Memory and Tonality in Debussy s Prélude à l après-midi d un faune

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1 Memory ad Toality i Debussy s Prélude à l après-midi d u faue Mark DeVoto Does the orld eed aother aalysis of Debussy s Prélude à l après-midi d u faue? This is a fair questio. The most familiar treatmets available i Eglish, icludig William Austi s Norto Critical Score, the hermeeutic aalysis by David J. Code published 7 years ago i JAMS, ad Matthe Bro s elaborately Schekeria approach i Spectrum, ot to metio my o brief outlie that appears i the revised Harmoy of Walter Pisto, ought to be eough for ayoe ho ould rather ot go through several excellet aalyses already published i other laguages. Faue has, after all, received almost as much aalytical attetio as the Prelude to Wager s Trista, ad for much the same reasos : Faue is a historical turig poit just as Trista as, ad is a piece of maageable size for a thorough explicatio ithi, oe hopes, a relatively fe pages. My examiatio here ill take up here my Pisto aalysis left off, so I beg the reader s idulgece if I recapitulate some of that as I begi. It is said that i the orks of the Impressioist paiters, light is the protagoist. I Impressioist music, it may be argued that toe-cetricity is the protagoist. I thik of Faue as a art ouveau ork o the ay to Impressioism, but toe-cetricity is all-importat, because i Faue there are to toal foci, more or less balaced ad defiig a bifocal toality of Csharp ad E. Moreover, Debussy s toal form i this ork depeds above all o absolute-pitch values, ad these are realized i harmoic quata that may be respelled eharmoically ad respaced i differet positios but that alays display the same absolute pitch-classes. These harmoic quatities ca be said to embody subcoscious emotioal ad symbolic values that ork their ay to the surface of cosciousess, ideed, the stuff of dreams ; they mea somethig to the Fau eve he he caot precisely remember hat they mea. There are classical progressios defiig the form as ell ; oe ecouters, for istace, some ell-placed ii-v-i cadeces before actually realizig that they are Debussy s o. From Mallarmé s poem, otithstadig its dautig complexity ad illful obscurity, e ko that the Fau s essetial problem is memory his oeiric memory of those ymphs. We may thik of this as ho Debussy coceived the form of his Prelude : as a graph of attempted memory, eve though cosidered as a geeral impressio. The Fau, i ceter stage ith his flute, is the pitch-class Csharp, ad Fate, the summer Afteroo ithout ymphs, is the key of 5 Memory ad Toality i Debussy s Prélude à l après-midi d u faue 2014-prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 5 13/03/14 16:11

2 E. The Fau s costat effort to recapture the memory proceeds ith icreasig imprecisio as the Prelude develops, as e ca tell from the differet ays the Csharp is harmoized ad the differet ays i hich it dissolves melodically. As so ofte elsehere i Debussy, the overall form is essetially i three parts, hich e ca defie by the presece or absece of the mai melody that first appears i the solo flute. By the middle of the Prelude, that is, the secod part of this three-part form, the melody, but ot the pitch-class C?, has disappeared almost etirely ; ith the begiig of the third part the mai melody reappears, but decisively chaged, ad by the last fe bars of the Prelude it has gradually recovered its iitial form ith a e role for the Csharp, oly to yield toally, at the very ed, to a fial E major i hich the Csharp is oly a evaescece. The opeig flute solo already defies essetial boudaries that ill be clarified soo eough. Most importat are : the iitial Csharp ; the chromatic scale segmet ; the loer G that is atidomiat, dividig the Csharp octave exactly i half ; the diatoic third measure that so clearly moves from a tetative Csharp toe ceter to a much clearer E major toic defied as a triad. So far so good, ad ay umber of aalysts have poited to these elemets. What immediately follos i m. 4 is a etirely e complex : chordal accompaimet, e timbres, ad a Asharp pitch-class that does t belog to either Csharp mior or E major. As the added major sixth above a Csharp mior triad it forms a half-dimiished seveth chord hich e o t call a Trista chord, because Debussy as careful to make explicit use of the Trista chord i the characteristic Trista spacig i earlier orks such as La Damoiselle Élue ad the ufiished Rodrigue et Chimèe. The Asharp7 chord resolves chromatically via to commo toes Asharp-Bflat ad Gsharp-Aflat. This is very similar to the stadard classical resolutio of raised VI7 to V65. Example 1 Toally, this chord of resolutio Debussy otated it as Bflat7 of course is the root-positio domiat of Dsharp, ad more of it ill be heard very soo. The pitch-class D is the lik to the ext e harmoy : a root-positio D major seveth (m. 11). This o supports Csharp i the flute melody as a strog dissoace. The oder is that the G7 harmoy that supports the G of the flute melody is so much more cosoat tha the D major seveth. 6 Cahiers Debussy o prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 6 13/03/14 16:11

3 Example 2 But i fact this is a familiar augmeted-sixth chord, proceedig from a ufamiliar major seveth chord via uorthodox voice-leadig ; Schubert used this same progressio i reverse i his Great C major Symphoy. Example 3 : Schubert, Symphoy i C major, D 944, IV From this poit, Debussy gives us full harmoy for the mysterious flute melody ; the D i the bass yields to Dsharp i m. 13, adumbratig the more complete root-positio domiat seveth of E (ith Gsharp13th) that i tur resolves to a E triad ith added Csharp sixth. Example 4 7 Memory ad Toality i Debussy sprélude à l après-midi d u faue 2014-prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 7 13/03/14 16:11

4 Is this, here at m. 13, the first real toic soority i the Prelude E major because its precedig domiat is so strog? Probably ; but the Csharp eighbor ote of B also vitiates the toic stregth of E. This is oly a cotiuig hit that Csharp ad E ill be competig for cetricity. Nor does it last, for the ext stable soority is a Asharp43 chord at m. 14. Example 5 This harmoy as already heard i root positio at m. 5, ad it ill lik up agai at mm , to alterate ith a real Trista chord, ith Wager s same origial pitch-classes, stated four times at mm to support the Csharp as domiat of Fsharp the oly time Trista makes his presece ko i the ork, but here he is oly part of a domiat of Fsharp. Example 6 Debussy s third statemet of the Csharp, at m. 21, is the most stable so far, as the added major sixth above the E major triad as at m Cahiers Debussy o prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 8 13/03/14 16:11

5 Example 7 Oce agai the Csharp focus is balaced ith E cetricity the Csharp because e have already heard it tice before as the iitial pitch-class of this flute melody, ad the E because of its root-positio triadic stregth. The E major is redeemed by m. 23, hoever, ith its strog domiat. The flute melody, already let loose i m. 22, is sho here i m. 23 to udergo chromatic developmet, iitiatig ith A (the seveth of V7 i E). Thus freed, the flute leads off temporarily i a differet toal directio : m. 24 is clearly or almost clearly a domiat of G for a short hile, ad the flute reaches a upper C o a half-dimiished 7th, settlig back oce more to Debussy s fourth statemet of Csharp at m. 26. Example 8 Measure 26 is like m. 21 i that its root-positio soority is o E : Example 9 9 Memory ad Toality i Debussy sprélude à l après-midi d u faue 2014-prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 9 13/03/14 16:11

6 but this time it is E9, that is, E Gsharp B D Fsharp, ad the Csharp is the thirteeth, oce agai a stroger dissoace, aalogous to the D ith major seveth that e heard at m. 11. Here at 26 the E ad Csharp harmoize i the same ay that they ill agai later at m. 94 ad it is importat to ote that this flute melody does ot appear agai ith the Csharp i the flute util that late bridgig poit. The mai melody ill defiitely appear agai i betee, but ith chaged circumstaces, ad here at m. 26 it is poised to embark o further variatios the Fau is strugglig to get it right as he goes up ad do betee the Csharp ad the G, ad up agai above the Csharp to Gsharp at m. 28. Ad o e have a eve more classical cadece, ii-v-i i B major, at mm Example 10 This is the momet here some aalysts uderstadably sese the most importat formal poit of demarcatio thus far i the Prelude. The e subsectio, begiig ith the upbeat to m. 31, offers a variat of the flute melody, ideed a cosiderable variat, but startig ith the dobeat o G ad i the clariet. To be sure, e sa this same G7 at m. 11, here it as a uusual kid of augmeted sixth chord ; here, arisig from the B major triad of m. 30, it is a augmeted sixth chord of a more familiar kid, a plai Germa sixth. Ad i the bass at this poit? Csharp it ould, oe assumes, hardly have disappeared altogether. The chromatic scale segmet has burroed ito the accompayig harmoy as ell. At mm the melody graduates to a hole-toe segmet, for the first time i the Prelude, supported by the root-positio G7 ith major ith. Together ith the precedig Csharp, the G bass frames the same iterval that framed the opeig flute melody, so it might be said that the opeig flute melody is ritte as a chord stadig o its head, ad that the shado of the flute melody is retaied i the bass eve hile its chromatic skeleto daces i the clariet. Note the symmetry of this Germa-sixth chord, ith its Csharp pedal, ad their tritoe traspositio, i the Boris-bell relatioship ; the remove the D ad Gsharp from the to chords ad you have to symmetrical ad eharmoically equivalet Frech-sixth chords hich share a hole-toe mappig : 10 Cahiers Debussy o prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 10 13/03/14 16:11

7 Example 11 Whe this three-bar passage is repeated a mior third higher, mm , the sustaiig harmoy is a Bflat7, hich coects back to m.5 ad its subsequet maifestatios. The bass, formig that oblique pedal udereath the augmeted sixth chord, is o E. From this poit, for the ext 42 measures, e have the Part 2 of the three-part overall form. It is marked by the disappearace of the flute theme, ad ideed by the disappearace of ay soloistic activity for the flute. (Whe the flutes play at all i this sectio they are alays doubled.) What takes over the leadig melodic role at this poit is the oboe : the poem speaks of to pipes, after all. The tempo is icreased ; the harmoy is a clear V-I progressio i E major ; the overall orchestral texture becomes more full, ad the melodic progress more cotiuous. The etire subsectio betee mm. 37 ad 51 is trasitioal ad theme-suppressive : it develops short motives from mm. 37 ad 38, but o further, ad itroduces a subtle hit of hat ill be a structural theme : the rhythm of the oboe i m. 39, folloed by the violis i m. 40. The melodic high poit o Dflat at m. 46 suffices to coceal the ier part (clariets, Eglish hor) marked très e dehors ; this melody repeats i the violis i the ext bar ad ever returs after that. The harmoy Dflat major ith added major sixth is pre-cadetial ; e lear that by hidsight, a big supertoic upbeat to the ext three bars, mm , i the key of Aflat major, ith domiat upbeat i m. 50. At m. 51, four bars ith Aflat key sigature, 1er mouvemet, expoud the e sycopated theme, i the solo clariet, p, doux et expressif. We might have ko that this ould be comig he e heard the hors e dehors at m. 47 ; e ould ot have ko, hoever, as early as the oboe ad violi i mm It is characteristic of Debussy, characteristically ati-austro-germaic, that he itroduces his thematic material by causig it to emerge gradually from the textural backgroud. The chage of key sigature to five flats marks the formal ceter of the Prelude, ith a strog e melody occupyig ceter stage. I terms of toality, too, this passage is the structural ceterpiece, but it is also emblematic of the mai flute melody that is etirely abset here : oly its dream remais, i the form of the Dflat-G tritoe i the bass. 11 Memory ad Toality i Debussy sprélude à l après-midi d u faue 2014-prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 11 13/03/14 16:11

8 Example 12 The harmoy of m. 56 is a substitute for a domiat, i the form of a special augmeted sixth chord iverted, so that the iterval is the dimiished third of G Bdoubleflat ith appoggiatura F, the hole soority mappig ith the hole-toe scale. Debussy has used this harmoy before, at the begiig of the Act III sketch of Rodrigue et Chimèe : Example 13 : Debussy : Rodrigue et Chimèe, begiig of Act III sketch But this sketch passage is so closely similar to the begiig of Frack s Les Éolides that it is a fair guess that Debussy might have remembered it from there. This chord, ith its appoggiaturas, is i fact a double-fuctio chord, a augmeted sixth i to differet keys. Example Cahiers Debussy o prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 12 13/03/14 16:11

9 The Gflat mior triad that follos adumbrates the subdomiat major harmoy that ill appear at m. 67. The A mior melody at m. 61 is t etirely e ; it is related to the melody at m. 28. Its cadecig harmoy, last beat of m. 62, is aother augmeted sixth chord, iterpretig the C seveth above the D bass as a Bsharp risig to Csharp (Dflat). Example 15 The big Dflat major melody o repeats i strig octaves, ith throbbig ids decoratig the origial harmoy, ad after four bars the melody cotiues ith the sycopated E dehors melody of m. 47, plus a segmet just heard i m. 62 ; this etire seve-bar melodic stretch is assembled out of remembered fragmets. The passage icludes the dyamic climax of the etire Prelude, a sigle ff markig, ad that oly i the strigs ad harps. The strogest classical cadece i the etire Prelude, ii-v-i (compare mm ), is stretched out over mm , eve do to the sfz domiat bass i the harp i the upbeat to 74 good recordigs ever miss this. Example 16 Part 3 begis at m. 79 ith the retur of the four-sharp key sigature, Mouvt du Début, ad ith it the solo flute ad the mai melody, begiig o E, ad descedig ot by a tritoe but by a perfect fourth to B. 13 Memory ad Toality i Debussy sprélude à l après-midi d u faue 2014-prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 13 13/03/14 16:11

10 Example 17 The harmoizatio is oderful : a first-iversio E major triad at m. 79, ad the bass moves to Csharp at m. 81, like a domiat-to-toic motio i Csharp. The Fau remembers the Csharp subcosciously eve if he hears the flute melody startig o E. This is strogly structural, of course, but the motio of the bass after that to Fsharp is a stroke of geius. The idyll is iterrupted by the strage U peu plus aimé, aother deceptive cadece from E major to C major, strage because of the evaescet orchestratio, oscillatig pp muted hors, clariets, ad bassoos. The melody here is the jittery oboe, ith chromatic-scale segmets that are a variat of the clariet figures at m. 31, ad these come, of course, from the origial flute melody. The C63 alterates ith a A7, the oboe reiforcig the fifth of each of these chords. The repeat of mm is i Eflat major, ot E, ad either Csharp or E is preset ; because of this, there is o flute either, ad the melody is played by the oboe i other ords, far removed psychologically from the origial form. This is the Fau s most remote ad straied effort at recall. But remember remember! that there ere Asharp7 domiats of Eflat at mm. 5, 8-9, 17-18, ad 35-36, ad e ill have them oce more still before the Afteroo is over. The mai flute melody begiig o Csharp as last heard at m. 26, ad it returs here at m. 94 very subtly altered but over that same harmoy as before, ith E i the bass. Note the differece betee the last three otes of the melody of m. 94 ad those of m. 26 : the differece betee a half-dimiished seveth at 26 ad a full domiat seveth at 94. I m. 95, the melody takes the form of the ed of m. 27 ; simultaeously ith this is the sycopated melody from m. 47, i to umuted solo violis. 1 I the crucial measures that follo, the harmoy is supported by E i the bass : a Russia sixth i mm ad a ordiary raised ii7 i mm (read Fdoublesharp for Gatural). Toally ad harmoically mm mark the emotioal climax of the etire Prelude : the momet of the Fau s most complete recall. The mai melody is agai i the solo flute, but doubled a octave belo by solo cello. It desceds ot to G but to Gsharp, a perfect fourth as at mm Ad here, for the first time i the etire ork, the Csharp is the root of the harmoy, i a Csharp7 chord i the 43 positio. 1. This is oe of Debussy s characteristic formal devices : the cotraputal combiatio of themes dra from differet sectios of the piece. He does it i the Fataisie for piao ad orchestra, i each of the four movemets of the Petite suite, ad, later, Nuages ad Fêtes, ot to metio at a momet of superb poigacy i Act III of Pelléas et Mélisade, ad ith cocealmet i La Mer, to metio oly a fe istaces. 14 Cahiers Debussy o prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 14 13/03/14 16:11

11 Example 18 The auxiliary chord that follos it is A?7 (compare mm. 5, 14, 17, 35). The oboe takes over the melodic lie at m. 103, ith a cospicuous restatemet of the melody of m. 3 startig o C, ot E the E is i the bass, a first-iversio C major triad supportig. Example 19 It moves gradually toard oe more classical cadetial progressio : ii-v-i of E major, hich is the ultimately cocludig harmoy of the Prelude, at m No Csharp here but hat is left? The Fau s flute melody, but ot i the flute ad ot o Csharp, at m. 107, a ghostly soority of to muted hors above ad muted first violis belo. The harmoy of these bars is particularly extraordiary ote the sequetial triadic successio of E major C mior D major Bflat mior to the lo poit o a C major triad hile E still souds i the bass part. 15 Memory ad Toality i Debussy sprélude à l après-midi d u faue 2014-prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 15 13/03/14 16:11

12 Example 20 As the successio rises oce more, Csharp mysteriously reappears i the flute, of course, reiforced by the harp harmoic. This harmoy, too, has bee heard before, at m. 4, a differet spacig of Debussy s o-trista chord. The flute Csharp does t resolve so much as it dissolves, first upard to E ad the doard to Gsharp. This is the atithesis of a perfect cadece ; the Csharp that cetered so much of the Prelude is here alloed to hag i the air. Eve the fial E major triad is ot so spaced as to have its root duplicated i the upper voice, he the crotales give the uppermost part to the high B, ad the flute Gsharp i the ext-to-uppermost part. As a evoi i this paper I sho ho Debussy has bequeathed part of this last page to us before, i his 1887 suite Pritemps, first movemet, mm It is aother vivid demostratio of Debussy s absolute-pitch values i aural images, ith the E major root positio yieldig to C major first iversio, ad the E tied over i the bass. Example 21 : Debussy : Pritemps, I, mm (ci-cotre, p. 17) Perhaps it is fair to ote that the very first harmoy heard at the begiig of Pritemps is idetical i pitch-classes to the chord i m. 4 of Faue. The lesso is plai : if sprigtime comes, ca the summer afteroo be far behid? Example 22 : Debussy : Pritemps, I, begiig 16 Cahiers Debussy o prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 16 13/03/14 16:11

13 17 Memory ad Toality i Debussy sprélude à l après-midi d u faue 2014-prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 17 13/03/14 16:11

14 Refereces (selected) Austi, William W. (ed.) : Debussy : Prelude to The Afteroo of a Fau, Norto Critical Score, W. W. Norto, Barraqué, Jea : Debussy, Paris, Éditios du Seuil, 1962 ; e editio by Fraçois Lesure, Berstei, Leoard : The Uasered Questio : Six Talks at Harvard, Harvard Uiversity Press, Bro, Matthe : Toality ad Form i Debussy s Prélude à l après-midi d u faue, Music Theory Spectrum 15/2 (fall 1993), ; see especially footote 22 for a extesive list of aalyses. Code, David J. : Hearig Debussy Readig Mallarmé : Music après Wager i the Prélude à l aprèsmidi d u faue, Joural of the America Musicological Society 54/3 (fall 2001), p DeVoto, Mark : Debussy ad the Veil of Toality : Essays o His Music, Pedrago Press, DeVoto, Mark : Boris s Bells, By Way of Schubert ad Others, Curret Musicology 83 (sprig 2007), Hoat, Roy : Debussy i Proportio, Cambridge Uiversity Press, Mataige, Viviae : Le Prélude à l après-midi d u faue de Debussy : la dialectique du cotraste et de la cotiuité, Aalyse musicale 12 (Jue 1988), Meeùs, Nicolas : Le Prélude à l après-midi d u faue : ue aalyse harmoique, Aalyse musicale 13 (October 1988), Pisto, Walter, ad Mark DeVoto : Harmoy, 4th editio, 1978, , or 5th editio, 1987, ; W. W. Norto. 18 Cahiers Debussy o prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 18 13/03/14 16:11

15 Prélude à l après-midi d u faue (schematic reductio) prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 19 13/03/14 16:11

16 PART II # & #? ( ) b 37 Oboe # Sycopated motive # & b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b? b b b b b b b b b b b b b & b b b b? b b b b b b (cf. 39) b b b b b b b b b b 55. aug. 6th (iv.) app. J b 59 to 61 # # # & b b b b b? b b b b b & b b b b b # # # # # Solo V. 75 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ # # # quasi aug. 6th b PART III b b b b b 79 b # # 73 II V? b b b b b 20 Cahiers Debussy o prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 20 13/03/14 16:11

17 & 83 # # # 86 b Oboe b b b b b b b? b ΠΠ&? 90 # # (cf ) # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # b # ## # # ## # C#: V 9 ~~~~~~~~~~~ # & # Crotales ( ) # b ( ) # ( )? &? &? 94 (cf. 25) 100 Solo V. b # #. # # # # N 106 # I (cf. 5) # # # Solo. V. # # # 104 b # # # j to 106 b ~~~~ ~~~ [cf. 59??] # # E: ii V b # b b b #. j #.. (cf. 4) # prepa_texte_de_voto_02.idd 21 13/03/14 16:11