Claude Debussy
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to “The Afternoon of a Faun”)When
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune was first performed in Paris in December 1894, it sent musical shock waves around the world. Some fifty years after its premiere, conductor/composer Pierre Boulez wrote, “The flute of the Faun brought new breath to the art of music; what was overthrown was not so much the art of development as the very concept of form itself.”Claude Debussy’s revolutionary music is based on Symbolist writer Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem,
Afternoon of a Faun, published in 1876. Both poem and music unfold without clear narrative; the kaleidoscopic nature of the text and music creates a succession of shifting moods and impressions, rather than a straightforward, linear tale. In
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and much of Debussy’s other music from this period, color and texture are the essential structural components of the music. When Mallarmé heard
Faune for the first time, he exclaimed, “I was not expecting anything of this kind! This music prolongs the emotion of my poem, and sets the scene more vividly than color.”
The compositional style Debussy employed in Faune came to be known as Impressionism, after the style of the Impressionist painters. Essentially French in its conception, Impressionistic music was a direct challenge to the Germanic tradition, which emphasized formal structure and movement generated by harmonic progression.
In the poem, Mallarmé’s faun whiles away the languid torpor of a summer afternoon in half-conscious reverie. His thoughts circle around the memory of two nymphs; did he seduce them, or only dream it? He also ponders the alluring power of music. Unlike Mallarmé’s lengthy, ruminative text, however, Debussy’s music is concise. At 10 minutes, it effectively distills and transforms Mallarmé’s dreamy imagery into subtle shadings of color and texture.
Debussy explained that the music connected “the successive scenes in which the longings and desires of the faun pass in the heat of the afternoon.” The closest Debussy comes to a direct depiction of Mallarmé’s images is the opening solo flute, a stand-in for the faun’s panpipes. 18 years after its premiere, Faune inspired dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, who danced the title role in his iconic 1912 ballet, with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.
At the premiere, the audience reacted with such overwhelming enthusiasm that conductor Gustave Doret was forced to perform an encore. Unlike the audience, critics were slower to acknowledge the importance of Debussy’s innovations. “[The Afternoon of a Faun] has a pretty sound, but there is not the least truly musical idea in it; it is no more a piece of music than the palette on which a painter has been working is a picture,” scoffed the musically conservative Camille Saint-Saëns. In this instance, as in other revolutionary musical breakthroughs, the audiences’ intuitive embrace of Debussy’s radical sound proved prescient. From its premiere 131 years ago to today, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune remains Debussy’s most popular and best-known orchestral work.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote most of his piano concertos during the 1780s, and, as was his habit, he often worked on several compositions simultaneously. Such is the case with the Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, one of three piano concertos (along with the E flat, K. 482 and the C minor, K. 491) Mozart wrote at the same time he was working on his comic opera, The Marriage of Figaro.
On first inspection, there seems little similarity between K. 488, a lyrical, reflective work, and the exuberant silliness that embodies much of Figaro. However, a closer look reveals some interesting parallels between the concerto and the opera. There are moments in Figaro, particularly the Countess’ poignant aria, “Porgi amor,” in which she laments her loveless marriage, and in the finale, when the Count begs forgiveness, which echo the emotional depth and tenderness of the concerto. Correspondingly, passages in the concerto, particularly in the Adagio, are clearly vocal – if not operatic – in both construction and conception.
When performing, Mozart improvised cadenzas for all his concertos, although many do not survive in written form. Other composers, most notably Ludwig van Beethoven, composed and notated cadenzas for several of Mozart’s piano concertos. Mozart’s original cadenza for K. 488 not only survives, but also was notated directly into the score.
K. 488 stands out for other reasons. Although oboes were standard instruments in 18th century orchestras, Mozart uses clarinets in K. 488 instead. Mozart loved the sound of this instrument, and its dark round tone adds a pensive, melancholy quality to the orchestration, particularly the Adagio. Mozart also abandoned typical piano concerto conventions by writing the Adagio in a minor key. Mozart’s choice of a minor tonality, and the particular key itself, F-sharp minor, were rare departures from his usual practice, and lend added poignancy to the music.
K. 488 was published in 1800; for most of the 19th century, it was one of only a few of Mozart’s concertos to be regularly performed. It became, and remains, one of Mozart’s most popular and beloved works.
Richard Strauss
Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40 (A Hero’s Life)
Anyone who writes a piece of music titled A Hero’s Life and places himself in the role of the hero is asking for trouble. In the spring of 1899, when Richard Strauss conducted the first performance of his tone poem Ein Heldenleben, critics denounced him as a monumental egotist.
But how autobiographical was this tone poem, really? A letter Strauss wrote to his publisher in 1898, while he was in the midst of writing Ein Heldenleben, provides insight into his thinking: “Since Beethoven’s Eroica is so extremely unpopular with our conductors and hence rarely performed, I am filling a desperate need by composing a tone poem of substantial length entitled Hero’s Life … with lots of horn sound, since horns are, after all, the thing for heroism.” A staggering number of people, including Strauss’ musical critics, completely missed the blatant sarcasm in these much-quoted words.
The Hero of Ein Heldenleben, an allegory of The Artist, battles the provincial philistinism of both critics and narrow-minded audiences. (Strauss characterized his own critics as “cheeky uneducated laymen who pronounce judgments on the most sublime works of art as if they were equal to their creators.”) After the premiere, a delighted Strauss wrote to his father that the critics “spat poison and gall, mainly because they thought from the analyses that the nasty description of the ‘Moaners and Adversaries’ was aimed at them.”
Ein Heldenleben is in six parts; in the first, we are introduced to the Hero (intrepid, assertive string theme). In The Hero’s Adversaries, (music critics), chattering winds squeal and babble over the ominous murmurings of strings and brasses. The Hero’s Companion was modeled on Strauss’ wife Pauline de Ahna, an accomplished soprano. Her theme, played by solo violin, veers from coquettish to capricious. The unaccompanied violin executes ever more complicated and daring phrases, which alternates with brief comments from the orchestra. This becomes a romantic tableau of operatic proportions, but the music critics return at the close to wreck the tender moment. On The Hero’s Battlefield, an offstage fanfare summons the Hero to battle his adversaries. The strident calls of the brasses and winds, accompanied by the snare drum, depict the epic fight in a cascade of brilliant colors and descriptive sounds. Eventually the Hero triumphs, and the eight horns announce his victory. In The Hero’s Works of Peace, Strauss’ Hero reflects on his many accomplishments; in this movement Strauss quotes extensively from his own music. Strauss quotes a long passage from his Don Quixote to usher in the final movement, The Hero’s Retirement from the World and the Fulfillment of His Life. Here the Hero recalls his angry bouts with critics (snarling brasses and agitated strings). His wife (solo violin) returns, and the two engage in a tender duet for violin and solo horn. The Hero’s majestic theme sounds one last time, a fitting peroration to a colorful, ambitious life.
© Elizabeth Schwartz
NOTE: These program notes are published by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra for its patrons and other interested readers. Any other use is forbidden without specific permission from the author, who may be contacted at http://classicalmusicprogramnotes.com.
Elizabeth Schwartz is a musician, writer, and music historian based in Portland, OR. She has been a program annotator for more than 25 years, and writes for ensembles and festivals across the United States and around the world. Ms. Schwartz has also contributed to NPR’s “Performance Today,” (now heard on American Public Media). http://classicalmusicprogramnotes.com
