eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
This book is a firsthand report of a great composer's intentions in regard to the performance of his music. These intentions have been digested and interpreted for us by the composer's friend Robert Schmitz (1889–1949), who was himself a distinguished pianist, an articulate musician, and a well-known teacher. The product is an authoritative commentary on the entire body of Debussy's work for piano solo.
Written for both performers and listeners, the book's purpose is to increase enjoyment of and insight into these works. The book's shorter opening section comprises notes on many general aspects of the composer's life and work; a biographical sketch; a discussion of Debussy's place in relation to the concepts of impressionism and romanticism; his use of classical forms, tonality and modality, melody, counterpoint, etc. Section two, the heart of the book, examines in detail the whole of Debussy's music for solo piano, two hands. Seventy-one pieces in all are included: The Arabesques, the Suite Bergmasque, the Estampes, Images, Children's Corner, Préludes and Études. Each in its chronological place, the pieces are first described as a whole as to mood, source of programmatic inspiration, structure, tonality, and other characteristics. Then follows specific suggestions dealing with technical and expressive problems of particular measures and phrases.
The book is not meant as a substitute for Debussy's piano works; on the contrary, it will cause both listeners and performers to turn to this superb corpus of music with new interest and insight. "Complete, thorough, authoritative and important." — San Francisco Chronicle. "It is a thoughtful and mature reference book and though I am at variance with certain of its premises and conclusions, there is much to provoke the intelligent music lover and the inquiring musician." — Abram Chasins, The New York Times. "There is no doubt that he had closely identified himself with the great French composer, and his love and belief in the music shine through every page of this book." — H. C. Schonbert, The Saturday Review.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780486172750 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dover Publications |
| Publication date: | 04/10/2014 |
| Series: | Dover Books On Music: Composers |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
Read an Excerpt
The Piano Works of Claude Debussy
By E. Robert Schmitz
DOVER PUBLICATION, INC.
Copyright © 1950 Duell, Sloan & Pearce, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-17275-0
CHAPTER 1
General Commentary
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Achille-Claude Debussy was born on August 22, 1862, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. His ancestry being solely made up of shopkeepers, peasants, and employees of the Paris suburbs and the Côte-d'Or, he received but a slight and general early education with a few piano lessons by Cerutti. Madame Mauté, Verlaine's mother-in-law and a pupil of Chopin, took him in hand and in 1873 he was admitted to Lavignac's solfège class at the Conservatory, there to win the medal for solfège and to follow up in Marmontel's piano class. In the year 1874, he received his second "accessit" (honorable mention), then the second prize in piano (1877), and first prize for accompaniment in 1880. Nothing was awarded him in Durand's harmony class because of his persistent unwillingness to accept the established rules!
Thanks to Marmontel, and having become the pianist for Madame Nadiejda von Meck, Tchaïkovsky's famous Egeria, he is able to visit Switzerland, Italy, and Russia. Following his studies in composition with Ernest Guiraud, he obtains a second grand prize at Rome in 1883 and the first grand prize for his cantata "L'Enfant prodigue" in 1884.
From the Villa Medici, where he remains for two dull years (1885 to 1887) he sends his "Damoiselle élue," which is accepted with reserve, and, upon his return to Paris, composes the "Suite Bergamasque" for piano in 1888. Two pilgrimages to Bayreuth in 1889 and 1890 take him from delirious enthusiasm to the most hopeless disappointment. It is then that he chances upon the authentic score of Moussorgsky's "Boris Godounov" and befriends, as his natural allies, a small group of writers and artists who are in some way or another connected with symbolism.
A memorable date in the musician's evolution is the year 1892 when he finishes his first symphonic work which is no less than his "Prélude à l'aprés-midi d'un faune" and when, having discovered Maeterlinck's theater, he decides to put "Pelléas and Mélisande" to music. This composition will take him ten years to accomplish.
Meanwhile, in 1893, he offers the "Quatuor à cordes," and his "Nocturnes" for orchestra are favorably received at the Concerts Lamoureux on December 9, 1900. "Suite pour le piano" follows in 1901.
As a result of the controversial feud over his "Pelléas and Mélisande," Debussy who had kept away from the conflicts which he had occasioned, retires into a haughty solitude and, from then on, his life and works become as one. The year 1903 is that of the "Estampes" for the piano.
After six years of marriage, he separates from Mademoiselle Texier in 1905 to marry Madame Emma Moyse, publishes the second book of "Fêtes galantes"; a real symphony, "La Mer", wrongly named "symphonic sketches"; and two selections of "Images" for the piano, closely followed by "Images" for orchestra.
In 1910, the year of the first book of the "Préludes," he conducts his works in Vienna and Budapest. Ida Rubinstein then requests a rapid writing of an important score for a "mystère" by d'Annunzio, "Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien," which had its premiere on May 22, 1911. Immediately after this, the Ballet Russe asks for the music of "Jeux" of which the theme and choreography are by Nijinsky. By 1913 the second book of "Préludes" is completed.
A triumphal tour of Russia in 1914 precedes the advent of the war, by which Debussy is so affected as to be unable to write, but, despite the appearance of the first symptoms of an incurable illness, he reacts and composes the twelve monumental "Études" for the piano and plans to write "six sonatas for various instruments, by Claude Debussy, French musician." He composes three of these before entering into a long and painful agony which ends on March 26, 1918.
CHARACTERISTICS OF DEBUSSY'S PERSONALITY
To those who enjoy an infinite number of choicely and beautifully expressed details, I suggest reading the works of Maurice Boucher, Charles Koechlin, Leon Oleggini, and Oscar Thompson on the subject of Debussy.
This is only a résumé of personal recollections, and the quotations of a few paragraphs that we found particularly adequate to outline briefly the most salient characteristics of Debussy. Of course, more details will be brought out in the chapters that follow.
Independence is the dominant factor in his character. "The joy of being free" induces him, from his Conservatory days, to liberate himself as much as possible from all laws and restraint, if so compelled by his musical instinct.
"At first, one must disobey," said Maeterlinck ("Ariane et Barbe-Bleue"). "It is the primary duty when order is menacing and cannot be explained." This phrase sums up Debussy's view that logic is first and pre-established order last.
His tastes were those of a refined artist, sophisticated and exacting. They were multiple, too. He hated vulgarity in any form, and his epicurean or sybaritic impulses often deprived him of the sheer material necessities, yet they were essential to his heart and soul. An esthete with a taste for the rare, the exotic, and the perfect, for order in fantasy, he was also inquisitive, yet discreet.
Habitually silent, and what might have seemed distracted, he needed peace to better hear his soul's song; solitary, taciturn, and tormented, a sudden and compelling need to see or hear a friend would incite him to leave his work in order to share a joy or the emotion of a propitious creation; then his verve, colorful but always in good taste, as was his music, would relieve him of the almost constant worries that were generally his habitual climate.
For truly he was often anxious and possessed by a curious sense of guilt, probably due to the lack of balance between the material necessities of his daily life and his refusal or inability to create speedily, or publish works he did not find satisfying; he would write to J. Durand, his publisher, as in 1907:
"It is nice of you to think of the nervousness of your poor friend who now imagines the worst catastrophes with regard to a mere forgotten flat; think of what can come of it when it concerns things which affect one directly. Excuse me if my nerves are in 'triplets' today. Excuse this outburst of spleen. Unfortunately, they are so frequent in my life...."
Or in another letter of the same year: "Please forgive me for the delay; I work like a factory and I am progressing in spite of terrible and tiresome jumps backwards."
Debussy, as we see, worked slowly and was rarely completely contented with his creation. No one knows as yet how much music he wrote which he destroyed. He often announced the completion of a work, then, after playing it over, he would suppress it and say: "I have started all over."
It took him from 1893 to 1902 to conceive and finish "Pelléas and Mélisande"; and many of the acknowledged stimuli of his piano works were perceived years before the moment when the work was actually finished and ready for the publishers. In contrast to these rather serious aspects of his character was his great "à-propos" in humor.
When music expresses a feeling of joy, it is important to come out of the mist and let the sun burst forth, to be incisive without being brutal, to dance, play, laugh. As a person Debussy could be witty and he adored paradoxes. "His humor was not exactly irony or fantasy, nor sensitiveness, nor bitterness; it was all fashioned in a peculiar tone which added new elements and affected the subjects as a sharp or a flat affects the tone." (Maurice Castelain in the Revue Anglo-Américaine, 1927.)
His mocking sensitivity, his ironic languor, the unusual twist of his humor, were elegies that pirouetted into epigrams, all blended into a subtle alchemy.
"What is humor? It is a password, a sign of complicity, a complicity which involves all the players of the game, invites the witness to partake of the jeering. The victim is mocked and the mocker himself becomes linked to the trial, both as judge and defendant. Humor appears thus as an ironical confession of the blunders and bunglings in a universe, of which one is not too confident of being the least offender. With a secret delight, the humorist is apt at turning the derisive mirror toward himself, at the cost of its blurring as it discloses the reflection of his own grimace." This is an extract from Thérèse Lavauden's "Humor in Debussy," an excellent article which should be quoted in its entirety.
"Humor is the arrow that man uses to bluff God!" In his music, Debussy reaches humor through the irony of entrechats, the recall of an old melody, colored by our astonishment, hustling seconds, unexpected stops, jostling of rhythms, and splashes of arpeggi.
Thus, in "Hommage à S. Pickwick," the grandiloquence of the phrase completes the buffoonery of the sudden intrusion of the English national anthem.
In "General Lavine-eccentric," "Minstrels," or "Golliwog's cake-walk," the stubborn hammering of an out-of-tune and badly played cornet, drum tattoos, or a dirty joke followed by a burst of laughter; these are the simple suggestions of Debussy's fun. Likewise, in "La sérénade interrompue," we witness the lilliputian drama of the lover interrupted by everything, including the night-watchman with the crippled rhythm of his wooden leg. The instillation of the smothered sound of rockets and of fragments of a sleepy "Marseillaise" in among the firecrackers of "Feux d'Artifice" is another example.
It is humor tinted with tenderness which makes "semi-quavers sprout as bristles" on the mean "Gradus" of "Children's Corner." It is humor again in the amusing takeoffs on "Tristan," embodying that impertinence which children cherish so much.
But also, this humor is an expression of Debussy's all-embracing love and pity, of his understanding of children and adults alike, and of his putting himself so often in others' "shoes." A sympathy which is full of grace and of deep tenderness, gives him a perception which is childlike, and at the same time paternal, and initiates him to the juvenile universe of his beloved little Chouchou. Is it the memories of his own childhood which permit this spontaneous transposition which he shares with the adored child, of reality into the world of fantasy?
Love, tenderness, and pity are at the depth of Debussy's soul. Pity, which can be of a pagan nature when Debussy contemplates the sea or the reflection of the water, or dreams of the motion of clouds. Human pity, with which he imbues the mysterious figures of Mélisande and La Damoiselle élue. Human pity, when, with a few poignant notes, he transmutes into sounds the words of old Arkel: "If I were God, I would take pity on the hearts of men."
Debussy's synthesis of love was double-edged. In one aspect it was deliberately accepted as sinless, as almost divine, as an ultimate fusion into ambient poetry, a dream inviting the heart's tenderness and exaltations in the beholding of the charm of things and of beings.
It was also that all-embracing love of which Charles Koechlin speaks: "Debussy does not spiritualize matter; he does not deny its existence nor does he suppress it; but he endows it with the adoration of the heart, like the love of life ... the gratitude of him who has known voluptuousness."
Through the widely differentiated sensualities of Debussy's perception, voluptuousness had an unlimited scope—voluptuousness of a look, of hair, of perfume, or of music.
PERCEPTIVISM
What are the mysterious component elements that transform a human being into a creative genius?
Further in the book we will deal with Debussy's characteristics, and the analysis of the form, structure, melody, harmony, rhythm, counterpoint, and modality that he used. But now, with the help given us by the science of psychology, we would like to examine what the resources of the human mind are and how they may function:
"The activities of the total range which make up the life of an individual, whether normal or abnormal, may conveniently be divided into six groups each represented by a typical sort of activity; these activities have conventionally been termed: sensing, perceiving, thinking, feeling, willing and doing....
"Sensing is exemplified in the acts of seeing the color of a rose, tasting the flavor of a fruit, or smelling the odor of a perfume; there are other sensings for which we have no specific verbs; for example, the sensing of cold, heat, tickle, and pain; we sense also contraction and relaxation of muscles and sense many other conditions and occurrences within our bodies.
"Perceiving may be initially described as sensing and something more.... Under Thinking we include imagining, remembering and anticipating; you imagine, for example, the sound of a violin or of a bell; the blaze of a fire—at moments in which none of these are actually sensed or perceived. You remember the meeting with a friend yesterday ... the cold wind of last week, etc.... Under Feeling we have no subordinate terms. At various times you feel pleasure, depression, hunger, anger, elation, pain. Willing occurs when you hesitate as to whether you will do a certain thing or not. Doing or dynamic acting includes all cases in which action on your part modifies or changes your environment or changes your relation to it."
From the quotation above, we may deduct that the creation of art presupposes: to sense, to perceive, to think, to feel, to will or to do, and/or any combination of such.... Plus....
At the time of perception, the mind takes possession of a concrete matter as perceived by the senses (some form of vibration) and reforms a mental synthesis of it, an idea which then becomes its own. Sensory perception, as an impression made on us by that which is outside of us, then disappears as such, along with its cause, and the resulting feeling in the mind remains in the memory. The depth (or value) of the intuition of things in space and the intensity of the perception of concrete things are the result of the quality of each personal and particular sensitivity, also of the individual knowledge acquired through studies, and most probably of the many hereditary factors.
Looking back on some of the ideas of Mr. Dunlap, whose admirable book could be quoted at length, one can conclude that ... if sight governs space and perceptions, touch helps in measuring the forms, resistances, and densities, and the body as it approaches the object can appraise what the eye has seen, what the nose has smelled, and what the ear has heard, thus grasping the three dimensions: breadth, height, and depth.
Through special training, the eye will perceive the color gradations, the dispersions of light; the educated ear will discern noise from those sounds which are music. Thus accumulated in the memory, these recollections will be the mines from which the stimulated mind will draw its creative material. These very memories will be infinitely varied, as illuminated by the colors of the days, seasons, years, the revolutions of the outside world, and the evolutions or revolutions of the inner life of the individual. In brief, the senses manifest through the mind the synthesis of objects, forms, savors, perfumes, light, and vibrations of all kinds in time and space.
"When the several direct sensory reactions have become amalgamated into a single perception, the details of this perception will be determined, not by the characteristic sense stimulation of the object alone, but by it in conjunction with the various other stimulations playing upon the receptors of other senses and by the reactions (whether perceptual or ideational) which have preceded."
As an illustration of this quotation one can take any very ordinary object, in its visual perception (for example); confronted by this sensory stimulus, each person will have a different reaction, depending on association and past experience toward the set object. (A clock may suggest ... schooldays, waiting in hospital corridors, first date, zero hour, childbirth, mechanical precision, abstract design, the approaching of old age, tension of deadlines, taking a train, mathematical division, duty, a Harold Lloyd film, tick-tock music, late for the concert, etc.)
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Piano Works of Claude Debussy by E. Robert Schmitz. Copyright © 1950 Duell, Sloan & Pearce, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of DOVER PUBLICATION, INC..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
ONE: GENERAL COMMENTARY,TWO: THE PIANO WORKS 1888-1904,
THREE: PIANO WORKS 1905-1910,
FOUR: PIANO WORKS 1910-1915,
FIVE: PIANO WORKS 1915,
APPENDICES,
INDEX,