Notes for: July 17, 2018
Debussy, who died 100 years ago, had a transformative influence on musical development in the 20th century. Stravinsky called him “in all senses the century’s first musician.” This summer we’re celebrating his achievements with three remarkable sonatas that he wrote near the end of his life. If you are not familiar with them, their sound may surprise you, for they are leaner, simpler, and less texturally dense than his earlier Impressionistic masterpieces. The real surprise is that Debussy called them sonatas at all, since he had spent his life rebelling against Western European musical traditions. To Debussy, though, the sonata was simply an instrumental piece of French origin; and he turned for inspiration not to the German model but to the sonatas of the 18th-century French Baroque masters. Written while France was at war with Germany, Debussy’s sonatas were efforts to define French tradition and strengthen his own links to a French musical past that reached back to Rameau and Couperin.
The Violin Sonata is brief, forward-looking, and relatively abstract. It is a work of many moods, from sad to humorous to capricious to fiery. Like all of Debussy’s work, it is modal and harmonically ambiguous. At times it suggests Spain; at other times, gypsy fiddlers. The melodic first movement follows the traditional sonata form of exposition, development, and recapitulation. But from the violin’s melancholy opening theme, there are many irregularities. Keys shift unexpectedly. Motifs are inserted in unexpected places. The rhythmic interplay between violin and piano is complex from the very first notes, with beats often obscured, or the violin playing in 2/4 time over the piano’s 3/4 time. At times the violin and piano seem to be competing against each other rather than working together as they would be in a traditional sonata.
This first movement is subdued and nuanced except for a brief passionate outburst at the end of the development and a fiery, Spanish-tinged coda. The playful second movement is more extroverted and capricious. Titled Intermède (Fantasque et léger), it recalls another classical source much beloved by French artists: the Italian commedia del’arte and especially its floppy clowns. A rhythmic, dance-like theme alternates with a melodious second theme before the movement dies away. Debussy described the vivacious Finale as “full of a joyous tumult.” The structure, he said, with its opening subject taken from the first movement, was “an idea turning back on itself like a snake swallowing its own tail.” Again, there is a suggestion of Spain, as well as of the music of a gypsy violinist whose playing had impressed Debussy during a visit to Budapest.
The Violin Sonata was the last thing Debussy wrote. He died of colon cancer in 1918 during the German bombardment of Paris.