Syrinx for solo flute

Syrinx is music with a dying fall: written as incidental music for Gabriel Mourey’s Psyche in 1913, it is the melodious expression of the last breath of the god Pan. The title - an allusion to the nymph who, to escape pursuit by Pan, transformed herself into a reed, but only to be fashioned by the god into the first pan-pipe - was added when the piece was first published in 1927.

Considering how well he understood the flute and how seductively he wrote for it, flautists must regret that Debussy never wrote a concerto for the instrument or at least a rhapsody as good as the one for clarinet. It is particularly unfortunate that he wasn’t commissioned to write something for flute instead of the Rhapsody for saxophone, an instrument that had so little appeal for him that he never finished the piece. But there is the late Sonata for flute, viola and harp, and there is Syrinx for flute alone. Written as incidental music for Gabriel Mourey’s Psyche in 1913, Syrinx is the melodious expression of the last breath of the god Pan. It is music with a dying fall. The title – an allusion to the nymph who, to escape pursuit by Pan, transformed herself into a reed, but only to be fashioned by the god into the first pan-pipe – -was added when the piece was first published, nine years after the composer’s death, in 1927.

Debussy admired The Rite of Spring and knew it very well – he had partnered Stravinsky in a private performance of the piano-duet version even before the ballet was produced – but whether he actually liked the work it is difficult to say. Certainly, he could be ironic about it: “The Rite of Spring is an extraordinarily wild thing,” he wrote to a friend after the dress rehearsal. “If you like, it savage music with all modern comforts.!” And he didn’t want to imitate it: “That’s not the way to write French music.” If he looked for inspiration outside the present-day world he was drawn not so much to primitivism as to classical mythology, as in the Chansons de Bilitis, the Épigraphes antiques and (via Mallarmé) the Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune.

La flûte de Pan, as Syrinx was known at the time, was written at the request of his friend Gabriel Mourey who wanted music for his play Psyché at the point where the stage directions read: The moon spreads over the countryside… In the clearing the nymphs dance… At intervals they all pause, astonished, listening to the sryinx of the invisible Pan, moved by the song that escapes from the hollow reeds. Debussy was the obvious choice of composer for this, just as the flute – which had already played a starring role in La flûte de Pan in the Chansons de Bilitis and, of course, in the Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune – was the obvious instrument. When he finished the piece he sent it to Mourey with the following note: “There isn’t much of it but it’s of pretty good quality.”

Syrinx is the melodious expression of the last breath of the god Pan. It is music with a chromatically sighing, dying fall. The title – an allusion to the nymph who, to escape pursuit by Pan, transformed herself into a reed, but only to be fashioned by the god into a pan-pipe – was added when the piece was first published, nine years after the composer’s death, in 1927.