From Dawn to Noon on the Sea, from La Mer, arr. Beamish

Opening the inaugural noon concert of the 2019 Staunton Music Festival is the first movement from Claude Debussy’s La Mer (1905). Although somewhat like a symphony both in its broader form and thematic unity, La Mer really defies such a simple categorization, which should come as little surprise: Debussy was notoriously critical toward contemporaries who tried to improve or expand upon the multi-movement symphony as Beethoven had left it. Debussy avoids convention, for instance, in his choice to neglect the sonata form (Exposition-Development-Recapitulation) used in more traditional symphonies. The absence of sonata form does not leave the work without structure; however, it does lend an impression of ambiguity and amorphousness, which one might argue is better suited to depicting this dynamic body of water.
Debussy begins his poetic evocation “From Dawn to Noon on the Sea” with a hushed, gradually rising passage signaling the slow arrival of the sun over the horizon. He soon introduces scattered themes. But rather than treat this material to the typical development of sonata form, Debussy subjects it to cyclical repetition—material that once surfaces on the waves later on comes back to the surface. Tonality throughout the piece is ambiguous, and one would be hard-pressed to trace the trajectory from one discrete tonal area to another within the movement. All of this is not to say, however, that the piece is directionless; time still passes on the sea as the sun rises, and it becomes clear by the end that the goal in sight has been the arrival of noon, announced by a grand fanfare which concludes on the first clear major triad (D-flat) to be heard in the entire piece.

(c) Emily Masincup and Jason Stell