Debussy: Cello Sonata
Horrified by the carnage of World War One and losing his own battle with cancer, a world-weary Debussy began work on a set of six sonatas for various instruments, though he would only finish three of these before his death cut short his plans in 1918. Ironically, the Cello Sonata from 1915, the first of the set, brims with life and energy from its first declamatory fanfare to its percussive finishing blows.
Debussy’s longtime avoidance of the traditionally German symphonic and sonata genres points to his emphasis on the storied French musical legacy as a viable alternative to its “hegemonic” German counterpart, and he maintained this priority even after his late adoption of the sonata genre. The proud poise of the piano’s D minor opening in the Cello Sonata’s Prologue is distinguished by a harmonic clarity rare for Debussy, but redolent of the music of the 18th-century French composers Rameau and Couperin. Similarly, the sighing cello theme that emerges from the ashes of the florid ornamentation in the bars before recalls the character of a Baroque operatic lament.
The second movement Sérénade upends the textural status quo, trading the plodding sustain of the first movement for pointillistic, walking pizzicato and vanishing wisps of bowed phrases. In the frenetic Animé, the cello, marked “light and nervous,” lurches back and forth between Debussy’s 17 tempo changes, which add to the manic character of the movement.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival
Horrified by the carnage of World War One and losing his own battle with cancer, a world-weary Debussy began work on a set of six sonatas for various instruments, though he would only finish three of these before his death cut short his plans in 1918. Ironically, the Cello Sonata from 1915, the first of the set, brims with life and energy from its first declamatory fanfare to its percussive finishing blows.
Debussy’s longtime avoidance of the traditionally German symphonic and sonata genres points to his emphasis on the storied French musical legacy as a viable alternative to its “hegemonic” German counterpart, and he maintained this priority even after his late adoption of the sonata genre. The proud poise of the piano’s D minor opening in the Cello Sonata’s Prologue is distinguished by a harmonic clarity rare for Debussy, but redolent of the music of the 18th-century French composers Rameau and Couperin. Similarly, the sighing cello theme that emerges from the ashes of the florid ornamentation in the bars before recalls the character of a Baroque operatic lament.
The second movement Sérénade upends the textural status quo, trading the plodding sustain of the first movement for pointillistic, walking pizzicato and vanishing wisps of bowed phrases. In the frenetic Animé, the cello, marked “light and nervous,” lurches back and forth between Debussy’s 17 tempo changes, which add to the manic character of the movement.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival