Debussy
La Mer
References to water abound in Debussy’s works, from instrumental works such as Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the rain, 1903) or L’eau pure du basin (Basin of pure water, 1900-01), to art songs like Fleur des eaux (Water flower, 1883) or Le jet d’eau (The jet of water, 1889), to orchestral pieces such as Sirènes (Sirens, 1897-99). Even his opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), featured a fountain scene — and its source story was based on the myth of the Melusine, a river mermaid. But it was the sea, Debussy wrote, that fascinated him most: “I love the sea and I have listened to it passionately.”
Debussy began sketching
La Mer (The Sea) in 1903, and in 1905
traveled to Eastbourne, a town on the English Channel,
to complete the piece at the seaside. His purpose, as he later wrote to his
stepson, was to depict the ocean’s constant mutability in ways that the painters
in his Impressionist milieu could not. “Music,” he wrote, “has this over
painting: it can bring together all manner of variations of color and light.”
The critics, however, neither heard the ocean nor saw the light when the work premiered in October, 1905, at the Concerts Lamoureaux in Paris. Performances in London, Boston, and New York fared no better. A Boston reviewer found the sea only in his metaphor for what he claimed was wrong with the piece: “We clung like a drowning man to a few fragments of the tonal wreck, a bit of theme here, a comprehensible figure there, but finally this muted-horn sea overwhelmed us.” At the same time, fans of Debussy’s earlier, more delicate style found La Mer too forceful and not subtle enough. Only a few recognized the work for what it was, a new development in Debussy’s musical style. Giacomo Puccini, a firm believer in Debussy’s talents, wrote that La Mer was Debussy’s own “revolt against Debussyism.”
Though the work is presented as a series of three sketches, it has a distinctly symphonic construction, its forceful, larger-scale outer movements contrasting with the playful middle movement that functions like a scherzo. Debussy gave pictorial names to each sketch, but he warned that they were not meant to be taken literally (although his friend Erik Satie joked that he liked “From Dawn to Noon on the Sea” very much, “especially the part from 10:30 to a quarter to 11:00”). Yet the work certainly conjures images of the sea, from gentle swells and sparkling surfaces to the crashing of breakers on the shore.
The first movement, De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From Dawn to Noon on the Sea), develops from short thematic fragments above muted strings to a wonderful evocation of the swelling of waves, as a theme for divided cellos swells and subsides, subtly echoed by horns and timpani. Various brief melodies detach themselves from the complex texture, melodies that Debussy will later develop in the final movement (note especially the short rising and falling theme heard first in the brass at the movement’s opening). At present, however, he is content to let this movement surge and ebb, ending with a final brass chorus that swells from fortissimo back to piano.
Jeux de vagues (The Play of the Waves) offers many rapid, brilliant figures from various sections of the orchestra. Its lighter, percussive texture includes harp and xylophone, perhaps suggesting the sparkle of light on wave. The swirling motion of this movement does not resolve, but dies away, leading us to an equally restrained opening of the final movement. But where the second movement was playful, the Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea) is powerful and urgent. The brass theme from the opening of the first movement is heard again, now a firm statement allowed to develop and grow within the larger dialogue, and contrasted against a theme of falling triplets that sound by turns either vigorous or languid. The full orch estra gathers its forces for a triumphant conclusion, timpani and bass drum accentuating the power of Debussy’s majestic sea.