Nocturnes (Debussy)

“Three Scenes at Twilight”#

Based on comments in various Debussy letters and in Léon Vallas’s biography, Régnier was a symbolist poet, and his poems contain vivid imagery and dreamlike associations of ideas. In a letter to Jacques Durand on 3 September 1907, Debussy writes “I am more and more convinced that music, by its very nature, is something that cannot be cast into a traditional and fixed form. It is made up of colors and rhythms”; he found suitable material in the imagery of these poems. Debussy may have begun creating the work for an intended performance in New York City, promoted and sponsored by Prince André Poniatowski, a banker and writer, and a confidant to whom Debussy frequently expressed himself in long letters. The New York performance was to consist of the premiere of Debussy’s Fantaisie for piano and orchestra completed two years earlier, a rather traditional work in classical form but a tradition which Debussy in the next two years would reject and musically move away from (resulting in the Fantaisie never being performed or published in his lifetime); his experimental oratorio La Damoiselle élue, from four years prior, also still unperformed as yet; and the Twilight Scenes, which Debussy told the prince were “pretty much finished” even though he hadn’t put anything on paper yet. The American concert deal fell through. Debussy was already working with difficulty on his opera Rodrigue et Chimène, a biography of El Cid; it has been said that he eventually destroyed its complete score because he felt he could no longer write “that kind of music” to “that kind of literature”, but his biographer says he merely concealed them and they remained in private collections. He was also working on another orchestral triptych after a cycle of three poems by another symbolist poet, Stéphane Mallarmé, called L’après-midi d’un faune, that was more in keeping with the new style of music and inspiration Debussy was seeking. He had in fact asked Henri de Régnier, a close associate of Mallarmé, to inform the latter of his interest in setting the poems to a new kind of musical impression. Mallarmé was vehemently opposed to juxtaposing poetry and music and was strongly against Debussy’s compositional idea. After Mallarmé heard the completed Prélude based on his first poem, however, Debussy had evidently caused him to completely reverse his belief, as he expressed his astonishment in lavishing praise and admiration in a personal letter to the composer.

Three Nocturnes for solo violin and partitioned orchestra#

Meanwhile, Debussy’s Scènes au Crépuscule, after Régnier’s poetry, were completed in piano score in 1893, but before Debussy had a chance to orchestrate them he attended the premiere performance of his String Quartet in G minor in December, given by the Ysaÿe Quartet led by Belgian violin virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe. Thus it wasn’t until 1896 that he informed Ysaÿe that the music for the Nocturnes had pretty much been completed and he still wanted Ysaÿe to perform the solo violin part. By 1897, Debussy had decided to dispense with a solo violin part and the orchestral groupings, and simply write all three movements for a full orchestra. He worked for the next two years on the Nocturnes, and once confessed to his friend and benefactor, the publisher Georges Hartmann, that he was finding it more difficult to compose these three orchestral nocturnes than a five-act opera. Wanting to equal the sensation caused by the success of “The Afternoon of a Faun” piece, he drove himself toward an over-perfectionism with the Nocturnes. Having worked on the composition for as long as seven years, constantly revising it and changing its very structure several times, he expected it to live up to his own grand, avant-garde views:

Completion and further revision#

A full score of the manuscript of the Nocturnes was signed with the completion date of 15 December 1899. For several years after its publication, almost until the day he died, Debussy continued to tinker with the composition, at first making corrections to dozens of errors in his copy of the published score, then moving on to adjusting small passages and fundamentally revising the orchestration. Many of these changes were finally incorporated into a “definitive version” published in 1930 by Jobert. One reviewer states “in this new critical edition for the Debussy oeuvres complètes, all of the most important questions concerning the establishment of a text of the Nocturnes for practical performance have been confidently answered.” The Nocturnes are considered one of Debussy’s most accessible and popular works, admired for their beauty and for holding new possibilities and wonder upon repeated hearings.

Instrumentation#

The piece has the following instrumentation. ;Woodwinds : 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo) : 2 oboes : 1 cor anglais : 2 clarinets : 3 bassoons ;Brass : 4 horns in F : 3 trumpets in F : 3 trombones : 1 tuba ;Percussion : timpani : cymbals : snare drum ;Voices : women’s chorus (3rd movement only) ;Strings : 2 harps : 1st violins : 2nd violins : violas : cellos : double basses

Music#

There are three movements, each with a descriptive title. The entire work lasts approximately 25 minutes. Debussy wrote an “introductory note” to the Nocturnes and each of the individual movements, printed in the programme for the first complete performance in 1901: “The title ‘Nocturnes’ is to be interpreted here in a general and, more particularly, in a decorative sense. Therefore, it is not meant to designate the usual form of the Nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests.”

I. Nuages#

The tempo markings are “Modéré – Un peu animé – Tempo I – Plus lent – Encore plus lent.” According to Debussy, “‘Nuages’ renders the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones lightly tinged with white.” Biographer Léon Vallas recorded Debussy’s comments on the genesis of this piece:

II. Fêtes#

The tempo markings are “Animé et très rythmé – Un peu plus animé – Modéré mais toujours très rythmé – Tempo I – De plus en plus sonore et en serrant le mouvement – Même Mouvement.” According to Debussy: Léon Vallas, in his biography, continues:

III. Sirènes#

The tempo markings are “Modérément animé – Un peu plus lent – En animant surtout dans l’expression – Revenir progressivement au Tempo I – En augmentant peu à peu – Tempo I – Plus lent et en retenant jusqu’à la fin.” According to Debussy, “‘Sirènes’ depicts the sea and its countless rhythms and presently, amongst the waves silvered by the moonlight, is heard the mysterious song of the Sirens as they laugh and pass on.

Whistler and Debussy#

The title, Nocturnes, refers not to the musical tradition of the same name but to the “nocturne” paintings of Whistler, who in turn had borrowed the term from music. Debussy’s description of the Sirens movement reminded his biographer Léon Vallas of Whistler’s “Harmonies in blue and silver”. Vallas noted that Whistler “was a favourite with Debussy, and their art has often been compared.” The two were mutual influences, with Whistler borrowing from musical vocabulary to name his pictures, while Debussy did something similar in reverse.

Arrangements#

The complete work was transcribed in 1910 for two pianos by Maurice Ravel and Raoul Bardac (Debussy’s pupil and stepson), and was first performed in 1911.

External links#

• YouTube - Pierre Boulez, Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna State Opera Chorus (Salzburg Festival, August 30, 1992)
• YouTube - Mikko Franck, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Chœur de Radio France, Maîtrise de Radio France (September 15, 2017)