The Classical Music Book

230

(above which an oboe plays the four

chromatically rising notes of the

“desire” motif). Debussy’s chord,

however—shimmering amidst a

harp glissando—dissolves into

a seemingly unrelated dominant

seventh, colored by the horns

with a major ninth and sharpened

11th. Unlike Wagner, Debussy’s

work contains little tension—

each chord is to be appreciated

for the sensuality of its sound.

The similarities to Wagner’s

work make Debussy’s subversions

all the more obvious. Like Wagner,

Debussy also states his opening

melody twice more—each time

over increasingly lush harmony.

This establishes E major as the

tonic (“home”) key of the piece, but

the ambiguity of the chords used

up to this point—which do not

point clearly to a single key—

means that the arrival at E major

goes all but unnoticed in the

moment. Despite this seeming

ambiguity, under the surface,

Debussy follows a fairly traditional

tonal structure that stops the piece

from sounding incoherent.

Nine bars after the arrival of the

tonic key, Debussy even quotes

Wagner’s “desire” motif in the

clarinet, getting as far as the

third note, which he distinctively

accompanies with Wagner’s own

dominant-seventh harmony so it is

unmistakable. Debussy strips the

chord of Wagner’s context, making

it sound not tersely dissonant but

lushly exotic. Turning the unfinished

motif back and forth in descending

and ascending chromatic scales,

Debussy makes Wagner’s profound

utterance into his own plaything.

Technical experiments

The Prélude is notable for its use

of “Debussian” added-note chords.

While dominant sevenths, ninths,

11ths, or 13ths are easy to find in

the works of Wagner and Liszt,

Debussy strips them of any

expectation that, for example,

a dominant chord must always

resolve to its tonic. Rather

than working toward resolution,

Debussy progresses chromatically

in unexpected directions: often,

chords are joined to each other by

IMPRESSIONISM

Sasha Waltz & Guests, a German

dance troupe, reinterprets L’A p r è s - m i d i

d’un faune as a brightly colored and

provocative beach scene at Sadler’s

Wells Theatre, London, in 2015.

one or two common pitches or by

subtle semitonal shifts. Debussy

manipulates his audience’s

listening experience by subverting

their expectations of what will

come next; unusual harmonies

catch our attention, and we listen

closely to their “color” and effect,

hence, the reason why this sort of

harmony is often called “coloristic.”

The pulse of the Prélude is slow

beneath the surface filigree. While

mostly in triple meter, some of the

passages are in duple time, which

contain bars of two or four beats;

likewise the subdivision of the

beats varies between compound

time (each beat of the pulse

subdivided into three) and simple

(divided into two). Triple and duple

rhythms sometimes coexist; in the

middle section, the accompaniment

plays triplet cross-rhythms against

the duple melody, moving attention

away from any regularity of pulse

toward the music’s rich textural

fabric. While impressionist music is

The Afternoon of a Faun was

adapted into a ballet by Vaslav Nijinsky

in his first choreography for the Ballets

Russes. It premiered at the Théâtre du

Châtelet in Paris, in May 1912.

US_228-231_Debussy.indd 230 26/03/18 1:01 PM