La mer (The Sea)
Three Symphonic Sketches for Orchestra
Claude Debussy
(b. August 22, 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France; d. March 25, 1918 in Paris, France)
What Debussy sketched was not pictures but instead the sea itself translated into color, texture, and light. La mer is one of the great orchestral works of the 20th century, inviting the listener to feel, rather than simply hear, the ever-changing face of the sea.
Debussy began the composition of La mer in 1903 but did not finish it until March 1905 because his private life intruded into his career. He scandalized Paris by leaving his wife for singer Emma Bardac in 1904. After his wife attempted a very public suicide, the uproar was so great that he and Bardac avoided Paris for some time. Indeed, when the work premiered in Paris October 15th, 1905, Parisians, still in a vengeful mood, did not receive it well.
Two years later, still in Paris, Debussy conducted his own work for the first time and all was forgiven; La mer has been a popular favorite ever since. Not just listenable, it also survives detailed scrutiny as its magical details seem nearly limitless. In some ways it has the arc of a symphony with hefty outer movements and a lighter middle movement rather like a scherzo.
Debussy was a prodigy—confirmed by his admission to the prestigious Paris Conservatory at age ten. There he associated with many of the most significant musical figures of his day, but chafed at formal instruction as he wrestled with ideas inside him that were unwelcome to his teachers. He finally began to feel comfortable with his own unique approach around 1890 and his career soared soon after
The approach he took, although he himself was uncomfortable with the term, became known as impressionism. It was first seen full-fledged in Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun in 1894. Using the whole-tone and modal scales and abandoning the ideas of thematic development as it had been known for centuries, he had forged a distinct new musical language.
“From dawn to midday on the sea” begins with a calm sea at first light, barely a shimmer from the timpani and basses. Sun, wave, and wind freshening together, we hear musical fragments, rising and falling figures and dotted rhythms, that we will hear again in the final movement. Yet what brings the sea to the mind’s eye is not any cliché pattern but the texture of all the instruments contributing in their turns. Early on the impression is like the play of the water that a yachtsman picks up, looking for clues to the wind. The climax at the end is brilliant sunshine and great swells to ride before we again find smooth seas.
“Waves at play” is orchestral atmospherics. Listen for the sparkle of sunlight off the waves that the glockenspiel provides. It chimes a last time while a muted trumpet, harps, then muted strings fade into nothing.
Aggressive gestures almost from the beginning of “Dialog of the wind and the sea” soon show us what we did not know we were missing but which consummates everything gone before. Our attention riveted, Debussy slows the action—this will finish in its own time and on its own terms. The buildup is slow but inexorable. The brass take the gloves off and rough us up. We hear the falling dotted rhythm, once, and again. A mighty crash and it’s over.
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