Erik Satie quipped, “I like the part at quarter to eleven best.”ĭebussy’s second reflection is titled The Play of the Waves. By noontime, light streaks across the water in a climatic brass chorale as the sun travels across the heavens. As the sea becomes more animated, melodic fragments appear and disappear quickly. Celli return to sing a lush, four-part lyric tune. Gradually, pairs of flutes and clarinets whip up watery splashes. Though at rest, the ocean seems unquestionably powerful. Muted trumpet and French horn enter with a lovely small theme, which returns in the last movement. Celli announce the dawn with a soft, rising motif. The first section is titled From Dawn to Noon on the Sea. In 1903, he began work on his musical triptych titled La Mer, subtitled “symphonic sketches,” the last of his large scale works. For the composer, the sea was a psychological phenomenon. You do not know perhaps that I was intended for the fine career of a sailor and only the chances of life led me away from it…I have an endless store of memories…Music is a free art, boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, and the sea.” On the cover of the manuscript he placed the drawing titled Hollow of the Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai. It is really the thing in nature which bests puts you in your place…The sea has been very good to me. Nonetheless, he wrote to his publisher, Jacques Durand, “the sea is always endless and beautiful. The composer’s only “ocean voyages” were the three times (including one very rough crossing) when he went to England via the English Channel. ![]() Debussy’s love of the sea derived from two sources: his father, a sailor, who told his son beguiling stories of his life on the ocean, and visual arts.
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