Debussy---Estampes

Claude Debussy--(1862-1918)

Debussy completed Estampes in 1903. This work, together with the suite Pour le piano (1901) and D'un cahier d' esquisses (1903), marks a radical advance over the more conventional piano pieces that preceded it. While still firmly grounded in the pianistic tradition of the nineteenth century, Debussy was now experimenting with his own pictorial imagery, sonority and new composing techniques. In Estampes, his style crystallized in terms of form, rhythm and especially imagination.

Although it could hardly be called "program music", Estampes does use extra-musical imagery: oriental temples and a Javanese gamelan orchestra (chimes, gongs and bells) in "Pagodes"; a sensual "Soiree dans Granade" with strumming guitars, Arabic chants and flamenco dancing; and a stormy afternoon calmed by a lullaby in "Jardins sous la pluie." Thus Debussy points the way for the use of sound imagery by Villa-Lobos and Messiaen in the other works on this disc.

Debussy heard the Javanese gamelan at the International Exhibits of 1889 and 1890. In 1895, he wrote to the poet Pierre Louys:

"Remember the music of Java which contained every nuance, even the ones we no longer have names for. There tonic and dominant had become empty shadows, of use only to stupid children."

Sonorities in "Pagodes" recall the percussion, complex rhythmic counterpoint, the Oriental pentatonic scale, and elaborate motivic development of the gamelan. The piece is in modified sonata form.

Reviewing "Soiree dans Grenade" in the Revue Musicale, the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla said this piece contained "the most concentrated atmosphere of Andalusia... The power of evocation integrated in the pages of the 'Evening in Granada' borders on the miraculous, when one realizes that this music was composed by a foreigner guided by the foresight of genius. There is not even one bar of this music borrowed from Spanish folklore, and yet the entire composition in its most minute details conveys, admirably, Spain."

Likewise, writing to Louys in 1903, Debussy permitted himself to crow a little over this piece: "I tell you, if this isn't exactly the music they play in Granada, so much the worse for Granada."

This magical walk through the evening streets of the city starts with a slow habanera, lascivious and warm, as a background for a languid moorish chant. By the end we hear fragments of guitar music in the distance, and the piece concludes with a return of the chant.

The toccata-like "Jardins sous la pluie" is based on two French nursery songs: "Dodo, l' enfant, dodo" ("Sleep, child, sleep") and "Nous n' irons plus au bois" ("We'll go no more to the woods"). The different stages of the storm are implied by the use of different modes: the minor for the beginning of the storm, chromatic and whole-tone scales as its force builds, and the major mode for the brilliance of the sun after the rain.

Sonia Rubinsky