Six Épigraphes antiques

Pour invoquer Pan, dieu du vent d’été

Pour un tombeau sans nom

Pour que la nuit soit propice

Pour la danseuse aux crotales

Pour l’Egyptienne

Pour remercier la pluie au matin

When Pierre Louÿs published his Chansons de Bilitis in 1895 he claimed that the poems were “translated from the Greek” - a pretence which was taken so seriously by some of his contemporaries that a party of antiquarians set off for Greece in search of authentic traces of Bilitis, alleged contemporary of Sappho. The fact is, of course, that the poems were written by Louÿs himself. He had found his inspiration not in Lesbos but in Biskra where he had fallen for a dancer called Meriem ben Atala: “amber-skinned, firm-fleshed, her figure was round but still almost childish, for she was barely sixteen,” recalled André Gide who was with Louÿs at the time.

As a close friend of the poet, Debussy knew all about this. Indeed, he had met Meriem’s sister Zohra whom Louÿs had brought from Biskra to live with him in Paris. Questions of Greek authenticity were of little importance to the composer. What attracted him to the poems was their erotic quality, obviously, but also some very clear parallels with his own artistic interests. They inspired at least three works - the three songs called Chansons de Bilitis completed in 1896, the stage music also called Chansons de Bilitis written for a dramatic presentation of the poems in 1900 and, less directly, the Six Épigraphes antiques which were developed and arranged for piano duet from the Bilitis stage music in 1913.

The character of the Bilitis stage music was determined for the most part by the pseudo-antique nature of the poems it was intended to accompany but partly also by the evocative instrumental ensemble - two flutes, two harps and celesta - it was written for. So, in spite of the black and white of the piano-duet reproduction, more than a little of the original colouring survives in the Épigraphes antiques. The opening sections of both of the first two pieces, Pour invoquer Pan, dieu du vent d’été and Pour un tombeau sans nom (“For the invocation of Pan, god of the summer wind” and “For an unnamed tomb”), clearly feature the modal kind of flute melody frequently associated in French music - since the Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune at least - with Greek myth and pagan sentiment. Besides, Debussy’s piano writing is rarely just black and white: the hints of a funeral march in an alien 5/4 time in the middle section of Pour un tombeau sans nom and of distant lamentation towards the end of the same piece are masterful examples of poetic suggestion.

Beginning as a gentle nocturne, Pour que la nuit soit propice turns out to be rather more eventful than its title (“For a propitious night”) suggests, first in its multi-layered murmuring of night-time sounds and finally, after a gradual increase in tempo, in a briefly dramatic flurry of wind. Both of the next two pieces Pour la danseuse aux crotales and Pour l’Egyptienne (“For the dancer with crotales” and “For the Egyptian Girl”) are dances, inspired initially no doubt by the susceptible poet’s interest in Meriem and her sister Zohra. If the dancer with crotales (little finger cymbals clearly audible in the upper piano part in the opening bars) is the more lively, the Egyptian girl, with her supple chromatic line and provocative rhythms, is the more seductive.

The most pianistic of the six pieces is the last, Pour remercier la pluie au matin (“For thanking the rain in the morning”), which is an exotic relation of the very French Jardins sous la pluie in Debussy’s Estampes. The rustling rainfall stops just in time for a quiet recall of the opening invocation to Pan.

Gerald Larner©