CONCERT II: Dreams & Passion

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There are very few defining moments in musical history that drastically altered the future of music.  Certainly, Beethoven’s Third and Ninth Symphonies, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and Debussy’s Prelude to Afternoon of a Faun, which premiered 22 December 1894.

In a single ten-minute work, the grandiose late-Romantic era shaped by Richard Wagner collapsed, and the sounds of twentieth century were ushered in and, as modern composer and conductor Pierre Boulez often claims, “the art of music began to beat with a new pulse.” The thirty-two-year-old pianist, Claude Debussy indeed did create a completely new sound of music with this tone poem that was inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem of the same name written almost two decades earlier.

Subject wise, Debussy explains that the music was meant to convey the “desires and dreams of the faun in the afternoon heat.  Then, tired of pursuing the nymphs and naiads in their timorous flight, he abandons himself to intoxicating sleep, full of visions finally realized.”  The subject matter of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun however, is not the main interest of the composer; rather, it is the images left over from the faun’s dreams that Debussy attempts to capture, or as Debussy states, “it is the general impression of the poem.”

Musically, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun has a very transparent and almost watery quality, with no heavy brass and virtually no percussion.  The solo flute gives a vague direction to the work, while the remainder of the orchestra produces swells of colorful non-rhythmic sonorities, moving along without a clear sense of pulse.  The effect of this sensuous, fluid, subtly constructed music and supremely refined style of composition became known as impressionism in music, and thereby linking Debussy with painters such as Monet, Renoir, and Seurat.

For Debussy, music was rooted in memory.  In a letter to a pupil, Debussy wrote: “Collect impressions.  Don’t be in a hurry to write them down.  Because that’s something music can do better than painting: it can centralize variations of color and light within a single picture.”  This very statement became Debussy’s credo, mirroring statements from the impressionist and post-impressionist painters.

Earlier in his largely self-taught compositional career Debussy won the coveted Prix de Rome for composition in 1884; composed in Italy (even playing for Liszt); discovered and rejected the growing Wagnerian cult; then returned to Paris more focused and musically mature.  It was then that he composed his well-known string quartet and Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.  While Debussy’s music contains the color and ambiguity of Wagner’s harmonies, he avoids its emotional tensions.

Through his own discoveries, musically and otherwise, Debussy learned to prefer suggestion to direct statement.  He trusted no “lifeless rules invented by pendants,” as Debussy said; rather, it was his instinct that he followed, and in the process he brought to music a unique world of sensibility.

Despite that Debussy was often only admired exclusively for his harmonies, it was his images that were guided by clear melodic passages that contributed to his popularity.  Also criticized as being “boneless tonal vibrato,” Debussy’s music was capable of powerful, but controlled eruptions when needed.

In a note to his publisher, Debussy sums up this quiet musical revolution: “I feel more and more that music, by its very essence, is not something that can flow inside a rigorous, traditional form.  It consists of colors and of rhythmized time.  There is not theory.  You have only to listen.  Pleasure is law.”

Color is perhaps most associated with Debussy’s music.  In 1910 he composed a little waltz for piano titled La Plus que lente (“the more than slow” or “slower than slow”).  Despite its title of “lente,” La Plus que lente was not meant to be played slowly.  Debussy uses the word “lente” to the well-known genre in music of valse lente – a slow waltz popular in French society.

Debussy’s publisher commissioned a French composer (Henri Mouton) to orchestrate the piano score.  While Debussy supported the idea of La Plus que lente arranged for orchestra, he was not happy with the results from Mouton.  Naturally, Debussy reworked the orchestration to create a more magical and seductive sound by removing all of the brass instruments and adding a new opening to include the use of a cimbalom (which can be played on the harp).

This miniature is quintessential Debussy with its perfumed atmosphere and exaggerated sense of reality – another dream state.  The result sounds like a lazy waltz that could certainly never be danced to in reality, but only in an imaginary world.

Piazzolla wrote the first of his Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (“porteñas” refers to Buenos Aires) in 1965 with the Buenos Aires Summer movement (Verano Porteño).  Piazzolla composed it in one night for a recording session that his ensemble was to record for an upcoming production of the play Melenita de oro (Golden Hair) by his friend Alberto Rodríguez Muñoz.  Otoño Porteño (Buenos Aires Autumn) followed four years later, and then both Primavera Porteño (Buenos Aires Spring) and Invierno Porteño (Buenos Aires Winter) were written in 1970.  Originally it was not Piazzolla’s intention to write a suite that paralleled Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, as they were meant to demonstrate his Neuvo Tango and his Quintet, not an orchestra.  Occasionally the Quintet perform the four works together, but it was not until they were arranged for different ensembles that they began appearing under the title of Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires).

In the late 1990s, Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer collaborated with Russian composer Leopnid Desyatnikov to rethink and rearrange Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires as a work that directly relates them to Vivaldi’s masterpiece – meaning for solo violin and string orchestra.  The use of bandoneon and electric guitar are removed, and the movements of Piazzolla’s southern hemisphere seasons are directly associated with the seasons occurring simultaneously in Vivaldi’s Italy.  In January it is summer in Argentina, while it is winter in Italy.  So, the pieces are linked in that relative way: summer with winter, and fall with spring.  The arrangement even quotes Vivaldi’s virtuosic solo violin passages to make direct connections, hearing Vivaldi’s summer in Piazzolla’s winter for example.

Piazzolla’s electrifying blend of fire and passion with the traditional tango coupled with modern harmonies and edgy textures produced over 750 works – from intimate to theatrical, from violent to sensual, and from witty to melancholy.  By the time he returned to Buenos Aires in 1985, Piazzolla was hailed as the musician who revitalized one of the quintessential genres of Latin music, and a true revolutionary figure for tango.  While he died of a stroke in 1992, the popularity and excitement of his music is still growing.