Debussy

Eugene d'Albert, George Copeland, Percy Grainger, Myra Hess, Robert Lortat, Paquita Madriguera, Ignaz Jan Paderewski, Artur Rubinstein, Elie Robert Schmitz

by David Dubal









Claude Debussy, one of the seminal figures in twentieth-century music, composed the most original body of piano music after Liszt. In the six generations of the Debussy family preceding his birth, there appears to have been no trace of musical ability.

The eldest of four children, Achille-Claude, as he was called in childhood, received, aside from music, the bare minimum of education. His first real piano teacher was Antoinette Maute de Fleurville, Verlaine's mother-in-law and a pupil of Chopin, a fact of which Debussy was certainly proud.

The Paris Conservatoire accepted him at the age of ten. Although brilliantly endowed musically, he revolted against the rigid system that was inflicted upon him. Under the celebrated Marmontel, his piano professor, Debussy's pianistic gifts ripened. However, his parents were unhappy that he never captured a first prize in piano playing at the Conservatoire. Their hopes that he would eventually earn a living as a professional virtuoso vanished.

In harmony class Claude was impatient with the stringent rules by which he had to abide. He called César Franck a "modulating machine". When someone asked, "What rules do you follow?" the bright but insolent youngster replied, "mon plasir." Later in life he was to use his caustic wit and glib pen as an idiosyncratic music critic.

Hearing Wagner's music dramas in 1888 and 1889 in Bayreuth deeply stirred him, but he was convinced that to emulate Wagner was a dead end.

Eric Satie, four years Debussy's junior, became his friend. Satie, anti-Teutonic to the core, had been composing music stripped bare of frills and grandiosity. Constantly encouraging each other to write 'French music', the witty Satie told Debussy, "We ought to have our own music - if possible without Sauerkraut."

By the 1890s he had found his own style, composing such revolutionary scores as Prélude à 'L'après-midi d'une faune' and the Nocturnes. In 1902 the premiere of the opera Pelléas et Mélisande was the talk of Paris. Debussy, a confirmed Anglophile, visited London twice in 1908 to conduct and supervise the English premiere of Pelléas. The first signs of the cancer which would kill him appeared in 1909, as did Louis Lalov's biography of the composer.

Debussy was devastated by the Great War, feeling desolate, ill and impotent. To his publisher Durand he confided, "What I'm doing seems to be so miserably petty! It makes me envious of Satie and his real job of defending Paris as a corporal." After regaining his ability to "think in music", he worked furiously knowing that the cancer was relentless. To provide much needed income, he prepared a complete edition of Chopin's piano music while composing his own set of twelve Etudes, dedicated to the memory of the Polish master. Late in 1917 his strength failed. Taking to bed, he died on March 25, 1918.

His death coming before the war's end, France was hardly aware that one of the greatest of all French artists was no longer.

Although Debussy occasionally performed some of his own music, he was not a concert pianist. He did, however, give a great deal of advice to many pianists eager to enter the secret garden of his compositions. "In performing his own music," Leon Paul Fargue remarked, "he appeared to be giving birth to the piano. He cradled it, talked softly to it." Nadia Boulanger said: "You only need to have heard Debussy play once. I don't mean that he played better than others. He played otherwise, he had his own tone, his unique tone". Marguerite Long wrote that he was an incomparable pianist: "How could one forget his subtleness, the caress of his touch, while floating over the keys with curiously penetrating gentleness"?

Debussy added a new and revelatory dimension of his music, such that Claudio Arrau described it as "like the music of another planet". It offers a new world, inspired less by the European music of the past than by Symbolist poetry, nature, Impressionist painting, indeed sheer impulse itself and the exoticism of the Javanese Gamelan orchestra that he had heard in Paris. In Boulez's phrase, Debussy was to "break the circle of the Occident".

Debussy's pianism contains layers of exquisite 'chording', harmonies hovering unresolved in the most rarefied, intoxicating air. New concepts in pedalling and minute rhythms governing microspacing and a range of atmospheric tonal problems necessitate the highest sensitivity and elasticity that a pianist may possess. Unfortunately, as the most exportable of French piano composers, he has been subjected to many untenable performances. He may indeed be the most poorly played composer, generally speaking, after Chopin.

His art has often been called 'Impressionism', a word that Debussy disliked. However, it is impressionistic at many moments and he paints in music as did many of his Impressionist painter friends. But it would be a mistake to give Debussy such a narrow label.

As E. Robert Schmitz said, he was "a man with a magnificent wealth of knowledge, of experience, of intuition." He brought to music a new harmonic syntax and a breath-taking landscape of unique surface beauties. The pianist Paul Jacobs wrote that he "evolved an extraordinary vocabulary of timbre, which assumes a structural importance often equal to that of the other components in a given work... Debussy expressed a new and vast repertory of emotional states, often furtive and fleeting, often mixing pain and pleasure".

Perhaps Debussy is more Symbolist than Impressionist. He must often have thought of Mallarmé's dictum, "To name an object sacrifices three-quarters of the enjoyment. To suggest it - that is our dream."

With Debussy, the chord itself became freed of its necessity to move. A chord became an experience in itself. Harmonic progression was no longer required in the traditional sense. Yet Debussy is hardly a formless mass, relying merely on sensation. He is always the subtle architect with an acute ability to write pieces that were neither too long nor too short, in the way that Pisarro, Monet or Cezanne never painted a picture on the wrong sized canvas.

"Historically viewed", Virgil Thomson wrote, "Debussy is the summit toward which during the two centuries since Rameau's death, French music has risen... Internationally viewed he is to the musicians of our century everywhere what Beethoven was to those of the nineteenth - our blinding light, our sun, our central luminary." In 1971, the year of Stravinsky's death, the great Russian-born innovator declared, "Debussy is in all senses the century's first musician".

Paquita Madriguera was born near Barcelona in 1900. After taking her first piano lessons at the age of three, she studied at the Granados Academy in Barcelona with Frank Marshall, later to be Alicia de Larrocha's teacher. Madriguera made her debut in Barcelona when she was eleven years old. She also began composing. In 1915 she toured the United States for the first time and she recorded a number of works for the Duo-Art Piano, including the Granados Allegro De Concerto, as well as music by Raff, Macdowell, Chaminade and her own Serenade and The Cuckoo.

The Second Arabesque in G major is an early Debussy composition. Both Arabesques were composed in 1888 and are in ternary form with a coda closing No. 2





Artur Rubinstein (1887-1982) was in the forefront of Debussy players, performing his music hot off the press and being one of the first Slavic-born pianists to play his music regularly. Rubinstein's exquisite taste and gorgeous singing tone were ideal in many Debussy pieces. When planning his ten historic recitals at Carnegie Hall in 1961 he wrote down sixteen pieces ready to perform in his active repertoire, including Pour le piano, L'isle joyeuse, Reflets dans l'eau, Ondine and Hommage à Rameau. This disc contains three of Rubinstein's Duo-Art Debussy performances.

Danse was composed in 1890. It was first called Tarentelle styrienne. The work has great zest, with a lyric middle section. Ravel made a brilliant orchestration of it in 1925.

L'isle joyeuse, composed in 1904, is a Bacchanalian masterpiece, inspired by Watteau's celebrated painting, The Embarkment for Cythere. The score was premiered by Ricardo Viasterpiece, inspired by Watteau's celebrated painting, f it in 1925.

La plus que lente, composed in 1910, was always a Rubinstein favourite. Debussy wrote of this delicious waltz, "Let us think of cabarets, let us think also of the numerous 'Five O' Clocks' where the beautiful feminine listeners meet".

George Copeland (1882-1971) was born in Boston and studied with local teachers and later with Teresa Carrek of cabarets, let us think also of the numerous 'Five O' Clocks' where the beautiful feminine listeners meet".

eous singing tone were ideal in munate enough to meet Debussy, who worked with him for a period of several months. Contained here are three of his Duo-Art contributions to the Debussy legacy.

Claire de Lune is the third part of the 1890 Suite bergamasque. This piece of moonlight is one of the most famous of piano pieces and still exerts its evocative 'lunar' magic.

Passepied is the fourth and final work in the Suite bergamasque. Originally a French dance from Brittany, the form had achieved huge popularity in eighteenth-century Paris, even rivalling the minuet. Debussy uses the Aeolian mode and a left-hand which remains non-legato throughout the score.

Minstrels, composed in 1911, is the twelfth and final piece of Book 1 of the Préludes. It is a music-hall piece of broad humour inspired by the American cakewalk. Minstrel shows were becoming popular in Paris around 1900 and Debussy put such a scene into a Prélude with its foppish rhythmic appeal.

Percy Grainger (1882-1961) was born in Melbourne and studied with Louis Pabst and in Frankfurt with James Kwast. He later received valuable advice from Busoni.

Grainger was a renowned folksong collector and a dedicated champion of new music such as Cyril Scott's Sonata, Op. 66. He was also at his best in the performance of his own music, which has had a considerable revival in recent years. His discography attests to the spontaneity of his art.

Toccata from Pour le piano was composed in 1901 and is the third and final movement of the suite. Ricardo Viuch as Cyril Scott's Sonata, Op. 66. He was also at his best inToccata in eight countries by 1902.

E. Robert Schmitz (1889-1949) was born in Paris and studied at the city's famous Conservatoire with the renowned pianist Louis Diemer. He was highly acclaimed for his interpretations of the French moderns and as late as 1946 gave the premiere of Henri Barraud's Piano Concerto. Schmitz's career was interrupted by the Great War in 1914 where he served for 38 months on active duty, suffering two wounds.

In 1919 he travelled to America where he was well received and made rolls for the Duo-Art Piano. He knew Debussy who coached him in many works. His book, The Piano Works of Claude Debussy, contains many valuable insights. Virgil Thomson wrote, "Schmitz knew what every one of these (works) is about, what it should say, how to make it speak. He also knew, from long experience as a teacher, all the pitfalls. He knew how faulty fingering or pedalling... can make any work by Debussy lose precision..."

This disc contains three examples of Schmitz's interpretations of Debussy.

Prélude à l'après-midi d'une Faune, arranged by Schmitz. Debussy completed the work in 1892, inspired by Mallarmé's poem of the same name. Busoni thought, "It is like a beautiful sunset, fading as one looks at it". In 1912 Nikinsky choreographed the Faune and danced it with his sister with such lascivious suggestiveness that the public was scandalised. Pierrre Boulez noted, "The reservoir of youth in the Faune defies depletion and exhaustion."

La soirée dans Grenade is the second of Debussy's Estampes, composed in 1903 and premiered by Vich laEstampes inaugurates a new era in piano writing. Estampes are images printed from engraved copper or wood plates. Schmitz wrote, "Years of gestation purified these visions to the pungency of an essence." In Evening in Granada, a habanera rhythm permeates fine, short motifs. Manuel de Falla felt it to contain, in a marvellously distilled way, the most concentrated atmosphere of Andalusia.

La fille aux cheveux de lin. The eighth Prélude from Book 1 - The Girl with the Flaxen Hair - was inspired by a poem by Leconte de Lisle: a slender and supple melody about a girl who sang to herself in a field of clover with lips cherry red.

Robert Lortat (1885-1938) studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Diemer. At fifteen he won first prize at the Conservatoire in piano. In 1909 he was awarded the Grand Diemer Prize by a jury that included Saint-Saëns, Paderewski, Plante, Rosenthal, Sauer, Moszkowski and Granados.

In 1910 he made his Paris debut followed by European tours. Just before the war he gave a series of all-Faure recitals in London. During the war he was wounded and released to civilian duty, enabling him to make his American debut in 1916. In New York he recorded for the Duo-Art works by d'Indy, Franck and Widor.

Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the Rain), the third of the Estampes, is a pure impressionist evocation of raindrops with two French nursery songs woven into the framework.

Ignaz Jan Paderewski (1860-1941) was the most celebrated pianist in history after Liszt and Anton Rubinstein. Also a composer he left many piano pieces, a violin sonata, a symphony and the opera Manru. In 1919 he became Poland's first president.

Although he performed little contemporary music, he thought "that Debussy expressed the spirit of his particular epoch better than any other composer of that period. What is more, in Debussy I feel a natural warmth, I feel a heart in him, which I miss in most modern composers."

Reflets dans l'eau was composed in 1905 as No. 1 in the first series of Images also containing Hommage à Rameau and Mouvement. Debussy believed the Images would "take their place in piano literature... to the left of Schumann or the right of Chopin." Reflections in the Water is one of the miracles of musical impressionism.

Myra Hess (1890-1965) was one of the best-loved musicians of her time. She studied with Tobias Matthay at the Royal Academy of Music. Hess understood that the making of a major career takes infinite patience, time and strength both physical and emotional. Myra Hess never let up; season after season she crossed the oceans and travelled countless miles to attend to her work. She was one of the few women whose performing careers equalled in success those of the male stars of her era. Her programmes were serious; she never thought of playing down to an audience, no matter how provincial. Throughout World War II she programmed and performed more than 160 works, including the complete cycle of Mozart Concerti at her famous National Gallery afternoon concerts in a musically-starved London. For her great service to her art, she was made Dame Myra Hess.

La Cathédrale engloutie or The Engulfed (Submerged) Cathedral is the longest of Debussy's 24 Préludes. Debussy himself premiered it in 1910. It is music bathed in mystery, echoing with the sound of ancient bells. It is based on an old Breton legend of the Cathedral of Ys, engulfed in water because of impiety but rising at sunrise.

Eugene d'Albert (1864-1932) was born in Scotland. D'Albert was one of the finest musicians of the late nineteenth century. His teacher, Liszt, called him "The Astonishing d'Albert" and "The Second Tausig." His playing possessed ardour, intellectual power and romantic intensity. Beethoven was his speciality and he made an edition of the Sonatas which is still valuable for its discriminating thoughts on phrasing and fingering.

The young Artur Rubinstein heard him around 1900 in Beethoven's Fourth Concerto and stated that it was "played with a nobility and tenderness which has remained in my mind as the model performance of this work."

D'Albert composed a great deal and his works included a dozen operas of which Tiefland once enjoyed popularity.

General Lavine-eccentric was published in 1913 and is No. 6 from the second book of Préludes. In this Prelude Debussy depicts the once-famous American clown and juggler Edward Lavine, who seemed to be nine feet tall. Debussy loved seeing him perform. He called him "wooden - he hid with humour and with pirouettes a too sensitive heart."


© 1996 David Dubal

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