Classical Music | Soprano

Recorded on 01/31/2006, uploaded on 01/14/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

In the midst of searching for his own unique musical voice, Claude Debussy discovered the works of the Symbolist writers Maurice Maeterlinck, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine, and thus found a reflection in words of all he sought in his own music. Maeterlinck provided him the means of escaping Wagner’s operatic influence and the libretto to his one and only complete opera Pelléas et Mélisande; Mallarmé offered the inspiration for his revolutionary orchestral tone poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune; Verlaine, the text for nearly one-third of Debussy’s total output of song. Though Debussy’s vocal music often is resigned to live in the shadows of his magnificent piano and orchestral works, his songs are no less stunning and original.

Stéphane Mallarmé poem Apparition was the basis of Claude Debussy’s 1884 setting. Debussy’s music, however, was left unpublished and did not appear in print until 1926. Beginning in E major with brilliant figurations in the high register of the piano, Debussy effectively captures the ethereal setting of Mallarmé’s text. Throughout the song, the listener follows with great awareness the passions of the poem’s narrator as he recollects the “sacred day” of his and his beloved’s first kiss and her appearance before him in the cobblestone streets. The piano accompaniment is active, painting an intricate picture in tones of Mallarmé’s scene. At the conclusion of the opening E major section (though by then that key had long been abandoned), a new section juxtaposing compound and duple rhythms emerges in G-flat major. Despite this initial intricacy, the music of this section begins to slow as it approaches what might be termed the central episode. Shifting to C major, the voice adopts a much more lyrical tune and the piano provides a steady and quiet accompaniment of reiterated chords. A reprise of the G-flat major section closes out the song, which concludes with soft chords, over resonant open fifths, ascending into the high register of the piano.      Joseph DuBose

Apparition, from Quatre chansons de jeunesse Claude Debussy

APPARITION (Stéphane Mallarmé)

The moon was saddened.  Weeping seraphs,

Dreaming, clutching their bows, amid the calm of the gossamer blossoms,

Were firing chaste sobs from dying viols

Which slipped over the blue corollas.

It was the blessed day of your first kiss.

My reverie, taking pleasure in my martyrdom

Was knowingly intoxicated by the scent of sadness

Which, even where there is no regret or disappointment, is left by the

Harvesting of a Dream in the heart which harvested it.

So I was wandering, my eyes fixed on the aged cobbles

When, the sun on your hair, in the street

And in the evening, you appeared to me laughing

And I thought I saw the fairy with her helmet of light

Who long ago would pass through my lovely, spoiled-child's dreams

For ever letting white bouquets of scented starts drift down in a

Snowfall from her open hands.

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.