Notes for: August 14, 2018
The outbreak of war took a heavy toll on the ardently patriotic Debussy. To the publisher Jacques Durand he wrote, “I have suffered much from the long drought forced upon my brain by the war.” But by 1915 he was again able to work. That summer and fall he wrote the first two of a planned cycle of six sonatas for various combinations of instruments. The cycle began auspiciously with the Sonata for Cello and Piano. Debussy had considered calling it “Pierrot fâché avec la lune” (Pierrot raging at the moon), a reference to the sad clown of French pantomime and perhaps an indication of Debussy’s state of mind when he wrote it.
Like all of Debussy’s late works, the Cello Sonata pays homage to a French musical tradition of elegance, clarity, and restraint. It takes the shape of a Classical sonata: The Prologue is in roughly ABA form, the Sérénade is a scherzo, and the Finale is a dance movement. Other than that, it is unorthodox from the unusual titles of the movements on. The first motif of the Prologue, introduced by the piano, evokes the melodies of medieval French trouvères, the northern counterparts of troubadours. This opening theme is the first of three ideas that are juxtaposed, rather than developed as they would be in a conventional sonata. The cello introduces a second theme, a descending figure that sounds like a lament, followed by a third motif of alternating major and minor ascending fourths. After a brief, agitated section led by the piano, the opening ideas are repeated once more, and the movement ends in a final restatement of the opening theme and a shift from minor to major. All of this takes place in a brief span of about three and a half minutes.
The eerie and poignant Sérénade starts with the cello plucking out a low, rhythmically jerky motif that suggests a disoriented Pierrot stumbling around, then picking up his guitar and singing in a falsetto voice. The movement is filled with wandering tonalities and irregular rhythms created by short bursts of accented notes, interruptions, and sudden changes of tempo. The Finale, which is as modally melodic and flowing as the Sérénade is spiky and abrupt, is marked by extreme shifts in tempos and the striking juxtaposition of unrelated tonalities. Debussy was pleased with the proportions and form of the sonata, which he described as “almost classical, in the good sense of the word.” Clearly making a statement, he signed the printed manuscript, “Claude Debussy, musicien français.”
In their harmonic adventurousness, Debussy’s last sonatas look to the future. As Aaron Copland said of Debussy, “His work incited a whole generation of composers to experiment with new and untried harmonic possibilities.”