Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover

Claude Debussy
Images

15.03.2020
Ein Gesprächskonzert von Rosalind Phang
In 1911, when he was almost 50 years old, Claude Debussy (1862-1918) wrote these
critical words in a letter to composer Edgar Varèse (1883-1965), words that reveal
how much he understood about the nature of his creativity: “I love pictures almost as
much as music.” The French composer sought to paint pictures with tones, to create
visions, and to the extent that his music evolved in a manner consonant with such a
painter as Monet, it was inevitable that he become associated with the painterly
movement called Impressionism. His intense desire not to be categorised made him
despise the term Impressionist.

Claude Debussy composed three works with the same title: Images. One of them is a
work for orchestra which was composed last, and the others are two sets of piano
works, which were composed between 1905 and 1907. On the 8th July 1903, Debussy
signed a contract with his publisher Durand for the publication of all three series of
Images. In a letter to his Durand, he wrote:

"Have you played the Images ...? Without false pride, I feel that these three pieces
hold together well, and that they will find their place in the literature of the piano ...
to the left of Schumann, or to the right of Chopin ... as you like it." 

Images Livre 1
- Reflets dans l’eau
- Hommage à Rameau
- Mouvement

Images Livre 2
- Cloches à travers les feuilles
- Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut
- Poissons d’or
Images pour Orchestre
- Gigues
- Ibéria
- Rondes de printemps

Images Livre 1 (1905)

Reflets dans l’eau

Water was one of the favourite subjects of Impressionist painters, and so it became for
Debussy, e.g., La Mer, and also for Ravel, e.g., Jeux d’eau. The pianist Marguerite
Long, who asked Debussy for advice on playing his music, reported that Debussy
referred to the opening motif as “a little circle in water with a little pebble falling into
it”.

Composed in three days in Eastbourne just after Debussy had completed La Mer,
Reflets dans l’eau is the first of three piano pieces that makes up the first set of
“Images” (1905). (The remaining pieces are Hommage à Rameau and Mouvement; a
second set was composed in 1907). Though positioned first, Reflets dans l’eau was
actually the last of the three pieces to be written. An earlier version of the piece dates
back to 1901 when Debussy played the first version of this piece to the pianist Ricardo
Viñes. He was unsatisfied with it which he explains in a letter to his publishes, Durand
on 19th August 1905:

“I’m touched by your impatience over the Images. What happened was this: the first
piece, ‘Reflets dans l’eau’, doesn’t satisfy me at all so I decided to write another
based on different ideas and in accordance with the most recent discoveries of
harmonic chemistry…”
An interesting anecdote of this original conception of this piece can be traced back to
when Debussy won the Prix de Rome for composition in 1884. Debussy was unhappy
even though he had won the prize because he had anticipated the musical taste of the
judges in order to win but dismissed the work he won with as “theatrical, amateurish
and boring”. As he was staring out on the lake after he had heard the news, the light
reflecting off the water was said to be the initial inspiration of Reflets dans l’eau.

Reflets dans l’eau opens with a three note motif (consisting of Ab, F and Eb) played
by the left hand which is explored in the rest of the movement. Impressions of light
reflecting off of water are extremely prevalent through the use of rapid arpeggios and
shimmering waves of sound. Debussy creates ‘reflections’ through the use of
intervals, for example in x1 and y, the three notes are ‘reflected’ by using the same
intervals (in x1, an ascending 5th and descending 4th. In y, a descending 5th and
descending 4th).

Hommage à Rameau

This piece is written in the spirit of a stately Baroque Sarabande that pays tribute to
the 18th century composer Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764). It opens with a soft
singular line in octaves, reminiscent of a Gregorian Chant. The Sarabande is a slow
stately dance in simple triple time. There is always a small stress (tenuto) on the
second beat of the bar. Bars 1 and 2 reflect this characteristic.
 Mouvement

Both sets of Images require the services of a virtuoso if the pieces are to be fully
realized. Mouvement, however, is pure virtuosity, beginning with the ostinato
(repeated) triplet figures and proceeding through a nonstop etude-like development
that Debussy said “must revolve itself in an implacable rhythm”. The difficulties of
this piece are such that the pedal has to be used with ultimate subtlety, so that
Debussy’s instruction for “whimsical but precise lightness” can be achieved.

Images Livre 2 (1907)

Interestingly, the entire second series of Images is entirely written on three staves,
making easier identification and tracking of horizontal flow and voice distribution.

Cloches à travers les feuilles

Cloches à travers les feuilles was inspired by the bells in the church steeple in the
village of Rahon in Jura, France. Rahon was the hometown of Louis Laloy, a close
friend of Debussy and also his first biographer.
Debussy first heard Javanese musicians at the Paris Universal Exposition and the
sounds of the gamelan they played stayed with him, surfacing in the allusions to the
instrument in the present piece. Writing about Java in 1913, he said:

“There was once, and there still is, despite the evils of civilization, a race of delightful
people who learnt music as easily as we learn to breathe. Their academy is the
eternal rhythm of the sea, the wind in the leaves, thousands of tiny sounds which they
listen to attentively without ever consulting arbitrary treatises.”

A whole-tone scale and layering of sounds give the effect of a background shimmer
through which emerge melodic fragments, while the whole image of the sound
permeating the landscape is accentuated by bell overtones. 

Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut

Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut was dedicated to Laloy. The name evokes
images of East Asia, leading on from Pagodes in the Estampes where Oriental sounds
like the gamelan are present, as well as a feeling of Oriental stillness and stasis.

Poissons d’or

It is said that a painting of two gold-coloured fish on a small Japanese lacquer panel
that Debussy owned was the inspiration for this work. This piece was dedicated to the
pianist Ricardo Viñes, a prominent Spanish pianist who was also an important
promoter and interpreter of Debussy’s piano music. He is the only contemporary
musician to whom Debussy dedicated a piano piece to. This dedication shows the high
regard Debussy had to Viñes’ playing.

Pianist Maurice Dumesnil (1884–1974) provides a first-hand account of how difficult

it was to satisfy Debussy on Poissons d’or. He writes about a lesson with Debussy:
“Jouez plus librement,” he would repeat. I thought I did play with great freedom, but
it was not enough. Then those initial figures of accompaniment – they had to be
lighter, almost immaterial, so one could hear the “two clarinets” up above. Toward
the middle he spoke again: “Plus gracieux, plus élégant.” But when I complied he
said “Jouez plus simplement”. I came to the conclusion that the interpretation of
Ricardo Viñes had become inseparable from his own conception; so I took it as a
model and subsequently won approval.