a. Nuages
b. Fêtes
c. Sirènes
Baudelaire’s prose poem, “The Stranger,” might serve as motto for the
first nocturne, and for a hint to performance.
“_Enigmatical man, whom do you love best? Tell me—your mother, your
sister, or your brother?_”
“_I have neither father, mother, sister, nor brother._”
“_Your friends?_”
“_You now use a word which to this day has been meaningless to me._”
“_Your country?_”
“_I do not know under what latitude it lies._”
“_Beauty?_”
“_I would love her gladly; goddess and immortal._”
“_Well, what do you love, extraordinary stranger?_”
“_I love the clouds, the clouds that pass, yonder, the marvellous
clouds._”
_Festivals_, with its strange processional march, its whirring
capriciousness, makes a more direct appeal. Does the third movement
answer the old question put by Tiberius to the grammarians and repeated
by Sir Thomas Browne, “What song did the sirens sing?” Here is music of
waves and of sea-women: music that never was heard on a casino-lined
coast, but sounds that might go with “The light that never was, on sea
or land.” Here is music that is subtly poetic, music of ineffable
beauty. Suppose that Debussy had put words to this song; how he would
have cheapened the nocturne! To each hearer on the ship of Ulysses, or
to each hearer of Debussy’s music, the sirens sang of what might well
lure him.
* * *
The first two nocturnes, _Nuages_ and _Fêtes_, were produced at a
Lamoureux concert, Camille Chevillard conductor, Paris, December 9,
1900, and they were played by the same orchestra January 6, 1901. The
third, _Sirènes_, was first produced—in company with the other two—at a
Lamoureux concert, October 27, 1901. The third is for orchestra with
chorus of female voices. At this last concert the friends of Debussy
were so exuberant in manifestations of delight that there was sharp
hissing as a corrective. The _Nocturnes_ were composed in 1898, and
published in 1899.
Debussy furnished a programme for the suite; at least, this programme is
attributed to him. Some who are not wholly in sympathy with what they
loosely call “the modern movement” may think that the programme itself
needs elucidation. Debussy’s peculiar forms of expression in prose are
not easily Englished, and it is well-nigh impossible to reproduce
certain shades of meaning.
“The title _Nocturnes_ is intended to have here a more general and,
above all, a more decorative meaning. We, then, are not concerned with
the form of the Nocturne, but with everything that this word includes in
the way of diversified impression and special lights.
“_Clouds_: the unchangeable appearance of the sky, with the slow and
solemn march of clouds dissolving in a gray agony tinted with white.
“_Festivals_: movement, rhythm dancing in the atmosphere, with bursts of
brusque light. There is also the episode of a procession (a dazzling and
wholly idealistic vision) passing through the festival and blended with
it; but the main idea and substance obstinately remain—always the
festival and its blended music—luminous dust participating in the
universal rhythm of all things.
“_Sirens_: the sea and its innumerable rhythm; then amid the billows
silvered by the moon the mysterious song of the Sirens is heard; it
laughs and passes.”
Alfred Bruneau with regard to the _Nocturnes_: “Here, with the aid of a
magic orchestra, he has lent to clouds traversing the sombre sky the
various forms created by his imagination; he has set to running and
dancing the chimerical beings perceived by him in the silvery dust
scintillating in the moonbeams; he has changed the white foam of the
restless sea into tuneful sirens.”
Questioning the precise nature of the form that shapes these
_Nocturnes_, the reader may well ponder the saying of Plotinus in his
“Essay on the Beautiful”: “But the simple beauty of color arises, when
light, which is something incorporeal, and reason and form, entering the
obscure involutions of matter, irradiates and forms its dark and
formless nature. It is on this account that fire surpasses other bodies
in beauty, because, compared with the other elements, it obtains the
order of form: for it is more eminent than the rest, and is the most
subtle of all, bordering as it were on an incorporeal nature.”
The _Nocturnes_ are scored as follows:
I. Two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons,
four horns, kettledrums, harp, strings. The movement begins _modéré_,
6-4.
II. Three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, three
bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, two
harps, kettledrums, cymbals, and snare drum, strings. _Animé et très
rhythmé_, 4-4.
III. Three flutes, oboe, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons,
four horns, three trumpets, two harps, eight soprano voices, eight
mezzo-soprano voices, strings, _modérément animé_, 12-8.
Debussy before his death made many changes in the instrumentation of
these _Nocturnes_.
“LA MER,” TROIS ESQUISSES SYMPHONIQUES
I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer
II. Jeux de vagues
III. Dialogue du vent et de la mer
As these sketches are frankly impressionistic, the enjoyment of the
hearer depends largely on his own susceptibility and imagination. There
are persons who do not like the ocean. Oscar Wilde was disappointed in
the Atlantic; but there are more normal beings, far from being poseurs,
who cannot exclaim with Jules Laforgue, “the sea, always new, always
respectable!” We know a man who was doomed to spend a vacation in a
summer hotel on a bluff looking down on Nantucket Sound. Whenever he sat
on a bench he turned his back to the ocean and faced pine trees, giving
as an excuse that “the sea got on his nerves.”
Debussy’s _Sea_ is not for them, neither is it for those who find
pleasure in Mendelssohn’s overture, _Sea Calm and Prosperous Voyage_,
for Debussy knows a wilder ocean, many-faced, now exulting in Æschylean
laughter, now spasmodic, sinister, terrible, and never so terrible as
when calm, or inviting mortals to sport with it, and smiling—as though
it were forgetful of rotting ships and sunken treasure and the drowned
far down that were for a time regarded curiously by monsters of the
deep.
* * *
These orchestral pieces (I. _From Dawn till Noon on the Ocean_; II.
_Play of the Waves_; III. _Dialogue of Wind and Sea_) were performed for
the first time at a Lamoureux concert in Paris, October 15, 1905.
Camille Chevillard conducted.
Debussy wrote in August, 1903, from Bichain to his publisher Jacques
Durand[24] that he was at work on _La Mer_. “If God will be good to me
the work will be in a very advanced state on my return [to Paris].” He
wrote later that the sketches would have three titles: _Mer belle aux
Îles Sanguinaires_; _Jeux de vagues_; _Le Vent fait danser la mer_; and
in September he said the work was intended for Chevillard. In September,
1904, he wrote from Dieppe, “I wanted to finish _La Mer_ here, but I
must still work on the orchestration, which is as tumultuous and varied
as the sea (with all my excuses to the latter).” In January, 1905, he
was not sure that the title, “_De l’Aube à midi sur la mer_” would do:
“So many contradictory things are dancing in my head, and this last
attack of grippe has added its particular dance.” He also wrote that he
had remade the end of _Jeux de vagues_. He was disturbed because
Chevillard spoke of the difficulties in the music, but if he gave the
score to Colonne there might be a row. In July and September, 1905, he
complained of “very curious corrections” made by someone in the proofs;
and the idea of a performance at Chevillard’s first concert seemed to
him as bad as a performance at the last one of the season. At rehearsal
it was found that the proofs had been badly read.
The Sketches, dedicated to Jacques Durand, were published at Paris in
1905. Debussy made an arrangement for two pianos; André Caplet made one
in 1908 for three pianos.
_La Mer_ is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two
clarinets, three bassoons and contra-bassoon, four horns, three
trumpets, two _cornets-à-pistons_, three trombones, bass tuba,
kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, glockenspiel, two harps, and
strings.