Debussy: Images, Book One
The first piece from Book One of Debussy’s Images, “Reflets dans l’eau,” returns to a favorite subject of his for his impressionistic musical paintings: water. Rising and falling pianissimo sixteenth notes trace gentle arcs across the opening Andantino, their circular motion perhaps suggesting the rhythmic lapping of tidewater against a bank. A pebble shatters the water’s unstained surface, and Debussy paints the ensuing ripples in a shimmering, quasi cadenza cascade of 32nd notes. The increasingly more agitated swells that follow spill over into a mighty fortissimo climax, a wave that crashes just as quickly as it rose, and subsides in a sinking, faraway coda, marked Lent.
In his austere second movement sarabande, “Hommage à Rameau,” Debussy pays tribute to that French master composer and harpsichordist of the 18th century. Along with Ravel’s later “Le tombeau de Couperin” and Debussy’s longtime avoidance of the traditionally German symphonic and sonata genres, this movement points to Debussy’s emphasis on the storied French musical legacy as a formidable alternative to its “hegemonic” Germanic counterpart.
Aptly titled “Mouvement,” the final piece is an effervescent, scurrying tapestry of unrelenting triplets. This moto perpetuo could also evoke images of water, but this time of a rolling boil character, far from the glassy stillness of the first movement’s scene.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Yale School of Music
The first piece from Book One of Debussy’s Images, “Reflets dans l’eau,” returns to a favorite subject of his for his impressionistic musical paintings: water. Rising and falling pianissimo sixteenth notes trace gentle arcs across the opening Andantino, their circular motion perhaps suggesting the rhythmic lapping of tidewater against a bank. A pebble shatters the water’s unstained surface, and Debussy paints the ensuing ripples in a shimmering, quasi cadenza cascade of 32nd notes. The increasingly more agitated swells that follow spill over into a mighty fortissimo climax, a wave that crashes just as quickly as it rose, and subsides in a sinking, faraway coda, marked Lent.
In his austere second movement sarabande, “Hommage à Rameau,” Debussy pays tribute to that French master composer and harpsichordist of the 18th century. Along with Ravel’s later “Le tombeau de Couperin” and Debussy’s longtime avoidance of the traditionally German symphonic and sonata genres, this movement points to Debussy’s emphasis on the storied French musical legacy as a formidable alternative to its “hegemonic” Germanic counterpart.
Aptly titled “Mouvement,” the final piece is an effervescent, scurrying tapestry of unrelenting triplets. This moto perpetuo could also evoke images of water, but this time of a rolling boil character, far from the glassy stillness of the first movement’s scene.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Yale School of Music