Preludes - Book I (1907-1910)

I …Danseuses de Delphe

II …Voiles

III …Le vent dans la plaine

IV …Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir

V …Les collines d’Anacapri

VI …Des pas sur la neige

VII …Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest

VIII …La fille aux cheveux de lin

IX …La sérénade interrompue

X …La cathédrale engloutie

XI …La danse de Puck

XII …Minstrels

“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.

There is some disagreement as to exactly what was the inspiration for Danseuses de Delphe but the general consensus is that it was some example of ancient Greek sculpture in the Louvre featuring temple dancers. Are Voiles sails or veils? Actually, it is not important, since in this case the technique must have come before the expressive intention: except for a few bars of pure pentatonics three-quarters of the way through, it is written entirely in whole tones. Le vent dans la plaine is an allusion to a line quoted at the head of Verlaine’s “C’est l’extase langoureuse” which Debussy had set to music in the Ariettes oubliées in 1887 and which he resets here in a different way. The wind rustles the grasses and dances in dotted rhythms round a central section of melody in parallel fifths placed low in the left hand. The title of the next Prelude, Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir, is taken from Baudelaire’s “Harmonies du soir,” which Debussy had set to music in 1889. Less fragrantly but more helpfully perhaps he might have chosen the next line, “Valse mélancholique et langoureux vertige” or “melancholy waltz and dizzy languor.”.

Although the pentatonic scale is not a prominent characteristic of Italian song, it is in that mode that Les collines d’Anacapri begins and where its tarantella rhythms finds much of their harmony. No one has been able to trace the origin of the title of the sixth Prelude, Des pas sur la neige but it could be another look at Pierre Louÿs’s icy landscape in the Tombeau des naïades, the third of the Chansons de Bilitis, which has much to do with dragging footsteps in the snow. Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest, a rare instance of Lisztian virtuosity, is a stormy seascape observed by the West Wind. In contrast La Fille aux cheveux de lin, which takes its title from a line in Leconte de Lisle’s “Chanson écossaise” set to music by Debussy in 1882, is a pentatonic characterization of a personality celtic by race and placid by nature.

Sérénade interrompue, one of the wittiest pieces in the two books of Preludes, is unmistakably Spanish in the guitar figuration preceding the precariously pitched serenade and, after another false start, the flamenco cadenza. Again there is a direct contrast in the motionless Cathédrale engloutie. Based on legends surrounding the sunken cathedral of Ys off the Brittany coast, it finds its ecclesiastical atmosphere initially in the parallel fourths and fifths of 12th-century organum, its structure in the gradual emergence of the bell tower, and its climax in the massively sonorous triads of an archaic chorale.

If La danse de Puck is inspired by the Puck of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” - which seems not all unlikely in the quietly fleeting variety and unpredictability of its rhythms - it is surely not too fanciful to detect the regal presence of Oberon in the four-note fanfares which recur from time to time. The inspiration of Minstrels is more down to earth - specifically to the streets of Eastbourne where, on holiday in 1905, Debussy encountered a troupe of blacked-up American minstrels.

I…Danseuses de Delphe

II…Voiles

III…Le vent dans la plaine

IV…Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir

V…Les collines d’Anacapri

VI…Des pas sur la neige

VII…Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest

VIII…La fille aux cheveux de lin

IX…La sérénade interrompue

X…La cathédrale engloutie

XI…La danse de Puck

XII…Minstrels

“Naming a subject,” said Mallarmé, “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 two books of Preludes – the masterful culmination of his development of the art of piano impressionism    – Debussy headed each piece only with a Roman numeral and withheld the title until the end. However, since the titles are now at least as familiar as the music itself, it is probably not too grave an offence against that spirit to define, wherever possible, the source of the composer’s inspiration.   

There is some disagreement as to exactly what was the visual stimulus for Danseuses de Delphe – the earliest of the Preludes, dated 7 December 1909 – but the general consensus is that it was some example of ancient Greek sculpture in the Louvre featuring temple dancers. Debussy sees them dancing an antique minuet in sensuously curving chromatic lines and hears them accompanied by harps and, in the brightly dissonant seconds and ninths in the right hand, crotales perhaps. Are Voiles sails or veils? Actually, it is not important, since in this case the technique must have come before the expressive intention: except for a few bars of pure pentatonics three-quarters of the way through, it is written entirely in whole tones. In the absence of a diatonic tonal centre, in spite of its bumping B flats, the piece floats like sails … or veils.

Le vent dans la plaine is an allusion to a line quoted at the head of Verlaine’s “C’est l’extase langoureuse” which Debussy had set to music in the Ariettes oubliées in 1887 and which he resets here in a different way. The wind rustles the grasses and dances in dotted rhythms round a central section of melody in parallel fifths placed low in the left hand and recalling perhaps the under-water rolling of pebbles in Verlaine’s poem. The title of the next Prelude, Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir, is taken from Baudelaire’s “Harmonies du soir,” which Debussy had set to music in 1889. Less fragrantly but more helpfully perhaps he might have chosen the next line, “Valse mélancholique et langoureux vertige” (Melancholy waltz and dizzy languor). The extraordinary technical aspect of this most evocative of the Preludes is that it is based largely on an a series of five notes heard in the second bar.

Although the pentatonic scale is not a prominent characteristic of Italian song, it is in that mode that Les collines d’Anacapri begins and where it finds much of its harmony. Another dance in dotted rhythm, a tarantella perhaps, circles round a Neapolitan tune set low in the left hand. Since no one has been able to trace the origin of the title of the sixth Prelude, Des pas sur la neige, it has stimulated much metaphysical and psychoanalytical speculation. But, surely, since it was written on 27 December 1909, the day after a successful performance of the Chansons de Bilitis, it is another look at Pierre Louÿs’s icy landscape in the Tombeau des naïades, which has much to do with dragging footsteps in the snow. Debussy’s 1898 setting of the poem features at one point a rhythmic figure not unlike that which limps through the Prelude.

Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest, a rare Lisztian inspiration of a virtuosity to compare with that of L’Isle hereuse or Feux d’artifice, is a stormy seascape observed by the West Wind, the “dreadfully wild fellow” who recalls similar adventures in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Garden of Paradise.” La Fille aux cheveux de lin, which takes its title from a line in Leconte de Lisle’s poem “Chanson écossaise” set to music by Debussy in 1882, is a direct contrast, a pentatonic characterization of a personality celtic by race and placid by nature.

Sérénade interrompue, one of the wittiest pieces in the two books of Preludes, is unmistakably Spanish in the guitar figuration preceding the precariously pitched serenade and, after another false start, the flamenco cadenza. The major interruption, provoking an angry response from the serenader, comes in the form of a familiar rhythmic pattern from Le Matin d’un jour de fête in Ibéria. Again there is a direct contrast in the motionless Cathédrale engloutie. Based on legends surrounding the sunken cathedral of Ys off the Brittany coast, it finds its ecclesiastical atmosphere initially in the parallel fourths and fifths of 12th-century organum, its structure in the gradual emergence of the bell tower and associated sounds, its climax in the massively sonorous triads of an archaic chorale, its ending in shrouded echoes of earlier material.

If La danse de Puck is inspired by the Puck of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” – which seems not all unlikely in the quietly fleeting variety and unpredictability of its rhythms – it is surely not too fanciful to detect the regal presence of Oberon in the four-note fanfares which recur from time to time. The inspiration of Minstrels is more down to earth – specifically to the streets of Eastbourne where, on holiday in 1905, Debussy encountered a troupe of blacked-up American minstrels. But the development of the piece, incorporating the not only the minstrels’ banjo and drum but several other allusions to the jazz-inflected music-hall idiom, is just as fantastic.

Gerald Larner©