“Perhaps you do not know that I was destined for the fine life of a sailor and that it was only by chance that I was led away from it. But I still have a great passion for it,” Claude Debussy wrote to a friend at the time he began work on La mer in 1903. Shortly before the premiere in 1905, he commented to his publisher: “The sea has been very good to me. She has shown me all her moods.” Ironically Debussy composed most of La mer far from the sea in the hills of Burgundy, believing that countless recollections were worth more than “…a reality whose charm generally weighs too heavily.”
The sea itself was not his only inspiration. Together with many late-nineteenth-century painters, Debussy greatly admired Japanese art, especially the prints and drawings of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). One print in particular, The Hollow Wave off Kanagawa, appealed to the composer. It portrays three boats and their terrified crews almost swallowed by a giant wave, the curve of the wave breaking into spray and foam. Debussy chose the detail of the wave as a cover for the score of La mer.
The three movements of La mer are titled Symphonic Sketches, although they approach the symphonic structures of César Franck’s Symphony in D minor as well as the symphonies of Vincent d’Indy. There are numerous memorable melodic motives, which appear in more than one movement.
The first sketch, “From Dawn till Noon on the Sea,” opens with a gentle murmur on the strings and harp, portraying the usual early morning calm, eventually joined by the woodwinds. As the sea gradually awakens flexing its immense power, the brass introduce a melodic motto that will recur at the end. Imitating the interplay of sunlight and waves, fragments of melody reappear with constant shifts of rhythm and orchestral color, reflecting the irregularity of the water’s surface. Towards the end a chorale evokes the splendor of the midday sun.
The second sketch, “Play of the Waves,” tosses musical fragments around until, hesitantly, the wind and the motion of the waves picks up. The water becomes choppy before subsiding again into the calm playfulness, then gradually fading away. The many solos in this movement illustrate the infinite variety of the waves. Its principal musical theme is a trill motive in the woodwinds.
“Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea” is by far the most turbulent of the three sketches and was composed during the worst period of the composer’s personal troubles. The approaching storm growls ominously growing in strength, then subsiding. as if the sea is in the eye of the storm. Slowly the violence picks up again, but Debussy’s storm while powerful, is never a force five gale. The main theme in this section is a surging motive in the oboes, but the movement repeats and transforms melodies from the first movement as well.