Concert pianist and piano professor Julian Jacobson continues his Debussy journey in today’s blog post. This fourth article surveys the final six works of the French composer’s Preludes Book 1 (Preludes Nos. 7 – 12), in preparation for Julian’s concert on June 6th at the 1901 Arts Club in London, where he will play the complete Preludes Book 1 and 2.
Read earlier posts in this series here.
Preludes Book 1, Nos. 7 – 12
After the desolation of Des pas sur la neige, the elemental fury of Ce qu’a vu le Vent d’Ouest (What the West Wind Saw) comes as something of a catharsis. It is easily the most violent of all the Preludes and, incidentally, the most difficult (Debussy is never virtuosic for the sake of virtuosity): Feux d’artifice is usually ranked as the most difficult, but I find ‘Ce qu’a vu’ harder, if only because it’s more relentless – Feux d’artifice does have calmer moments, and most of the passagework lies comfortably enough under the hands.
The West Wind is usually thought of as benign, but Debussy’s title references a story of Hans Christian Andersen in which the wind is no longer gentle, having lost his good looks to become “a dreadfully wild fellow”. Perhaps Debussy also knew Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind, where the wind is characterised as “timeless, proud, and swift” – a perfect description of this magnificent piece, raging over the entire keyboard.
With an uncanny instinct for what the listener needs, and continuing in the same tonality of F sharp minor/major – G flat, Debussy places next the most gentle of all the Preludes, the famous, much loved and much transcribed La fille aux cheveux de lin (The girl with the flaxen hair), a piece with the inner stillness and radiance of a Vermeer painting. The source here is a poem of Leconte de Lisle, which Debussy had set as a song in 1882. The poem itself is based on Robert Burns’ ‘Lassie with the lint-white locks’, and this gives the key to the folklike pentatonic charm of the prelude – we really aren’t so far from the ‘bonny bonny banks o’ Loch Lomond’. A piece one can never tire of, such is its unpretentious perfection, and it requires the most delicate touch, perfect legato, refined pedalling and a discreet sense of improvisation.
After such bounty, a humorous vignette is just what is needed, and Debussy delivers a fine one in La sérénade interrompue (The interrupted serenade), one of Debussy’s finest ‘Spanish’ pictures and incidentally quoting from his own slightly earlier Ibéria. The dry, guitar-plucking texture of the opening sets the furtive, slightly seedy scene – a rather timid wooer being constantly interrupted and finally erupting in fury before slinking off disconsolately. This is “filmic”, with constant intercuts between different material, cancelling out the logic and continuity that all music since Bach had aspired to; it also makes it devilishly difficult to memorise. And many modern piano actions don’t help with the dry, pecking staccato touch that brings this piece to life.
After this palate-cleansing interlude Debussy serves up the longest, grandest and perhaps greatest of all the preludes, the celebrated La cathédrale engloutie (the submerged Cathedral). The ancient Breton city of Ys has been punished for its iniquities by being drowned; once a year the waters roll back, the spire of the cathedral is revealed and the mighty organ peals forth, before being submerged once more. Debussy’s piece describes a perfect arc and presents some of his most magical colours.
Debussy’s rhythmic notation is incomplete and confusing. At bar 22 it is generally now accepted that Debussy intends a doubling of the tempo and the new Durand edition makes this clear. In fact I’m not convinced it needs to be as cut and dried as this: it’s worth exploring a more fluid pulse for a smoother continuity and more imaginative sense of narrative.
The grand fortissimo central section is one of the few places in the Preludes where one really needs the middle sostenuto pedal, to sustain the long pedal C while the harmonies change on every beat. In general the right foot is almost constantly engaged, the una corda (left or ”soft” pedal) can be freely used where appropriate, and the dynamic range should be the widest possible, from a roar to a whisper.
Debussy clearly planned Cathédrale as the climactic point of Book 1 (it’s also the one that took him the longest to finish: most of the others seem to have been written, unbelievably, in a single day whereas Cathédrale needed several). The remaining two preludes are lighter in texture and mood, returning the listener pleasantly to earth after the heights of poetry and imagination of the previous numbers. No.11, La danse de Puck (Puck’s dance), is nevertheless still a flight of fancy and is marked to be played “Capricieux et léger” (light and capriciously). Puck is of course the merry, mischievous prankster in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Considering the piece’s scherzando character, Debussy’s metronome mark of quaver = 138 seems a little staid and one can safely take it a bit faster, up to 152 though with considerable license and observing all the directions to take time. It’s difficult, but not impossible, to observe the right hand notation of dotted semiquaver slurred to staccato demisemiquaver that threads its way through the prelude (and reoccurs in Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq in book 2, indeed a Debussy trademark): a quick flick of a lightly suspended wrist does the trick! The piece is full of fun yet also has its tender, wistful moments so it needs a generous range of touch and tone – and, as always, pedalling – if it is to make its full effect.
Finally Debussy brings us down to earth with a bump with the broad comedy of Minstrels. Debussy loved popular music of all sorts, including early jazz, and Minstrels has a distinct music-hall or circus atmosphere about it, in fact it was probably inspired by clowns in blackface that he could see from his hotel window in Eastbourne in 1905. A jolly vulgarity suits this prelude very well, with strumming banjos, sharp, jagged staccatos (“Nerveux et avec humeur” is Debussy’s direction), a feeling for conveying irony and sarcasm, and an exaggeratedly sentimental, one might say cheesy style in the Expressif middle section, clearly at a slower tempo: Debussy doesn’t indicate this, however he does mark Tempo 1 when the main section returns which can only mean that he expected the middle section to be played slower.
Having cut my early professional pianistic teeth in the Worthing Youth Swing Orchestra – Eastbourne being just bit further along the South Coast – perhaps I can claim a special affinity with this style! Pianists should certainly look beyond the normal models of fine classical and Romantic piano playing if they want to bring this final Prelude of Book 1 to life.
Top Image: Debussy at the piano in the home of the composer Ernest Chausson (who is turning the pages), 1893. Credit: De Agostini/Getty Images
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