In this series of articles, concert pianist and piano professor Julian Jacobson throws light on his preparation process for a forthcoming recital at the 1901 Arts Club in London on June 6th, where he will play both books of Debussy’s deliciously enigmatic Preludes. This is the third article in the series.
Read earlier posts here.
Preludes Book 1, Nos. 1 – 6
And so to the glorious Preludes themselves! I will cover six in each of the next four posts, starting with the first six of Book 1.
Book 1 covers a wide range of moods, from the sweet simplicity of La fille aux cheveux de lin to the violence of Ce qu’a vu le Vent d’Ouest, the grandeur of La Cathédrale engloutie, the desolation of Des pas sur la neige and the music hall humour of Minstrels. It seems to me to be an even finer entity than Book 2, with a wonderful natural progression and some intricate connections between the pieces, some easier to feel than to analyse. Each pianist must decide how long a gap to leave between preludes, whether playing a whole book (which Debussy never specified) or a selection as is normally done. But since the twelve pieces were carefully planned as a sequence, any selection must be carefully chosen to produce a similar natural progression.
Everyone knows that the titles are placed after the pieces. Since the audience (and the pianist) will always know the title of the piece being played, this is a somewhat fanciful exercise on Debussy’s part, but his idea was no doubt that the pieces should not be thought of as over-descriptive, or as programme music, but that the titles should act more as a stimulus to the imagination.
No. 1, Danseuses de Delphes ([female] Dancers of Delphi). This wonderfully stately and serene portal to the collection hardly summons up the wild Bacchantes of legend, however it seems that Debussy’s inspiration was a sculpture in the Louvre, thus depicting the dancers at rest. The tempo is marked by Debussy as crotchet = 44, however it can go even slower, as it does in Debussy’s own piano roll recording. It sounds easier than it is – there is a lot of leaping around, especially with the newly restored chords in bars 8-9 that were omitted in earlier editions. The piece must remain completely calm and one needs a cool nerve, especially as it’s the opening number!
No. 2, Voiles (Veils OR Sails). There has been some argument over which meaning of the French word “voiles” Debussy intended, however it seems most likely that he was thinking of the American dancer Loie Fuller, famous for the veils she wore and very popular in Paris. This certainly gives us more of an image for the light, fluid sonority required for this largely whole-tone piece than “sails” would. The pedal can be used almost constantly, with judicious use of the una corda, and this prelude comes closest to the idea of Impressionism, a term that Debussy disliked when referring to his music. The piece needs the finest control of minute gradations of very soft tone: two bars in particular, 45-46, have different dynamic markings on almost every note. The one forte outburst is by no means easy to play!
No. 3, Le vent dans la plaine (The wind in the plain). The title is taken from the epigraph to Verlaine’s poem C’est l’extase langoureuse, set by Debussy in the Ariettes oubliées. In fact the full quote is “Le vent dans la plaine / Suspend son haleine” (the wind suspends his breath), which makes more sense of the quiet, tense rustling that is the main characteristic of the piece. The first fast prelude, a fascinating “whirlwind”, mainly in pianissimo apart from a couple of outbursts where the wind seems to strike the observer directly and knock his hat off. The leaping chords (bars 28-34) are difficult to control as one cannot take extra time over them – no rubato! – as are the fluffy descending right hand chords of bars 9-12 and later. And the sextuplet ostinato pattern that threads its way through the piece must be very even, and mainly pianissimo.
No. 4, Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir (The sounds and perfumes mingle in the evening air). The title is from a poem by Baudelaire that Debussy had already set as one of his five Baudelaire songs. The piece has been called the first of the truly great preludes; anyway it is completely characteristic of Debussy in a certain mood and conveys an indefinable mood of sensuous longing and mystery, any feeling of resolution seeming always just beyond our grasp. Every marking in the score must be obeyed, yet the music must sound natural, almost improvised. Freedom and flexibility of tempo and phrasing are paramount.
No. 5, Les collines d’Anacapri (The hills of Anacapri). The title may come from a story by Axel Munthe, or it has been suggested that it may have been a scene depicted on a bottle of wine given to the composer. Debussy blows away the drowsy languor of “Les sons” with a brilliant, sun-drenched, totally extrovert piece, a sort of fast gigue with a slower, jazzy middle section based on the habanera rhythm. It needs a light, dancing touch yet with plenty of power for the triumphant outbursts and the ending. There’s a LOT of somewhat unpredictable detail – as one of the preludes I had not previously played, it took me quite a time to get comfortable with it and I sometimes cursed Debussy for not being more consistent! Yet the overflowing abundance of detail is what gives the piece its amazing vitality.
6. Des pas sur la neige (Footsteps in the snow). No direct source for the title has been found, though Debussy may have been thinking of the effet de neige paintings of Monet and others. After the uninhibited brilliance of the previous prelude, Des pas sur la neige paints a picture of bleakness and utter desolation – I sometimes think it’s the saddest piece of music ever written, yet utterly beautiful. The impression as the piece develops is that it describes the irreconcilable parting of two lovers in the frozen landscape, Debussy directing us at one point to play “Comme un tendre et triste regret” (like a tender and sad regret, or remorse – there’s a challenge for the pianist!), and one cannot avoid the feeling that the piece must have had some special, and painful, personal meaning for the composer. The tempo is very slow throughout: Debussy’s marking of crotchet = 44 is hard to sustain but worth going for.
We will see in my next post how Debussy blows away this sense of bleak despair with the most violent and virtuosic of all the preludes, Ce qu’a vu le Vent d’Ouest (What the West Wind saw) – despair giving way to a bracing elemental fury.
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