Page 251 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun (1894)
Debussy spent more of his time in the company of poets and painters than mu- sicians. His orchestral Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun, in fact, was written to precede a stage reading of the poem The Afternoon of a Faun by his friend and mentor Stéphane Mallarmé. The faun of Mallarmé’s poem is not a young deer (fawn) but a satyr (a mythological beast that is half man, half goat), who spends his days in lustful pursuit of the nymphs of the forest. On this afternoon, we see the faun, exhausted from the morning’s escapades, reclining on the forest floor in the still air of the midday heat (Figure 15.3). He contemplates future con- quests while blowing listlessly on his panpipes. The following passage from Mal- larmé’s poem suggests the dream-like mood, vague and elusive, that Debussy sought to re-create in his musical setting:
No murmur of water in the woodland scene, Bathed only in the sounds of my flute.
And the only breeze, except for my two pipes, Blows itself empty long before
It can scatter the sound in an arid rain. On a horizon unmoved by a ripple
This sound, visible and serene,
Mounts to the heavens, an inspired wisp.
Not wishing to compose narrative program music in the tra- dition of Berlioz or Tchaikovsky, Debussy made no effort to follow closely the events in Mallarmé’s poem; he wanted a succession of sonic sensations, rather than a musical story. As Debussy said at the time of the first performance in December 1894, “My Prelude is really a sequence of mood paintings, throughout which the de- sire and dreams of the Faun move in the heat of the midday sun.” When Mallarmé heard the music, he, in turn, said the following about Debussy’s musical response to the poem: “I never expected anything like it. The music prolongs the emotion of my poem and paints its scenery more passionately than colors could.”
Note that both musician and poet refer to Prelude to The Af-
ternoon of a Faun in terms of painting. But how does one create
a painting in music? Here (see Listening Cue) a musical tableau
is depicted by using the distinctive colors of the instruments,
especially the woodwinds, to evoke vibrant moods and sensa-
tions. The flute has one timbre, the oboe another, and the clari-
net yet a third. Debussy has said, in effect: “Let us focus on the sound-producing capacity of the instruments, let us see what new shades can be elicited from them, let us try new registers, let us try new combinations.” Thus, a solo flute begins in its lowest register (the pipes of the faun), followed by a harp glissando, then dabs of color from the French horn. These tonal impressions swirl, dissolve, and form again, but seem not to progress. No repeating rhythms or clear-cut meters push the music forward; instead of a singable melody as we know it, we hear a twisting, undulating swirl of sound (Example 15.1). All is lan- guid beauty, a music that is utterly original and shockingly sensual.
Figure 15.3
Mallarmé’s The Afternoon of
a Faun created something
of a sensation among late- nineteenth-century artists. This painting by Pal Szinyei Merse (1845–1920) is just one of several such representations of the faun and woodland nymphs. Notice that he holds classi-
cal panpipes, which Debussy transformed into the sound of the flute.
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Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest/© The Bridgeman Art Library
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