Trois mélodies (1891)

La mer est plus belle

Le son du cor

L’échelonnement des haies

Debussy set more of Verlaine than of any other poet – twenty poems in all, beginning with five texts from the Fêtes galantes in 1882 and ending with three more from the same collection in 1904. Written towards the middle of that period, at about the same time as he was first thinking about the musical potential of Mallarmé’s L’Après-midi d’un faune, the Trois mélodies are among the best and yet the least often performed of his Verlaine songs. Such impetuosity as that displayed in the surging piano part and rapturous vocal line of the first half of La mer est plus belle is rare in Debussy’s music. The final reconciliation of the comparatively calm and radiant material of the middle section with that of the opening after its return in the last stanza is a masterly touch.

The second of these three songs on texts from Verlaine’s Sagesse is a study in colour as much as in word-setting. The sound of the horn is identified in the first bar of the piano part by open fifths in a syncopated 9/8, a rhythmic figure which returns with more expressive harmonies as “the soul of the wolf weeps” and persists until it is muffled by the falling snow. The voice in the meantime expands its range from its initial monotone as, in its own 3/4 time, it approaches the languidly lyrical ending. L’Echelonnement des haies offers contrastingly bright colouring. The pianist’s left hand emphasises the lowest notes of the rippling right-hand arpeggios to pick out a joyful tune Debussy had recently used in his Tarentelle styrienne. The voice seems too elated to notice that tune, which, however, is taken up by the “flute-like bells” in the closing bars.