Debussy: "Impressionist? Me? Imbecile!"
LstPuritan
time signature although I have heard concert performers ignore these
instructions. I've wondered how they could simply ignore something written so
clearly on the score without ever researching what it meant.
As for pedaling in Debussy, I thought that your original post was very accurate
and specific, Greg, about the "two faces" of Debussy, but I too feel some later
posts may have confused a bit of the meaning.
I have heard horrendous extremes by well-known pianists who either used too
much or too little pedal in Debussy (and Ravel). Most often they are pianists
who do not play much Debussy, i.e., Cliburn and Horowitz. Cliburn plays the
"cluster chords" in Ce Qu'a a vu le Vent D'ouest with the pedal down through
the entire progression, which is an example of interpreting "impressionist" as
"murky" and "unclear." I think this is a mistake, as I also feel it is a
mistake for the previous poster who planned to hold down the pedal through the
dramatic marcato chords in measures 92-93 of Reverie. Some of Debussy must be
pedaled frugally and responsibly no differently than any other music (pedal
each chord, pedal each major harmonic change, do not allow melody notes to blur
together when that is not clearly the intention of the composer).
On the other hand, there is Horowitz' awful rendition of l'isle joyeuse, in
which he uses almost no pedal at all and the piece sounds like a Bach toccata
on a badly tuned piano. For pieces such as this, La Cathedrale, Danseuses de
Delphes, Claire De Lune, et cetera, where Debussy is not clear in his pedal
indications common sense must dictate where and how much pedal should be used.
Uses of pedal which may be unique to Debussy's music include: blurring the
repeated chords together in Claire De Lune just before the center section with
a bit of fluttering to maintain the bass while achieving as much clarity as
possible in the upper chords, pedaling any "Bell" or "Gong" sonorities so as to
keep the dampers off allowing those sounds to ring while playing the melody
(most important in Danseuses), and using no dampers (all pedaled) for special
effects such as the submerged atmosphere of portions of La Cathedrale,
including parts indicated by "sans nuance" and the rising of the Cathedral.
However, the majestic middle fortissimo section needs to be half pedaled
carefully to keep the low C while changing for each of the chords played by
both hands.
Pedaling La Fille aux cheveux de lin is problematic because although the origin
of the title is known as the line of a poem by Leconte de Lisle of the same
name, Debussy may have also had in mind Wordsworth's poem, "The Solitary
Reaper."
"Solitary Highland lass
Reaping and singing by herself...
...I listened motionless and still;
And as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more."
The mood of Lisle's poem would suggest a faster tempo, a type of pastoral
idealism, with little pedal to support the archaic and pentatonic melody. If
one takes the approach of the "Solitary Highland lass/Reaping and singing by
herself" I would imagine playing this prelude with far more pedal through the
entire exposition of the melody, at a much slower tempo. And this is exactly
what we find in the recordings: fast tempos with little pedal, or slow tempos
with abundant rubato and lots of pedal. In this case, it's an interpretive
decision.
However, I don't feel Le Vent dans la Plaine is open to interpretation. The
title is a line from Charles-Simon Favart:
Le Vent dans la plaine
Suspend son haleine
The wind on the plain
Holds its breath
The humming ostinato here clearly should not be pedaled at all; the sound of
what amounts to two semitone trills causes the listener to hold _his_ breath
until the forte Gb Major chords and the subsequent Gb-Db tremolo in the left
hand, which can played with the pedal down for the first three chords labeled
with the crescendo, but then the pedal must change for the 4th chord which is a
"subito" pianissimo that requires the elimination of those startling preceeding
chords. With each chord change in the next few measures, Fb minor, Db major,
back to Fb minor, the pedal must change to hear both the harmony suggested by
the right hand chords and the changing tremolo 5ths in the left hand. This is
very similar to Le Vent D'ouest in that both are musical portraits of wind; the
gusty wind on the calm plain and the violent and unforgiving West wind,
respectively. Gusts of wind do not leave resonance; wind whirs by in a frenzy
and then leaves silence behind. Thus, no pedal should be employed at all for
the repeated-note octaves (I don't know any official name for these: such as
D#3 D#4 D#4 D#5 D#4 D#4 D#3, fingered 1-4-1-5-1-4-1, for example). Too many
performers treat these the same as arpeggios and pedal them thinking them to be
all belonging to the same "harmony" when they are to be fleeting bolts of
wind-like sound. These "ascending/descending broken octaves" are found in
Debussy, Liszt's B minor sonata and La Campanella, and also Prokofiev.
Debussy's use for them is far different from the others, and needs to be
examined each time they are encountered.
In Anacapri, this figuration represents festive bells and I've always pedaled
through them, seeing them as a way to evoke melodious silence with a single
note played over octaves. The harmonic meaning is nil, melodic value nil, so
in the case of Anacapri I would term them as "atmospheric" in meaning; they
connect the various incidental sounds and melodies found on Anacapri by filling
the silence with distant bells before offering a closer look at just what those
bells symbolize, and what various festivities accompany them. This is one of
my favorite Debussy pieces, and when I play it I always feel like a tourist
traveling around the land of Anacapri and hearing fragments of exotic popular
native songs, most clearly in the middle section, when the listener is in the
center of it all. Debussy marked the last five notes to be played with the
thumb; I actually go a step further and play them with either fingers 1-2-3
squeezed together (as if one were about to snap) or even with a fist. It
depends on the piano. I imagine that last whirl of polyrhythmic notes like a
fading dream as one leaves the sonorous world of Anacapri, so there is no place
for a pleasing tone; the end should be sharp, harsh, and fast. Pedal is
irrelevant in this register.
Debussy himself was not pleased with how others played his music, and it's easy
to see why.
***Debussy is not an Impressionist!!!***
When writing to his publisher he explained that in his orchestral Images he was
a musical painter of "realities. . . what imbeciles call 'impressionism'."
Although Debussy was influenced by Impressionist painters and these words were
a harsh cry against those who did not understand Impressionist art, (remember,
the term "impressionist" was originally a derogatory term used by critics to
describe the style of of a group of painters who used odd colors and vague
outlines to express the subjective snapshot of a given scene. Only later did
the Impressionists themselves adopt the term for their movement) Debussy
himself associated with figures of the Symbolist movement of the 1890s, who
were actually reactionary _against_ the Impressionists. Only Debussy's
harshest critics initially called his music Impressionism; the first use of the
term applied to him was in 1887 in the response to his offering of Printemps
for the Ecole des Beauz-Arts. Debussy was said to
"have a pronounced tendency葉oo pronounced葉oward an exploration of the
strange. One has the feeling of musical color exaggerated to the point where
it causes the composer to forget the importance of precise construction and
form. It is to be stronly hoped that he will guard against this vague
impressionism, which is one of the most dangerous enemies of truth in works of
art."
Impressionism is a subjective method of interpreting reality and presenting a
distorted and highly personal rendition of what _is_; Symbolism is an objective
method of discerning reality and presenting an _intact_ interpretation for the
recipient to distort and make personal for himself. In this way, Scriabin is
more of an Impressionist than Debussy, for his works are vague, distorted, and
highly personal interpretations of what he perceived to be reality. Debussy,
on the other hand, is a Symbolist, for he attempted to paint musically accurate
portraits of sensual reality, but did _not_ pass any judgements or compose
subjectively to his environment; rather, he composed *passively*, conveying
with pure sound the _reality_ of what he saw, read, and heard.
Baudelaire: "The artist, the true artist, the true poet, should paint only in
accordance with what he sees and feels. He must be _truly_ faithful to his own
nature. He must avoid like death itself the temptation of borrowing the eyes
or the feelings of another man, however great, for in that case the production
he gave us would be a pack of lies, in relation to himself, not _realities_."
[underline=italic]
Debussy seems to agree: "What you will be finding here [in my music] are my
own sincere impressions of reality, exactly as I felt them."
Thus, although the term impression is used here, it does not imply the
"rendition of spontaneous impression into constructed form through
subjectivity" but rather "the constructed and apparent spontaneity of
impressions rendered into form through objectivity."
Debussy: "I wanted music to have a freedom that was perhaps more inherent than
any other art, for it is not limited to a more or less exact representation of
nature, but rather to the mysterious affinity that exists between Nature and
Imagination."
The original Impressionist painters猶issarro, Monet, Degas, Renoir耀howed the
viewer all that they desired through a subjective and distorted lens. *Active*
composition. This was a natural reaction to Realism, the reaction to
Romanticism. Compare these true impressionists with Whistler and Turner,
post-impressionist Symbolists. Like Baudelaire, like E.A. Poe, like Whistler
and Turner, Debussy never tells you that the sky is purple or houses are
triangular; in fact, musically, he does not interpret anything without
considering whether he is producing with music accurate portraits of
_realities_. Whistler's Nocturne paintings are far from Impressions; they
suggest unseen furtive realities, and create mystery of concealed truths, but
do so through a great clarity of brushstroke and even greater self-discipline
against excess pre-interpretation.
Like the poor inquisition victim made famous by Edgar Allen Poe, in the music
of Debussy all that one actualy knows is that fleeting melodies, strange
harmonies, and ideas hidden in shadows and just barely concealed from view
surround him. Debussy is Poe's musical inquisitioner, torturing us with
suspense and luring us into aural traps and then surprising us once again with
a new "reality." From reality to reality we go; as pianists, our job is to
seize the position of inquisitioner and tantalize the listener with realities
barely realized and just out of reach. This requires clarity and objectivety,
the "transparency of Mozart" combined with the shrouded, mysterious, and often
witty "eccentricity of Satie" and "mystery of Scriabin."
Not an easy task, but rewarding both for the pianist and listener.
--Justin
George Gilliland
>
> Like the poor inquisition victim made famous by Edgar Allen Poe, in the music
> of Debussy all that one actualy knows is that fleeting melodies, strange
> harmonies, and ideas hidden in shadows and just barely concealed from view
> surround him. Debussy is Poe's musical inquisitioner, torturing us with
> suspense and luring us into aural traps and then surprising us once again with
> a new "reality." From reality to reality we go; as pianists, our job is to
> seize the position of inquisitioner and tantalize the listener with realities
> barely realized and just out of reach. This requires clarity and objectivety,
> the "transparency of Mozart" combined with the shrouded, mysterious, and often
> witty "eccentricity of Satie" and "mystery of Scriabin."
>
> Not an easy task, but rewarding both for the pianist and listener.
Very beautifully put, as well as the rest. . . I really must give you credit for
some exceedingly good and inspirational thinking on the interpretation of a
composer who I personally feel is equal in quality to the other greats in just
about every way.
I'm now re-evaluating my (meager two) Debussy pieces, and suddenly feel I should
find the time to learn more, which is a very good thing. . .
G.G.
Gail Mrozak
You gave Cliburn and Horowitz as examples of well-known pianists who
misused pedal in Debussy (and Ravel).
Who are your favorite pianists in these works? And why?
--
Gail Mrozak
"You play that cling cling cling jazz
or you won't get PAID tonight!"
--Stan Freberg, "The Great Pretender"
LstPuritan
You gave Cliburn and Horowitz as examples of well-known pianists who
misused pedal in Debussy (and Ravel).
Who are your favorite pianists in these works? And why? >>
Hi Gail:
I am not crazy about Cliburn in general, but especially when it comes to
Debussy. I think his repertoire is plain, he uses too much rubato in
everything, and he simply does not care much about the music he plays; he's
more interested in what his audience will think.
Van Cliburn's "My Favorite Debussy" CD contains the following:
Clair de lune (Suite bergamasque, No. 3)
Étude pour les octaves (Douze "Études, Book 1, No. 5)
Feux d'artifice (Douze Préludes, Book 2, No. 12)
Jardins sous la pluie (Estampes, No. 3)
La Fille aux cheveux de lin (Douze Préludes, Book 1, No. 8)
La plus que lente
La soirée dans Grenade (Estampes, No. 2)
La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune (Douze Preludes, Book 2, No. 7)
L'Isle joyeuse
Reverie
Reflets dans l'eau (Images, Set 1, No. 1)
Reverie and Clair de Lune are immature works from Debussy's early period.
L'Isle joyeuse and Feux d'artifice are showpieces. Reflets dans l'eau is the
safest Image (read: easy listening) from either book to play and does not
require any special technique outside of the general Chopin/Liszt school. The
etudes are showpieces and not all that interesting, IMO. Look at the preludes
he plays: another easy listener (La Fille) and a slight dip into the real
substance of Debussy with La Terrasse, which he plays like Chopin—this type of
playing does not work for the chordal sections of the piece, but Cliburn seems
downright bored with La Terasse altogether: the whole thing is rushed and there
is absolutely no sensetivity of touch. Soiree dans Grenade is the least
effective (but most conventional) of three Spanish pieces Debussy wrote, and
Jardins is a fast and difficult but pretty straightforeword work often only
noted for its incessant pentatonic repetition, compositionally more similar to
Bach and Chopin than the majority of Debussy. And then there is La Plus que
Lent, a piece I happen to like even though few have heard of it, a
strange-sounding waltz which is Debussy's equivalant of Chopin's e minor etude:
it sounds wrong until you accept it as right. This is also one of the few
Debussy pieces where swaying, agonizing, rubato is actually appropriate
(indicated both in the score and implied by the humorous title "Slower than
Slow") so it makes sense Cliburn would play it.
Essentially, Cliburn skips all the music of Debussy that makes Debussy shine
and finds among his output those pieces most closely related to 19th century
Romantic literature, with which he is more familiar than early 20th century
French music.
It's not that I blame Cliburn for choosing to play pieces that he may enjoy,
and rejecting those he doesn't, but it's not representative of Debussy IMO and
he never attempts to come to grips with the more risky Debussy pieces. Better
he choose pieces he can play decently than try to apply his 19th century logic
to the more sacred Debussy music and end up with a mess. I'm well aware of his
acheivements with Tchaikovsky, but when it comes to Debussy and Ravel—not to my
liking.
Horowitz plays "Serenade of the Doll" and L'Isle joyeuse as encores, and also
plays La Plus que Lent and La Fille. Obviously, he was looking for a
showpiece, a simple yet profound piece, an obscure piece, and a heartwarming
favorite. Still, he never really got into Debussy: La Plus Que Lent sounds
like Brahms, Serenade (easy piece) sounds like Hayden on Crack (but it's
supposed to). But La Fille is taken at breakneck speed akin to a Fleeting
Vision of Prokofiev and L'Isle joyeuse is treated as a Mozart Rondo as it would
sound on a harpsichord. Debussy trills, like Scriabin trills, are vibrations
of air for effect, not ornaments in the conventional sense of turn, mordent,
etc.
Discussing Cliburn and Horowitz don't have anything to do with your question,
but I should at least justify why I stated what I did about their Debussy
playing.
You asked who my favorite pianists for Debussy are, and also Ravel. I might
add Satie to the equation also. I have two:
1. Pascal Rogé. For a bio, try
http://www.indra.com/cso/99_00/guest_artists/roge.html
Why? He seems innately able to produce sounds in the music of Debussy and
Ravel that I simply can't hear from other pianists. I have listened to his
performances of Book I preludes a million times, and they don't get old. It
sounds like he's improvising music without even using a piano. Prelude #1,
Danseuses, is a study of motionless, yet the piece moves with a subtle charm
similar to Satie's Gymnopedies. Gong sonorities don't sound like 2 tones
played together in seconds and doubled an octave apart; they sound like gongs.
Most of all, Rogé brings a sense of humor on the one hand to pieces like
Minstrels, The Interrupted Serenade, while on the other hand plays exotic,
almost mystical pieces like Pagodes (the only of three Estampes that Cliburn
conveniently left out of his repertoire) and Et La lune descend sur le Temple
qui fuit with so little regard for showing off his own pianistic virtuosity
that the piano itself recedes into the background—some kind of link is formed
between the music and listener such that the performer and instrument cease to
matter. His recordings of the complete music of Debussy are published by
Decca, and he also recorded some Ravel, Satie, Faure, and Poulenc.
2. Sviatoslav Richter. Surprise. As far as I know, Richter did not discover
Debussy until he was in his 30s, and no recordings exist before he was at least
45. Richter's repertoire is amazing. Of course, being the champion of
Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov and Shostakovitch even when the
Soviet ministry of culture had banned them adds to his legend as primarily a
Russian pianist with the standard 19th century Chopin/Liszt to back up his
Ruski warhorses. He played almost all of Debussy, though, and by nature he was
absolutely obsessed with details to the point where he would not perform music
unless he had the score in front of him. This, by his own admission, was
because "no one can remember every performance indication in a piece of music,
and when one continues to play disregarding the music, one is interpreting,
which is disastrous. There is no doubt in my mind that there is one correct
way to play one musical work." [I'm paraphrasing] Richter plays La Cathedrale
with the same static pious admiration he plays the slow movement of that long
last Schubert sonata, sitting straight up, head slightly tilted in the dark,
and playing each chord with his clawlike hands pointing the fingers straight
down producing a sublime pianissimo despite his odd technique. Then, in the
West Wind, he sits high and close to the piano and strikes the keys with all
the firey passion that one would more likely associate with Prokofiev's 5th
concerto than a Debussy prelude. For Richter, every accent, every passage,
every trill is a device to communicate what he sees and hears in the score.
The sound he produces is very different from the French specialist Pascal Rogé;
there is even less nuance in his quiet Debussy, and even more fire in his
extroverted Debussy. While I appreciate and enjoy Rogé's restraint and
temperance, as well as his truly French style and understanding of Debussy's
world, I also equally admire Richter, the furious Russian, whose calculated and
meticulously precise technique and obsession with detail have given us
remarkable recordings of Debussy and Ravel despite the fact that he probably
could have cared less about musical movements and schools. Richter hated
analysis of any music, but IMO somehow he discovered the key to Debussy and fit
him in his repertory next to his Chopin Etudes and Shostakovitch Fugues.
--Justin
LEC
Are you familiar with Walter Gieseking's recording of the (nearly) complete
piano works of Debussy?
It's on a 4 disk set, mostly remastered from recordings in the 50's.
Although a German interpreting a French Impressionist is something of an
oxymoron, I think he does a nice job. In particular his "La Cathedrale" is
particularly nice (IMO).
Greg Presley
I have to agree that Horowitz is a rotten Debussy player. Of players from previous
generations, many agree that Gieseking had a way with Debussy's music. (I almost
said Impressionistic music-whoops) And I have liked what I've heard, although I
have listened more to his albums of Ravel's music. Greg
Greg Presley
today. I wanted to add that some (perhaps Debussy himself) likened his music to the
pointilist painters, probably because so much of it is assembled from motifs which
rarely coalesce into an unbroken line, and yet suggest such that such lines are
there - maybe just out of reach, or there if the listener is able to "connect the
dots". Of course, there is never a really good comparison of an aural art to a
visual one - something I struggled with for years in teaching music to dancers.
Greg
LstPuritan
Are you familiar with Walter Gieseking's recording of the (nearly) complete
piano works of Debussy?
It's on a 4 disk set, mostly remastered from recordings in the 50's. >>
One of my college professors gave me a taped mono copy of one of Gieseking's
live performances of two Debussy preludes: "Les sons et les parfums tournent
dans l'air du soir" and "Minstrels." The audio quality was terrible, but I
tried to listen. Les sons et les parfums is one of my favorite Debussy pieces,
and I remember feeling that he played it far too quickly, particularly near the
end where the score indicates "Tranquille et flottant," pianissimo, and una
corda, yet Gieseking ripped through those octaves like an etude at almost
double the tempo of the previous measures. And he also changed the rhythm of
the thirds (fourths in the LH) so that the 2nd 32 note in both hands was held,
and the resulting sound was changed from "bum bum ba-ba bum bum" to "bum bum
ba-bum.... ba-bum" and I didn't sense any "Plus retenu," "Comme une lointaine
sonnerie de Cors," or "Encore plus lointain et plus retenu."
Minstrels was interesting; Gieseking connects the last two eighth notes in each
measure with the first in the next measure, yet plays the right hand strictly
staccato until the last RH note. It sounded odd at first, but I did note that
he played "les 'gruppetti' sur le temps" (The grace note groups on the beat)
and it didn't sound at all wrong, although I had always played Minstrels very
much dry until measure 28. I think I should reserve any judgement until I hear
a better recording.
I played the two pieces myself for this professor, who was not a pianist, but a
German music lover and lieder singer, and she said I played Les Sons too slowly
and did not understand why I had a complete break after the 4th beat of those
5/4 measures. I hear a fragmented waltz in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th beats of the
strange 3/4 +2/4 time signature that never is allowed to fully develop; she saw
the extra 5th beat as a "caesura" of a conventional 4/4 measure. In Minstrels,
I find humor in playing the theme without any pedal; that teacher believed it
unpianistic, despite staccato dots on every single note in the score. Then
again, she was no pianist, and was used to Gieseking's slight romantic flavor
added to the bare and "floaty" texture of some Debussy. She hadn't really
looked at the music, and it wouldn't have done her much good.
I should look into a better recording of Gieseking's music; in particular, I
wonder if he observed the 6/4=3/2 indication in La Cathedrale. Thanks for the
recommendation.
--Justin