Il pleure dans mon coeur

German art song exploded in the early 19th century, due in large part to the inestimable lyric genius of Franz Schubert (a sampling of which you will hear at Saturday’s Gala Dinner and Concert). The impact of Schubert’s achievements rippled down the century and all across the European continent; understandably, it took some time for other national song traditions to gain a foothold. In France the first flowering of art song arrived in the music of Gabriel Fauré. And although Claude Debussy is best known today, I believe, for his piano music or his evocative musical drama Pelléas et Mélisande, his skills as a composer of mélodies deserve our deeper appreciation. In these intimate works, Debussy developed the melodic sense that would serve so well in maintaining the dramatic arch of Pelléas. All of the songs performed this evening were written by Debussy during his mid to late 20s, yet they display both melodic originality and a sincere appreciation for the textual urgencies of the great poetry before him. During his student days he more often frequented the company of writers than musicians, and figures like Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Baudelaire exercised as great an influence—if not greater—than composers such as Beethoven or Wagner. As Debussy himself put it, his musical settings of poetry “begin at the point where the word is incapable of expression; music is made for the inexpressible.”
The first two mélodies performed this evening come from Ariettes oubliées, a collection of six settings of Verlaine’s poetry. The opening bars of “Il pleure dans mon Coeur” establish the “overcast” ambience with right-hand tremolos in the piano and poignant whole-tone melody of seven pitches in the left hand. At the very moment this melodic core gives way to a chromatic continuation of the theme, the voice enters essentially in medias res (in the middle of things); the soprano soloist begins as an onlooker, making comments as an aside. A striking harmonic change on “ville” sets the stage for a rising melody in the voice by which it asserts its presence on the texture. Debussy’s lines are broad, and the eventual arrival on high G-sharp toward the end of the opening period shows the composer’s mastery of dramatic shape. The basic ABA form is enlivened with a central section that opens quasi-recitative on the question “Quoi! nulle trahison?”

(c) Jason Stell