La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune

The title of Debussy’s seventh prelude from the second book, “La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune,” provides something of a mystery. Debussy places the title of every prelude at the end, so even though the refinement and compactness are usually sufficient to meet his expressive needs, this tactic—according to his friend and biographer, E. Robert Schmitz—

avoids the coyness of those who have a subject and won’t say what its program is. [Debussy] also makes clear that the music is of first importance, and the stimulus to its added enjoyment is only an afterthought, a helping hand for those who need it, a confirmation for those who are wavering, and of no importance for those who have found their own thoughts so completely in the music as to need no further suggestions.

But in order to assess the relevance of the epigrammatic title to the music of the prelude Book II no. 7, we must first decode (and translate) that title. We might like “Moonlit Terrace” but that is incorrect; it is, more literally, “The Terrace for Moonlight Audiences.” Attempting to discover whose audiences and what terrace is meant, we come closer to the apparent source. More than one writer contemporary with Debussy referred to “terrasses pour tenir conseil au clair de lune”—terraces for holding counsel by moonlight—in colonial India. For instance, the French author René Puaux described the coronation ceremonies for George V, new-crowned Emperor of British India, with its “hall of victory, the hall of pleasure, the garden of the sultanesses, the terrace for moonlight audiences. . .” If this, indeed, was Debussy’s original inspiration, then we have our basic image: a colonial overlord seated amongst oriental splendor in a distant land, taking counsel and hearing petitioners in the cool evening air on his moonlit terrace.
Now, can any of this be captured in music? Certainly the evanescence and ephemeral charm of moonlight may be evoked by Debussy’s kaleidoscopic harmonic changes. This prelude is permeated with parallel chords that shift and slip without anchor in conventional tonality. Similarly, the chromatic cascades—first heard a few seconds into the piece—carry one’s imagination to distant times and places. But all of this is generic and may be found in many other compositions: echoes of Debussy’s other preludes abound, like “Danseuses de Delphes” (Delphic Dancers), “Voiles” (Sails, or Veils), “Canope” (Canopic jar), and “La cathédrale engloutie” (The Sunken Cathedral).
Chromaticism and octatonic scales in this prelude approach something of Hindustani microtonal pitch structures, though the kinship is only suggestive. Perhaps the closest association lies in rhythm, where Debussy sets out two contrasting rhythmic motives and then gradually overlaps them. If this prelude evokes Indian music or atmosphere, it is a view from afar. Schmitz’s opinion is probably nearest the truth: literary references to George’s coronation amidst Hindu splendor “captivated Debussy’s imagination, and that from this initial stimulus a series of chain-reactions, of associations brought about the mood of this deeply thoughtful and moving composition.”
The interval structure of parts of “La terrasse…” suggests, to me at least, the influence of Russian mystic composer Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), whose Fifth Piano Sonata from 1907 tries to embody a progression through the cyclical Ages of Brahma. Debussy nearly quotes the second theme of Scriabin’s Fifth Sonata, and both suggest temporal expanses barely populated with the most tentative life force. (An aside: our Festival’s exploration of India might have included Scriabin’s final work, Mysterium, the music for which would summon all mankind to India for a final love-death rite—Scriabin, of course, as head priest. The composer’s insane request to have bells suspended from clouds certainly would have posed staging difficulties for the Staunton Music Festival directors…)

(c) Jason Stell