{"id":95,"date":"2012-07-11T10:45:19","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T14:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esm.rochester.edu\/debussy\/?page_id=95"},"modified":"2012-10-25T15:56:27","modified_gmt":"2012-10-25T19:56:27","slug":"debussy-premieres","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.esm.rochester.edu\/debussy\/debussy-premieres\/","title":{"rendered":"Debussy Premieres"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Saturday, October 27, 9:30 AM \u2013 5 PM, Hatch Recital Hall<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Performances of and presentations on Debussy\u2019s songs \u2013 including the North American premieres of five \u00a0previously unknown songs: &#8220;L\u2019Archet&#8221;; &#8220;Le Matelot qui tombe \u00e0 l\u2019eau&#8221;; &#8220;Romance&#8221;; &#8220;Les Elfes&#8221;; &#8220;S\u00e9guidille&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Symposium organized by Ralph P. Locke, professor of musicology, Eastman<\/p>\n<p>Guest Scholars:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Denis Herlin, Centre national de la recherch\u00e9 scientifique<\/li>\n<li>Jonathan Dunsby, professor of music theory, Eastman<\/li>\n<li>Marie Rolf, professor of music theory, Eastman<\/li>\n<li>Myl\u00e8ne Dubiau-Feuillerac, Universit\u00e9 de Toulouse<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Helen Smith, technical director<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>9:30\u201312:30: early songs of Debussy, including five previously unknown works<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>2 PM \u2013 5 PM: master class and study session<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>In the longstanding spirit at Eastman of combining first-rate performance with cutting-edge scholarship, the School devotes this final event of its <strong>Prismatic Debussy<\/strong> festival to <strong>Debussy Premieres<\/strong>: a \u201cstudy day\u201d on Debussy\u2019s early vocal works, including five songs that here receive what we believe to be their North American public premieres.\u00a0 Participants include faculty and students from the Eastman School and from the Royal College of Music (participating via Internet2), as well as eminent scholars from England, France, and Wales who have contributed notably to a better understanding of Debussy and of the art song.<\/p>\n<p>Debussy\u2019s vocal works\u2014aside from <em>Pell\u00e9as et M\u00e9lisande <\/em>and a few oft-repeated songs\u2014are much less well known outside of France than are his works for piano, chamber ensemble, or orchestra.\u00a0 Particularly fascinating are the songs and choruses that he wrote during his late teens and early twenties.\u00a0 Several of these are among his earliest published works; many others remained unpublished and unknown until very recently.\u00a0 Yet all these early songs are remarkably accomplished and inventive.\u00a0 They also are highly responsive to their poetic texts, which comes as no surprise: Debussy was an avid reader, with a particular interest in Symbolist literature and in poets such as Verlaine, who would only become widely accepted somewhat later.<\/p>\n<p>We will never know why Debussy left so many of his early vocal works unpublished.\u00a0 Many of the songs held a highly personal significance for him, notably those that he composed for Mme Marie Vasnier, a married woman with whom he apparently had a long-term affair and who\u2014a not irrelevant fact\u2014possessed a highly trained and stratospheric soprano voice.\u00a0 (For a \u00a0splendid introduction to Debussy and his creative partnership with Mme Vasnier,visit: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b0194mvs\" target=\"_blank\">www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b0194mvs<\/a>.)\u00a0 Debussy clearly intended the songs for Mme Vasnier as gifts to her, as he indicated in the dedication on the manuscript of the song \u201cCaprice\u201d: \u201cTo Mme Vasnier, these songs, conceived in some way through memory of you, can belong only to you, as does their composer.\u201d\u00a0 Perhaps, too, Debussy felt that to publish the songs he wrote for his muse would be risky to her reputation or to his own.\u00a0 More generally, he may have come to view most of the early songs as \u201claboratory\u201d works, in which a wide range of literary styles and subjects had stimulated his creativity and had helped him to find his compositional voice, which then took full flower in the piano works (e.g., <em>Suite bergamasque<\/em> and <em>Estampes<\/em>), the orchestral <em>Nocturnes <\/em>and <em>La Mer<\/em>, and <em>Pell\u00e9as et M\u00e9lisande <\/em>(which is, not coincidentally, an opera about a young man of poetic temperament in love with a married woman).<\/p>\n<p>Even when the early songs are not \u201cDebussyan\u201d in a way that is familiar to us, they are extremely well composed.\u00a0 And they show\u2014better than any testimony we might have in words from the composer\u2014the musical styles and aesthetic attitudes that Debussy was trying on, like so many suits of clothing.\u00a0 These include manners and moods typical of the salon romance of the day (\u201cNuit d\u2019\u00e9toiles,\u201d \u201cRomance\u201d), coloratura writing (\u201cLes Elfes,\u201d \u201cLa Romance d\u2019Ariel\u201d), exoticism (\u201cRondel chinois,\u201d \u201cS\u00e9guidille,\u201d the \u201cChanson espagnole\u201d duet), and an openness to the whole world outside of the bustling cities: that is, ocean, trees, and desert (as in the songs \u201cFlots, palmes, sables\u201d and \u201cLe Matelot qui tombe \u00e0 l&#8217;eau\u201d).\u00a0 The range of poets that the young Debussy set is remarkable and shows a distinct progression, from the clarity (and, at times, sentimentality) of the Parnassians\u2014e.g., Charles Leconte de Lisle and Th\u00e9odore de Banville\u2014to the challenging imagery, word play, and synaesthesia of the Symbolists\u2014e.g., Paul Verlaine and St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the songs to be performed and studied in our <strong>Debussy Premieres <\/strong>session are still little known.\u00a0 Four of them\u2014\u201cL\u2019Archet,\u201d \u201cLe Matelot qui tombe \u00e0 l\u2019eau,\u201d \u201cRomance,\u201d and \u201cLes Elfes\u201d\u2014were published for the first time this past March, thanks to the efforts of Denis Herlin, editor-in-chief of the Debussy complete-works edition.\u00a0 A fifth, \u201cS\u00e9guidille,\u201d remains unpublished but has been reconstructed by Marie Rolf (professor of music theory and associate dean of graduate studies at Eastman) and here receives what may well be its first performance since Debussy and Mme Vasnier no doubt performed it together in intimate surroundings.<\/p>\n<p>Eminent specialists on Debussy and on the song genre will launch the day\u2019s events by presenting the compositional history of the five new songs, the many distinctive features of these and other early songs, and the unique role of poetry in Debussy\u2019s creative development.\u00a0 These scholars include Denis Herlin (CNRS, Paris), Myl\u00e8ne Dubiau-Feuillerac (Universit\u00e9 de Toulouse), Marie Rolf, and Eastman professor and chair of music theory Jonathan Dunsby.<\/p>\n<p>The performers to be heard in the course of the day\u2019s events include Paris-based soprano Elizabeth Calleo (who received her MM from Eastman in 1996), Russell Miller (professor of vocal coaching and repertoire), current voice and piano students of the Eastman School, and\u2014participating by special Internet2 linkup\u2014students from the Royal College of Music (in London) as well as scholar Chris Collins (University of Bangor, Wales). The texts of the five previously unknown songs will be read in French by the noted authority on music and its relationship to language Jean-Jacques Nattiez (Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al).<\/p>\n<p>Students will perform other songs from Debussy\u2019s earliest period (ca. 1881-83, when the composer was between 19 and 21 years old), and the performances will be enriched by coaching and interpretive commentary from several different perspectives.\u00a0 Participating in this \u201cmaster class\u201d part of the day\u2019s events will be the scholars mentioned above, other Eastman faculty members, David Grayson (University of Minnesota), and noted Debussy authorities Richard Langham Smith and Roy Howat (joining us \u201con screen\u201d from the Royal College of Music).<\/p>\n<p>The Eastman School is delighted to be able to share these performances and scholarly insights with the wider music-loving community.\u00a0 Music lovers and Francophiles alike are invited to come for all or part of the day\u2019s events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday, October 27, 9:30 AM \u2013 5 PM, Hatch Recital Hall Performances of and presentations on Debussy\u2019s songs \u2013 including the North American premieres of five \u00a0previously unknown songs: &#8220;L\u2019Archet&#8221;; &#8220;Le Matelot qui tombe \u00e0 l\u2019eau&#8221;; &#8220;Romance&#8221;; &#8220;Les Elfes&#8221;; &#8220;S\u00e9guidille&#8221; Symposium organized by Ralph P. Locke, professor of musicology, Eastman Guest Scholars: Denis Herlin, Centre&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"onecolumn-page.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-95","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","description-off"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esm.rochester.edu\/debussy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esm.rochester.edu\/debussy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esm.rochester.edu\/debussy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esm.rochester.edu\/debussy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esm.rochester.edu\/debussy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.esm.rochester.edu\/debussy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/95\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esm.rochester.edu\/debussy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esm.rochester.edu\/debussy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}