Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun [arr. Graeme Steele Johnson]
Claude Debussy's 1894 tone poem Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun has been reimagined from its lush, orchestral origins several times, notably by fellow Impressionist Maurice Ravel, for piano four hands, and again under the supervision of Arnold Schoenberg, for a hodgepodge band of thirteen players. My arrangement responds to both composers, taking its orchestrational inspiration from Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro (for the present forces minus the bass), and diverging from the Schoenberg school version by restoring the harp of the original score and trimming other instruments. Moreover, by taking up the more personal vessel of chamber music, my arrangement seeks to reconnect Debussy’s Faun with the intimacy of the poetry that inspired it.
Indeed, Mallarmé’s poem is tethered to the individual experience by its single narrator, the faun, as he daydreams of erotic encounters with a pair of nymphs. But even this most baseline narrative is full of ambiguity and dizzying imagery; the faun isn’t sure — and we’re not sure — if he’s recalling actual experiences of just fantasy: “Did I love a dream,” he wonders. But by packaging his bewildering verse in strict hexameter with Alexandrine rhymed couplets, Mallarmé contains his attacks on poetic meaning within classical forms. Debussy’s mirrors this to a tee in his Prelude. Pierre Boulez called the piece the beginning of modern music, but while Debussy’s tritones, whole tone scales and misbehaving harmonies tear at tonality from the inside, his major cadences confirm E major amid subtle looks backward to Wagner. But whereas German music strives and battles, Debussy’s music takes a more passive approach by relishing this fundamental, Freudian division of the self. Instead of trying to reconcile its tonal and chromatic poles, it basks in them, like a faun in the afternoon. Half-asleep, half-man–half-goat, half charging into the 20th century and half hanging onto the glitter of yesteryear, it balances precariously but deliciously at the dawn of a new era.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for Chamber Music Northwest
Claude Debussy's 1894 tone poem Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun has been reimagined from its lush, orchestral origins several times, notably by fellow Impressionist Maurice Ravel, for piano four hands, and again under the supervision of Arnold Schoenberg, for a hodgepodge band of thirteen players. My arrangement responds to both composers, taking its orchestrational inspiration from Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro (for the present forces minus the bass), and diverging from the Schoenberg school version by restoring the harp of the original score and trimming other instruments. Moreover, by taking up the more personal vessel of chamber music, my arrangement seeks to reconnect Debussy’s Faun with the intimacy of the poetry that inspired it.
Indeed, Mallarmé’s poem is tethered to the individual experience by its single narrator, the faun, as he daydreams of erotic encounters with a pair of nymphs. But even this most baseline narrative is full of ambiguity and dizzying imagery; the faun isn’t sure — and we’re not sure — if he’s recalling actual experiences of just fantasy: “Did I love a dream,” he wonders. But by packaging his bewildering verse in strict hexameter with Alexandrine rhymed couplets, Mallarmé contains his attacks on poetic meaning within classical forms. Debussy’s mirrors this to a tee in his Prelude. Pierre Boulez called the piece the beginning of modern music, but while Debussy’s tritones, whole tone scales and misbehaving harmonies tear at tonality from the inside, his major cadences confirm E major amid subtle looks backward to Wagner. But whereas German music strives and battles, Debussy’s music takes a more passive approach by relishing this fundamental, Freudian division of the self. Instead of trying to reconcile its tonal and chromatic poles, it basks in them, like a faun in the afternoon. Half-asleep, half-man–half-goat, half charging into the 20th century and half hanging onto the glitter of yesteryear, it balances precariously but deliciously at the dawn of a new era.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for Chamber Music Northwest