THE STORY BEHIND: Debussy's "La mer"

On November 11, conductor Morihiko Nakahara and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra will present DEBUSSY'S LA MER with violinist Randall Goosby. 

Title: La mer
Composer: Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Last time performed by the Rhode Island Philharmonic: Last performed February 28, 2009 with Larry Rachleff conducting. This piece is scored for two flutes, two piccolos, two oboes, two clarinets, E-flat clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings.

The Story:

You may not know that I was destined for a sailor’s life and that it was quite by chance that fate led me in another direction. However, I have always retained a passionate love for her [the sea]. You will say that the ocean does not exactly wash the Burgundian hillsides . . . and my seascapes might be studio landscapes; but I have an endless store of memories and, to my mind, they are worth more than the reality, whose beauty often deadens thought.

When Claude Debussy wrote those words in a September 1903 letter to his friend André Messager, he had been at work on La mer only a short time and was spending the summer in Burgundy. It would be another two years before the score would be ready for performance. The veiled fear of criticism in Debussy’s letter was well founded, for the critics were fiercely divided about the new work. Several contended that Debussy had achieved a new stage of development, while others viewed the music in some negative ways. For example, Pierre Lalo declared in Le Temps, “I neither hear, nor see, nor feel the sea.” History would suggest that such critics merely misunderstood the work.
       
Debussy gave La mer the subtitle Three Symphonic Sketches. Symphonic yes, but these full seascapes are anything but sketchy. La mer is the closest Debussy ever came to composing a symphony. Biographer Léon Vallas even suggests that, instead of programmatic titles, the movements could have been called Allegro, Scherzo, and Finale. Although classical movement plans and sonata forms are not part of Debussy’s conception, the romantic symphonic technique of recurrent musical themes is easily discernible: Two thematic ideas from the first movement return in the last.
       
As in much of Debussy’s music, the syntax of the music is to lay out a mosaic of short themes or shorter melodies, and intuitively improvise patterns of recurrence and development. The first movement, From Dawn Until Noon on the Sea, works with three themes. Much of the movement is dark and mysterious, with considerable attention to undulating musical figures, climaxed by a chorale from the depths.
       
The Play of the Waves gives us the play of light on the spray. This “scherzo” is actually closer to a rondo, with its diverse episodes competing against the main theme for development.
       
The threat of an approaching storm opens the Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea. A heralding theme for solo trumpet is answered in the next section by horns. This leads to the restated “chorale from the depths” in the horns followed by an undulating theme from the first movement and new musical figures throughout the orchestra. One of these becomes the material of the movement’s dynamic climax. This excitement gradually subsides, but quicker rhythmic motives spur the orchestra on to a final, glorious moment.

Program Notes by Dr. Michael Fink © 2023 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Tickets start at $20! Click HERE or call 401-248-7000 to purchase today!