Rondes de printemps from Images

In spite of the rival claims of earlier works like Nocturnes and La Mer and the later Jeux, not to mention the Images and Préludes for piano, the Images for orchestra is surely the greatest achievement of Debussy’s impressionism (a term he hated, incidentally, but one for which there is no alternative). It took him the seven years between 1905 and 1912 to complete Images, but what he finally produced, in a series of poetic tributes to the three countries that meant most to him – Spain in Ibéria, England in Gigues, France in Rondes de Printemps – was a work unsurpassed in its breadth and variety by any composer of his time.

Although the motto at the top of the score of Rondes de printemps – “Welcome to May and its woodland banner” – derives from an Italian May-day song, the springtime rounds are clearly set in France. There is an early hint of that when flutes and oboe make gentle allusions to Debussy’s favourite nursery lullaby “Do, do, l’enfant, do” (Sleep, sleep, baby, sleep) before the day definitively dawns. The confirmation is in the next section where, against a background of triplet rhythms set up by woodwind, the oboe speculates on another favourite folk song “Nous n’irons plus au bois” (We’ll to the woods no more), which proves in the long term to be an inexhaustible source of thematic interest. There is another main theme, cheerfully introduced by violins and thoughtfully echoed by solo flute before it takes flight in a spontaneously extended development where the dancers’ feet scarcely touch the ground. But from the moment “Nous n’irons plus au bois” reappears, again on a solo oboe, it pervades the texture at every level, in all kinds of rhythmic transformations and in a variety of contrapuntal combinations both with itself and the other main themes. The ending, though conclusive enough, is as “immaterial” as Debussy considered the rest of the piece to be.