The Genius of Claude Debussy

Линк: https://interlude.hk/genius-claude-debussy/?
fbclid=IwAR1Z_C_kkWL3924bDrr8I91X810tbem498L9FRboc069Eurz-Jzks8DfyVc

The Genius of Claude Debussy

by Frances Wilson April 26th, 2018
Tags: Debussy

Claude Debussy

Debussy at the piano! One had to have seen it to appreciate its magic. No words
could describe the mysterious enchantment of his playing…
– Jacques-Emile Blanche, 1932

2018 marks the centenary of the death of French composer Achille-Claude

Debussy (he died in Paris on 25th March 1918). While rightly noted for his
orchestral, chamber music and songs, it is in his piano music that we find the finest
examples of his distinctive compositional language. He revolutionised piano music
in his use of timbre, unusual tonalities, parallel chords used for colour rather than a
strict harmonic progression or structural bridges, the use of whole tone and
pentatonic scales, idioms drawn from eastern music. He absorbed many influences,
from the music of the Far and Middle East, Russia, Spain and America to that of
his Baroque antecedents, the French clavecinistes Rameau and Couperin, yet he
created music which was distinctly French and modern, providing inspiration for a
diverse range of composers including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax,
Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Béla Bartók, Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, Olivier
Messiaen, Ned Rorem, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Toru Takemitsu, George
Gershwin, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, and Duke Ellington.

Olivier Messiaen: 8 Preludes – No. 6. Cloches d’angoisses et larmes d’adieu

(Roger Muraro, piano)

Duke Ellington: Single Petal of a Rose (Luigi Palombi, piano)

He is all too frequently described as an “impressionistic” composer, a term he is

said to have disliked, but his attempts to create musical effects certainly bring to
mind a visual scene, or ‘impression’, and his music’s lack of fully-realized ideas,
dissonant chords and occasionally a seemingly almost complete lack of structure
certainly gives listeners the feeling that they are not just listening to a piece of
music but to a soundscape.

The Preludes for Piano, in two books, became – and remain – his most popular
music for piano, arguably his finest works for the instrument in their variety – from
exuberance to bleakness (Feux d’Artifice, Des pas sur la neige), eccentricity and
mischief (Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq., La Danse de Puck), languor and drama
(La Fille aux cheveux de lin, La Cathedrale Engloutie) – and replete with daring
perfumed harmonies, sparkling figurations, and atmospheric textural layers. To
encourage listeners, and performers, to respond intuitively to these beautiful piano
miniatures, their titles were placed at the end of each piece so that listeners would
not call to mind stereotyped images as they listened.

Claude Debussy: Preludes Book 1 – No. 10. La cathedrale engloutie (Pierre-

Laurent Aimard, piano)
I’m not sure how old I was when I first heard Debussy’s music – the work in
question was almost certainly La Mer, which my parents had on LP, and I
remember hearing at the Proms when I was a little girl. When I became reasonably
proficient at the piano, his Preludes caught my imagination, captivated me with
their curious colourful harmonies, sensuous fragmentary melodies and dramatic
intensity in miniature form. I learnt La Cathedrale Engloutie when I was about 12
or 13. It was too advanced for me, and my small hands couldn’t really cope with
the large chords and octaves, but the work remained a favourite, along with
perhaps his best-loved Prelude, La fille aux cheveux de lin. As an adult, returning
to the piano after an absence of nearly 20 years, I veered towards the more “grown
up” works in Debussy’s oeuvre – Hommage à Rameau, Voiles, the Images Inédites
(the forerunner to his better known Images) and the erotically-charged La Plus que
Lente. And from Debussy came my interest in the piano music of Olivier
Messiaen.

I adore his piano music and I’ve been fortunate to hear some incredibly fine
performances of it in concert in recent years – most memorably by Pavel
Kolesnikov and Denis Kozhukhin – and on disc (Stephen Hough’s new recording
is a good starting point for anyone wishing to explore the variety and range of
Debussy’s piano music).

Debussy: La Plus que Lente

Play
His piano music is challenging to play, even the “easier” works. First, I think it is
important to dismiss the notion that his music is “dreamy and ethereal” (the
inaccurate and banal description given to it in a segment marking the composer’s
centenary on Radio Four’s Today programme on 24 March). It is not a Monet
painting in musical form. In fact, his music is tightly structured (for more detailed
analysis on this, see the writings of Roy Howat) and intellectually rigorous;
paradoxically, it is this rigour which gives his music its uniquely delightful
spontaneity and improvisatory qualities.
No other composer feels to me more improvised, more free-flowing. But then the
player is conscious of a contradiction as the score is studied more closely: Music
that sounds created in the moment is loaded with instructions on how to achieve
this.
– Stephen Hough, concert pianist

Physically, much of his piano music demands that the pianist thinks in horizontal
terms and forget that the piano is a machine of springs, wood and wires. Working
on the Sarabande from Pour le Piano with my then teacher, in preparation for my
first diploma, she urged me to forget that my arms had bones in them and to
imagine instead two thick rubber bands of infinite freedom and softness.

Claude Debussy: L’isle joyeuse (Mathilde Handelsman, piano)

While some works utilise sound washes akin to Monet’s brushstrokes – blurred
lines and veiled textures – others have a clarity of expression with glittering
virtuosic figurations, remarkable pianistic effects and distinct layers of musical
colour (Pagodes, l’Isle Joyeuse, Jardins sous la pluie or Pour le Piano, which closes
with a Baroque-inspired Toccata requiring extreme clarity of articulation on the
part of the performer).

… the colour that only he could get from his piano. He played mostly in half-tint
but, like Chopin, without any hardness of attack. […] His nuances ranged from a
triple pianissimo to forte without ever becoming disordered in sonorities in which
harmonic subtleties might be lost
– Marguerite Long, pianist
 Превод урадила:
Доротеа Кулић 4/1,
Фебруар 2023.