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Stories of Symphonic Music / A Guide to the Meaning of Important Symphonies, Overtures, and Tone-poems from Beethoven to the Present Day cover

Stories of Symphonic Music / A Guide to the Meaning of Important Symphonies, Overtures, and Tone-poems from Beethoven to the Present Day

Chapter 34: THREE NOCTURNES
By Lawrence Gilman
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About This Book

The guide offers concise, non-technical explanations of symphonies, overtures, and tone-poems, arranged by composer, that orient concert-goers to the illustrative or poetic intentions behind each work. A preface argues for knowing a composition's programme when it is central to the music; individual entries summarize a work's descriptive basis, thematic outline, and salient orchestral effects without indulging in speculative interpretations. Coverage ranges from Beethoven through late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century composers and selects items likely to appear on contemporary orchestral programs, providing practical background to enhance informed listening.

THREE NOCTURNES

  1. CLOUDS (Nuages)
  2. FESTIVALS (Fêtes)
  3. SIRENS (Sirènes)[40]

This suite was written in 1897-99. In date of composition it stands, so far as Debussy's more important works are concerned, between the opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1893-95) and the "symphonic sketches" La Mer (1903-05). The score bears no explanatory note or elucidation; but the following "programme" (which, it has been remarked, would itself seem to require elucidation) is said to have been supplied by the composer:

"The title 'Nocturnes' is intended to have here a more general and, above all, a more decorative meaning. We, then, are not concerned with the form of the nocturne, but with everything that this word includes in the way of impressions and special lights.

"Clouds: The unchangeable appearance of the sky, with the slow and melancholy march of clouds ending in a gray agony tinted with white.

"Festivals: Movement, rhythm dancing in the atmosphere, with bursts of brusque light. Here, also, the episode is of a procession [a wholly impalpable and visionary pageant] passing through the festival and blended with it; but the main idea and substance obstinately remain,—always the festival and its blended music,—luminous dust participating in tonal rhythm.

"Sirens: The sea and its innumerable rhythm. Then amid the billows silvered by the moon the mysterious song of the Sirens is heard; it laughs and passes." [41]

These "Nocturnes" may be sympathetically approached only when it is understood that they are dream-pictures, fantasies, rather than mere picturesque transcripts of reality. The brief characterization of them by Debussy's colleague, Alfred Bruneau, is more suggestive than many an elaborate commentary: "Here, with the aid of a magic orchestra, he has lent to clouds traversing the sombre sky the various forms created by his imagination; he has set to running and dancing the chimerical beings perceived by him in the silvery dust scintillating in the moonbeams; he has changed the white foam of the restless sea into tuneful sirens."