Classical Music | Mezzo-Soprano

Recorded on 08/06/2012, uploaded on 02/19/2013

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

From his revolutionary musical depiction of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem L'après-midi d'un faune, Claude Debussy further explored the sensual adventures of Pan in a setting of three selections from Chansons de Bilitis, a collection of poems by Pierre Louÿs. Louÿs, a close friend of the composer, wrote the poems in 1894, yet claimed instead that they were by an Ancient Grecian woman named Bilitis and discovered in an ancient tomb in Cyprus. Indeed, he went to great lengths to forward this allegation, even inventing a biography of the professed poet’s life. Despite Louÿs’s profound knowledge of Ancient Grecian culture, which certainly helped him perpetrate his fraud, his secret was in time revealed. Yet, the revelation of the hoax did little to damage the reputation the poems had already garnered or their significance in French literature.

Debussy composed his setting for female voice and piano over a period of time spanning at least a year during 1897-98. The first of the three songs (though second in published order) to come into existence, La chevelure, appeared in print separately from its companions in the October 1897 issue of L’Image. The remaining two songs, La flûte de Pan and Le tombeau de Naïades, however, were not composed until September of the following year. A public premiere took place at the Société Nationale de Musique on March 17, 1900 with the composer himself at the piano accompanying Blanche Marot. At the suggestion of Fernand Samuel, Debussy later expanded his music to incorporate the recitation and miming of six of Louÿs’s poems, as well as rescoring the accompaniment for two harps, two flutes and celeste.       Joseph DuBose

The Steans Music Institute is the Ravinia Festival's professional studies program for young musicians.