1. FROM DAWN TILL NOON ON THE SEA
(De l'aube à midi sur la mer)
2. FROLICS OF WAVES
(Jeux de vagues)
3. DIALOGUE OF THE WIND AND THE SEA
(Dialogue du vent et de la mer)
La Mer(trois esquisses symphoniques) was composed in 1903-05. Debussy has supplied no programme other than that contained in the titles of the different movements. The music is broadly impressionistic, a tonal rendering of colors andodors, of voices imagined or perceived, no less than of moods and reveries. The comment of the French critic, M. Jean d'Undine, is suggestive: "How can any one analyze logically creations which come from a dream, ... and seem the fairy materialization of vague, acute sensations, which, experienced in feverish half-sleep, cannot be disentangled? By a miracle, as strange as it is seductive, M. Debussy possesses the dangerous privilege of being able to seize the most fantastical sports of light and of fluid whirlwinds. He is cater-cousin to the sorcerer, the prestidigitateur...."
And it has elsewhere been written of these pieces, by way of an indication of their mood:
"For Debussy the sea is wholly a thing of dreams, a thing vaguely yet rhapsodically perceived, a bodiless thing, a thing of shapes that are gaunt or lovely, wayward or capricious; visions that are full of bodement, or fitful, or passionately insistent: but that always pertain to a supra-mundane world, a region altogether of the spirit. It is a sea which has its shifting and lucent surfaces, which even shimmers and traditionally mocks. But it is a sea that is shut away from too-curious an inspection, to whose murmurs or imperious commands few have needed to pay heed; a sea whose eternal sonorities and immutable enchantments are hidden behind veils that open to few, and to none who attend without, it may be, a certain rapt and curious eagerness."
"For Debussy the sea is wholly a thing of dreams, a thing vaguely yet rhapsodically perceived, a bodiless thing, a thing of shapes that are gaunt or lovely, wayward or capricious; visions that are full of bodement, or fitful, or passionately insistent: but that always pertain to a supra-mundane world, a region altogether of the spirit. It is a sea which has its shifting and lucent surfaces, which even shimmers and traditionally mocks. But it is a sea that is shut away from too-curious an inspection, to whose murmurs or imperious commands few have needed to pay heed; a sea whose eternal sonorities and immutable enchantments are hidden behind veils that open to few, and to none who attend without, it may be, a certain rapt and curious eagerness."
FOOTNOTES:[37]Debussy follows the sensible procedure of inscribing upon his scores the date of their composition, instead of their opus numbers.[38]The tone of the horns and other brass instruments is sometimes muffled, for special effects, by the insertion of a pad in the bell of the instrument.[39]Translated by Mr. Philip Hale.[40]This third "nocturne" is scored for orchestra and a choir of women's voices. They sing no words, the eight soprano and eight mezzo-soprano voices being treated as part of the instrumental fabric.[41]Translated by Mr. Philip Hale.
FOOTNOTES:
FOOTNOTES:
[37]Debussy follows the sensible procedure of inscribing upon his scores the date of their composition, instead of their opus numbers.
[37]Debussy follows the sensible procedure of inscribing upon his scores the date of their composition, instead of their opus numbers.
[38]The tone of the horns and other brass instruments is sometimes muffled, for special effects, by the insertion of a pad in the bell of the instrument.
[38]The tone of the horns and other brass instruments is sometimes muffled, for special effects, by the insertion of a pad in the bell of the instrument.
[39]Translated by Mr. Philip Hale.
[39]Translated by Mr. Philip Hale.
[40]This third "nocturne" is scored for orchestra and a choir of women's voices. They sing no words, the eight soprano and eight mezzo-soprano voices being treated as part of the instrumental fabric.
[40]This third "nocturne" is scored for orchestra and a choir of women's voices. They sing no words, the eight soprano and eight mezzo-soprano voices being treated as part of the instrumental fabric.
[41]Translated by Mr. Philip Hale.
[41]Translated by Mr. Philip Hale.