CLOUDS(Nuages)FESTIVALS(Fêtes)SIRENS(Sirènes)[40]
This suite was written in 1897-99. In date of composition it stands, so far as Debussy's more important works are concerned, between the operaPelléas et Mélisande(1893-95) and the "symphonic sketches"La Mer(1903-05). The score bears no explanatory note or elucidation; but the following "programme" (which, it has been remarked, would itself seem to require elucidation) is said to have been supplied by the composer:
"The title 'Nocturnes' is intended to have here a more general and, above all, a more decorative meaning. We, then, are not concerned with theformof the nocturne, but with everything that this word includes in the way of impressions and special lights."Clouds: The unchangeable appearance of the sky, with the slow and melancholy march of clouds ending in a gray agony tinted with white."Festivals: Movement, rhythm dancing in the atmosphere, with bursts of brusque light. Here, also, the episode is of a procession [a wholly impalpable and visionary pageant] passing through the festival and blended with it; but the main idea and substance obstinately remain,—always the festival and its blended music,—luminous dust participating in tonal rhythm."Sirens: The sea and its innumerable rhythm. Then amid the billows silvered by the moon the mysterious song of the Sirens is heard; it laughs and passes."[41]
"The title 'Nocturnes' is intended to have here a more general and, above all, a more decorative meaning. We, then, are not concerned with theformof the nocturne, but with everything that this word includes in the way of impressions and special lights.
"Clouds: The unchangeable appearance of the sky, with the slow and melancholy march of clouds ending in a gray agony tinted with white.
"Festivals: Movement, rhythm dancing in the atmosphere, with bursts of brusque light. Here, also, the episode is of a procession [a wholly impalpable and visionary pageant] passing through the festival and blended with it; but the main idea and substance obstinately remain,—always the festival and its blended music,—luminous dust participating in tonal rhythm.
"Sirens: The sea and its innumerable rhythm. Then amid the billows silvered by the moon the mysterious song of the Sirens is heard; it laughs and passes."[41]
These "Nocturnes" may be sympathetically approached only when it is understood that they are dream-pictures, fantasies, rather than mere picturesque transcripts of reality. The brief characterization of them by Debussy's colleague, Alfred Bruneau, is more suggestive than many an elaborate commentary: "Here, with the aid of a magic orchestra, he has lent to clouds traversing the sombre sky the various forms created by his imagination; he has set to running and dancing the chimerical beings perceived by him in the silvery dust scintillating in the moonbeams; he has changed the white foam of the restless sea into tuneful sirens."