Classical Music | Soprano

Recorded on 08/16/2005, 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 Debussy’s music, however, was left unpublished and did not appear in print until 1926.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

Lyrics by Stéphane Mallarmé

The moon was saddening.  Seraphim in tears, dreaming, bow in hand, in the calm of vaporous flowers were drawing from dying viols white sobs that glided over the blue corollas.  It was the blessed day of your first kiss.  My fantasy that loves to torment me knowingly reveled in the scent of sadness, which, even without regret and disappointment, the gathering of a dream leaves in the heart that has gathered it.  Thus I wandered, my eyes fixed on the worn pavement, when with the sun in your hair, in the street and in the evening, laughing, you appeared to me, appeared to me...and I thought I saw the fairy with her luminous cap who once through the lovely sleeps of my spoilt childhood would pass, letting her half-closed hands always snow white bouquets of perfumed stars, of perfumed stars.

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.