Two Études from Book II (1915)

Pour les arpèges composés

Pour les sonorités opposées

Debussy’s piano Études are another major contribution to the repertoire in small sizes. Far from being the dry technical exercises their pedagogical titles seem to suggest - “For chromatic notes,” ”For repeated notes,” “For chords” - they represent the composer’s joyful rediscovery of the piano after nearly a year of creative inactivity. In a state of depression caused by illness and the outbreak of war, he had been able to do little more than work on a new Chopin edition for his publisher Jacques Durand. The time he spent with Chopin wasn’t wasted, however. When he was feeling better, staying in a little house overlooking the sea at Pourville near Dieppe in the summer of 1915, one of the first things he did was to make a start on emulating Chopin’s Études in a set of his own. This meant writing studies which, as Schumann said of Chopin’s, “offer nourishment for both hand and spirit,” even when addressing specific technical problems. “A little bit of charm never did any harm,” he wrote to Durand, “Chopin has proved it.” Strangely, although Debussy intended to dedicate his Études to Chopin’s memory, the dedication was missing when the two volumes (of six pieces each) were published by Durand a few months later.

There is no lack of charm in Pour les arpèges composés (arpeggios covering more than one octave). It is as picturesque, in fact, as any of the Images or Préludes. Its fountain of liquid and freely flowing arpeggios is set against melodic lines at a wide a variety of pitch levels and, towards the middle of the piece, whipped up into a squall at the top end of the keyboard. Incongruously perhaps, but delightfully, the middle section introduces the last in the line of Debussy’s clown impersonations, following Minstrels of Book I and Général Lavine of Book II of the Préludes. The clowning is briefly recalled near the end, alongside a subtle but unmistakable hint of a tribute to Chabrier.

That Pour les sonorités opposées is a study in touch is clear enough from such fastidiously precise directions as ”p doux,” “p marqué” and “p expressif et pénétrant” applied to the same chord in the space of three bars. But for all its prophetic tendencies (it is not so far from Messiaen’s systematic organisation of different kinds of touch in his Quatre Études de rythme) it is a profoundly, if mysteriously thoughtful piece. Made up of a mosaic of material - the persistent G sharps heard first in the opening bars, the expressive melody that follows, a slow chorale crossed by a chromatic counterpoint, a distant fanfare - it revolves round a central climax that modestly recedes as soon as it makes its emotional point.