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Influences on the composition of the Piano Etudes

Debussy’s Patriotism and Connection to Chopin


Consideration of the patriotic and distinctively French elements in Debussy’s set of piano Etudes reveals the various ways in which he managed to deal with the new French cultural expectations. Within the Etudes, he implanted a number of clear points of reference to the French tradition; by composing this set, he positioned himself as a successor of this tradition. The first reference to the French tradition comes in the foreword to the set, where Debussy refers to “our admirable clavecinistes,” a reference to the French harpsichord school of the baroque era, which extends the historical connection of Debussy’s music as far back as the 17th and 18th centuries, to Couperin and Rameau. Other references to the French tradition appear in the Etudes themselves. The Etude “Pour les agrements” is devoted to the study of “the embellishments,” a clear reference to the tradition of ornamentation of French baroque keyboard music, and indeed, its first few bars are reminiscent of Couperin’s style of harpsichord composition. The etude “Pour les huit doigts” is written in such a way that it precludes the use of the thumb. This technique relates as well to the early 18th-century harpsichord technique, in which only the eight fingers were used; this further connects Debussy’s music to the historical French tradition.


One more important reference to the French tradition comes in the dedication of the whole set to Frederick Chopin. Debussy had a great knowledge and admiration for Chopin’s music, which was also considered to have a true French spirit. [1] The connection to Chopin’s music was very strong and based on Debussy’s profound previous knowledge of Chopin’s music, which stemmed from playing and teaching, editing Chopin’s music, and understanding it from a composer’s point of view. As a young pianist Debussy had studied with Mme. Marmontel, a former student of Chopin, and he was accustomed to including music by Chopin in at least a third of his solo piano programs. As a teacher he used to teach many of Chopin’s piano works.[2]

The Etudes of Chopin and Debussy have been compared by previous writers, as have their respective contributions to the pianistic tradition. Robert Godet compared the pianistic techniques they used in each of the Etudes.[3] Lockspeiser remarked that “the creation of the Debussyan piano stands out, like the creation of the Chopin piano, as a unique artistic phenomenon in the history of music, radically changing the musician’s whole conception of what the instrument can be made to convey.”[4]


The circumstances of Debussy’s personal life in 1915 involved poor health, a long drought in his creative period, and the outbreak of the war; these factors also led him to think about his legacy in the musical world. By referring to the widely respected musical figures from French history, such as Couperin and Chopin, and by creating a set of piano Etudes, a genre that was an established and important cornerstone of the piano repertoire, Debussy sought to place himself within the heritage of great composers of the past. As he wrote to his editor, Durand, in August of 1915, “I hope you’ll like them, both for their music as well as for what they denote.”[5] Marianne Wheeldon believes these words reflect Debussy’s awareness of the etudes’ importance in his placement within the music heritage.[6] In another letter to Durand, Debussy wrote about the difficult decision of whether to dedicate his set of Etudes to Couperin or Chopin. “You haven’t given me an answer about the dedication: Couperin or Chopin?”[7] Marianne Wheeldon writes about these thoughts of the dedication.


These deliberations reveal a great deal about how Debussy wanted his Etudes to be perceived and, by extension, how he wanted to be located in the history of the genre. By drawing on both composers, he traces his desired lineage through the history of “French” pianism, with Couperin representing the eighteenth century, Chopin the nineteenth, and presumably himself as heir apparent in the twentieth century.[8]


This strong feeling of wanting to be placed in the lineage of the great composers gave Debussy the meaning and motivation to create a substantial artistic musical work.


Nature as the Artistic Vehicle for the Etudes


Although Debussy was constrained in some respects, such as his desire to adhere to tradition and the necessity to address the French patriotism that arose during the First World War, he constantly sought new compositional means and more particularly a new language of piano sonorities. His primary inspirational vehicle was nature, which he regarded as having an almost religious force. His creative revival at Pourville sur la mer was inspired by the sea and its movements, the colors and the shades created by its encounter with other elements of nature such as the sun, winds, cliffs, and animals.


In his music Debussy wanted to capture nature in its broader and more abstract sense. In an interview to a musical journal Debussy said,

… We don’t pay enough attention to the thousand noises of nature around us; we don’t listen out for this music which is so varied, which she offers us so generously… This, according to me, is the new path [which young composers should follow].[9]


Debussy wanted his music to have a free flow like the flowing sounds that he heard in nature. He used rhythm, harmonies, melodies, dynamics and performance directions to create this flow. In her chapter “Debussy and Nature,” Potter further explains this ideal: “He drew a parallel between the freedom of nature and an idealized free music, based on an imaginative transformation of nature.”[10] Potter continues,

Debussy’s love of music and love of nature were one and the same. He declared that he passionately loved music, ‘and it is out of love for it that I try to release it from those sterile traditions which stifle it. It is a free, vibrant art, an open-air art, an art which measures up to the elements, to the wind, the sky, the sea![11]


On 1889 Debussy heard a concert with a Gamelan-Javanese orchestra and immediately fell in love with its music, understanding in its sound connections to the sounds of nature. In a letter he wrote about this connection:


Their [Indonesian musicians’] school consists of the eternal rhythm of the sea, the wind in the leaves, and a thousand other tiny noises, which they listen to with great care…[12]


Their sound aesthetics were inherent in Debussy’s compositional ideal.


In order to understand the artistic aesthetics and context in which Debussy composed and set his musical ideals I now turn to the musical French style and the pianos at the beginning of the 20th century. This provides an idea of the sonorities that Debussy had at his disposal.

[1] “On 17 October 1915, the Societe Frederick Chopin gathered around the composer’s [Chopin] tomb… to commemorate the sixty-sixth anniversary of his death. The president of the society, Camille Le Senne, addressed those attending the ceremony: ‘It is not only the exquisite artist, the rare virtuoso, that we came to commemorate. Chopin is connected to France by the most intimate and tight bonds, as a poet of energies, as a great patriot claiming through all forms of the aesthetic idiom, the inviolable rights of oppressed nations.’” Wheeldon, Debussy’s Late Style, 11. [2] Ibid., 62. [3] Robert Godet, “Chopin-Debussy par Robert Godet,” presented by François Lesure, Cahiers Debussy 3 (1976): 11–13. [4] Quoted in Wheeldon, Debussy’s Late Style, 55. [5] Claude Debussy, Debussy Letters, ed. François Lesure and Roger Nichols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 300. [6] Wheeldon, Debussy’s Late Style, 57. [7] Debussy, Debussy Letters, 300. [8] Wheeldon, Debussy’s Late Style, 55. [9] Caroline Potter, “Debussy and Nature,” in The Cambridge Companion to Debussy, ed. Simon Trezise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 137. [10] Ibid., 137. [11] Ibid., 151. [12] Jann Pasler, “Timbre, Voice-Leading, and the Musical Arabesque in Debussy’s Piano Music,” in Debussy in Performance, ed. James R. Briscoe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 226.



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