The Debussy conundrum
The French composer gets top marks from musicians but scores less well with the rest. A fine array of anniversary concerts will soon reveal why, and might just boost his placement on the charts
Twentieth-century music as we know it would be unthinkable without Claude Debussy (1862-1918). To many musicians, including radical innovators such as John Cage and Pierre Boulez, the French composer was the father of modern music. Philippe Cassard, who will be playing Debussy's complete piano works in a single day in May (see concert highlights on page xx) has written an informal appreciation in connection with that concert that's worth paraphrasing: Debussy's sound world remains incomparably modern, poetic, delicate and varied. Voluptuous, replete with masterpieces; playful with virtuoso and song-like qualities from Chopin; touches of British humour, evocations of Spain and ancient Greece, homages to the French Baroque, shadings of Verlaine, Mallarmé, Turner, Renoir, echoes of Pelléas et Melisande, tenderness towards the world of childhood...
And yet, the general public has not been won over. When Musiq’3, Brussels' French-language classical music radio station, invited listeners to vote for their top 50 classical works last Fall, not a single piece by Debussy made it onto the list.
True, Debussy hardly wrote hummable tunes, and his music, though beautiful, is demanding. But his sounds are around us everywhere. Many of his innovations, particularly his revolutionary harmonies, have been taken up not only in classical music, but also in jazz, film music and commercials (you can often hear strains of his youthful Clair de Lune, a true charmer if hardly representative of his highest inventions).
So what gives? How is it that a composer of such sublime music and wide reputation (he even has a street named after him in Anderlecht) has such a small fan base?
Starting close to home, with Jos van Immserseel the Belgian keyboard maestro and founder of the period instrument ensemble Anima Eterna, I presented the question to four musicians who approach Debussy from distinctly different angles and asked what they find so special about his music.
“Debussy has always fascinated me," van Immerseel replied, "especially for his extremely personal use of harmony. Several years ago, when I acquired a 1897 Erard piano, I knew that I had found the perfect instrument to play Debussy on. He himself didn’t own an Erard, but he certainly knew them well. They were the suppliers to the Paris Conservatory, where he studied."
Van Immerseel doesn't regard Debussy as a radical innovator. " He created a new musical language, but Liszt’s late works are as forward-looking. The worst thing that happened to Debussy was being branded as an Impressionist. He rejected the term. He was much closer to the Symbolist painters and poets of his times, although I see no direct relationship between their art and his. Even when he wrote songs to texts by Symbolist poets, he wasn’t illustrating the text but using the music to create something new.”
Next, I reached spoke by telephone to French soprano Sandrine Piau, who will soon be in Belgium to perform mélodies by Debussy, Fauré and Poulenc, accompanied by van Immerseel on his Erard. “For me, Debussy is the greatest poet among composers," she said. "It's amazing to see how he evolved from the surface charm of his youthful songs to the refined, pared-down quality of his late songs to poems by Mallarmé, where music is an extension of the text. Emotion is implied rather than expressed, as it would be in German lied or an Italian opera aria. There is nothing superfluous, not a single decorative note. You could say that truth matters more than emotion.”Piau, a celebrated performer of Baroque music, draws connections between Debussy’s art and the French Baroque. “In bel canto [the style associated with 19th-century Italian opera] the text is subordinate to vocal display. With Debussy, both in his songs and in Pelléas et Mélisande, vocal beauty serves meaning. The text is monosyllabic, so every word must be understood; the voice can't really take off. That's the link between French Baroque and later mélodies, such as Debussy’s.”
French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, whose recording of Debussy’s complete piano works has been garnering rave reviews, helped lift the veil on Debussy a little further. “No composer writes with more precision than Debussy, but as [Pablo] Casals once said, the two most important things in music, colour and timing, are not written in the score. What is essential is not written.”
How, then, can he do justice to music? “In Debussy," says Bavouzet, "what I feel very profoundly is a panorama of enormously varied moods, from the most telling music based on almost nothing, just a few notes, to downright Prokofiev-style violence. It certainly is not impressionistic music, but I wouldn’t call it intellectual either. What I have to add is the implied emotion-- all the work’s richness and diversity.” And what does Debussy demand from the listener? “A lot of attention. His finest works compel you to think about your own emotions, about the phenomenon of music itself, and make us conscious of the passing of time. It is ever-changing music: you think you’ve understood what is going on, and it leads you elsewhere.”
Conductor Patrick Davin, who in 2007 led a superb production of Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande at the Royal Opera of Wallonia, shares many of Bavouzet’s views. “He is one of my favourite composers," says Davin. "He is both so demanding and so mysterious. His magic, refinement and subtlety are unequalled, but he isn’t popular, and I doubt that he ever will be. In a way, Debussy represents a kind of culmination: you cannot go further. He influenced almost all later composers, but he has no heirs.”
Top Debussy CDs
Debussy Mélodies Soprano Sandrine Piau and Jos van Immerseel, playing his own 1897 Erard piano, recorded this Prix Ravel-winning CD in Liège in 2002 (Naïve).
Complete works for Piano Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's is the finest modern version of these works. Chandos, 5 CDs, 2007-2009.
Debussy: Orchestral Music Bernard Haitink/Concertgebouw Orchestra: orchestral works, including the Nocturne, La Mer and Jeux. Outstanding interpretations in exemplary recordings. Philips, 1993, subsequently reissued by Decca, 2 CDs.
Claude Debussy Preludes - Vol I - Images Pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's rendition of these works is ultra-refined, fascinating. Deutsche Grammophon, 2005.
Debussy, Fauré & Ravel: String Quartets by the Quatuor Ebène. Superb. Virgin Classics, 2009.
Bio
1862 Born in St-Germain-en Laye, near Paris.
1878 & 1879 Fails piano exams at the Paris Conservatory
1880 Begins studying composition.
1884 Wins the Prix de Rome for his cantata L'enfant prodigue but finds the prize--a four-year stay at the French Academy in Rome--stifling and leaves after two.
1893 Attends a performance of Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande. Travels to Ghent to meet Maeterlinck, who agrees to cuts in the text. Their collaboration ends in1902, when Debussy refuses to cast Materlinck’s mistress as Mélisande.
Première of his String Quartet by the Belgian Ysaÿe Quartt.
1894 First performance of Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, his first major orchestral work.
1899 Marries fashion model Lily Texier.
1902 Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, based on Belgian Symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck's play of the same title, is a hit in Paris. It is mainly thanks to Debussy’s music that Maeterlinck’s play is remembered today
1904 Leaves Texier, who attempts suicide, for Emma Bardac, an amateur singer and wife of a wealthy banker, whom he marries in 1908.
1904-1905 Writes piano pieces (Images), songs, and La Mer, his symphonic masterpiece.
1909 London première of Pelléas et Mélisande. Starts work on the first of his two books of piano Préludes. Diagnosed with cancer.
1913 Writes Jeux, his most enigmatic orchestral score, for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Book II of the Préludes is published.
1915 Writes his 12 fiendishly difficult piano Etudes.
1917 In his final public appearance, he plays the piano part of his Violin Sonata at its first performance.
1918 Dies of cancer at home in Paris.
Debussy 150th anniversary concerts
Selected highlights in Belgium
Jan 18 Radu Lupu, the legendary Romanian-born pianist, plays Preludes, Book II. deSingel.
Feb 3 Jos van Immerseel conducts the Anima Eterna ensemble in La mer, among other works. deSingel; concert repeated at Flagey, Place Sainte-Croix, Brussels on Feb 4, www.bozar.be; and at the Concertgebouw, Bruges, on Feb 9.
Feb 5 Brussels Philharmonic and the Vlaams Radio Orkest and Koor, led by Michel Tabachnik, give a rare performance of Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien, Debussy's large-scale work for orchestra and chorus. Bozar.
Feb 9 Royal Liège Philharmonic, conducted by Paul Daniel, performs Jeux, Children's Corner, and the symphonic suite from Pélleas et Mélisande. Bozar; concert repeated at the Salle Philharmonique, Liège, on Feb 10.
Feb 10 Soprano Sandrine Piau and pianist Jos van Immerseel perform works from their award-winning CD Mélodies. Concertgebouw. Concert repeated at Royal Music Conservatory, 30 Rue de la Régence, Brussels, Feb 17, www.bozar.be
Feb 11 Jos van Immerseel and Claire Chevalier play four-handed works on two Erard pianos. Concertgebouw.
Mar 16 De Filharmonie's new chief conductor Edo De Waart conducts La mer. Concertgebouw.
Mar 23 Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes in a solo recital of Debussy and Chopin. Bozar.
May 4 Pierre Boulez conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in Debussy's Nocturnes and other works. Bozar.
May 27 Philippe Cassard performs Debussy's complete works for piano in four concerts given in a single day starting at 11.00. Salle Philharmonique, Liège.
June 6 Simon Rattle leads the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Prélude à l'après-midi d'une faune and La mer. Bozar.
Main venues
de Singel, 25 Desguinlei, Antwerp, www.desingel.be
Concertgebouw, 34 't Zand, Bruges, www.concertgebouw.be
Bozar, 23 Rue Ravenstein, Brussels, www.bozar.be
Salle Philharmonique, 25 Blvd Piercot, Liège, www.opl.be
