fontaine” near the end of the song.

    It was at Mme Moreau-Sainti’s singing classes the Debussy met a amateur but not unaccomplished soprano, the married but not unsusceptible Marie-Blanche Vasnier. Between 1881 and 1884 he wrote more than twenty songs for Mme Vasnier and, on leaving for the Villa Medici as the winner of the Prix de Rome, he presented them to her with a loving dedication in a specially bound leather volume. Both the Bourget settings included here - the charmingly tuneful Voici que le printemps and the poetic Beau soir with the evening’s message rising melodiously through the piano part to mingle with the vocal line - are featured in the Vasnier collection. So is Mandoline, the first of Debussy’s twenty Verlaine settings and, with its mixture of modal and diatonic harmonies matching the poet’s ironic view of the Watteau-esque scene before him, the most characteristic of his early songs.

Romance: Voici que le printemps (1884)

Zéphir (Triolet à Philis) (1881)

Fleur des blés (1881)

Beau soir (1883?)

Nuit d’étoiles was the first of Debussy’s works to appear in print. Written in 1880, it was published two years later with a dedication to

Mme Moreau-Sainti, a singing teacher who employed the young composer as piano accompanist in her classes. Evidently preferring not to take up the precise musical assocations of La dernière Pensée de Weber, as Banville’s poem is actually entitled, Debussy changed its name and set it as a kind of serenade. The melodious refrain echoing Banville’s “triste lyre qui soupire” is accompanied by arpeggiated piano chords in a choice variety of rhythmic figurations.

It was at Mme Moreau-Sainti’s singing classes the Debussy met an amateur but not unaccomplished, married but not unsusceptible, soprano called Marie-Blanche Vasnier. Between 1881 and 1884 he wrote more than twenty songs for Mme Vasnier and, on leaving for Italy as the winner of the Prix de Rome, he presented her with 13 of them, together with a loving dedication, in a leather-bound volume. The last six are all Bourget settings, including Voici que le printemps, which is all too easily written off as merely charming. In fact, Debussy makes a careful harmonic distinction between the messages of unrequited and requited love carried by the blackbird and the nightingale respectively, returning to the carefree manner of the opening with the assurance that his love is worthy of the nightingale. If Zéphyr (also known as Triolet à Philis) was addressed to Mme Vasnier it was from a distance – as, indeed, its harmonically enraptured wishful thinking suggests and as its dateline “Rome November 1881” confirms (he was in Italy with Mme von Meck, Tchaikovsky’s patron, as tutor to her children). Fleur des blés was written earlier in the year for another of Mme Moreau-Sainti’s singing pupils, a Mme Deguingand, who no doubt appreciated the pretty compliment and surely also the piano melody swaying in even crotchets in counterpoint to the vocal line.

Of uncertain date, Beau soir is sometimes attributed to 1880, which seems unlikely since Bourget’s poem wasn’t published until 1883. Although, as a friend of the poet, Debussy might have seen the poem before then, the song seems – in comparison with the Banville setting Nuit d’étoiles which we know to have been written in 1880 – too sophisticated for such an early date: it is so subtly unsettling in its harmonies and, as the voice of nature makes its melodious entry in the pianist’s left hand in the third line, so discreetly resourceful in its textures. (The New Grove date of 1891, which which would make it later than the Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire, makes no stylistic sense).