{"id":26251,"date":"2019-06-16T06:59:53","date_gmt":"2019-06-16T06:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.camac-harps.com\/blog\/?p=26251"},"modified":"2019-10-07T13:57:12","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T13:57:12","slug":"after-debussy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.camac-harps.com\/blog\/en\/news\/after-debussy\/","title":{"rendered":"Le Tombeau de Debussy: repertoire for flute, viola and harp"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Camac blog is unlikely to disapprove of music written for or with instrument makers – and in any case, this type of collaboration has always played a part in musical development. The better an instrument is, the better the artist who will be interested in playing it, and the better a composer who’ll be inspired to write music for them. Great artists playing fine music inspire the luthiers further to improve their instruments, in a positive cycle. For a well-documented hotspot of such activity, look no further than the harp, fashionably late to the nineteenth-century party of extended chromatic richness. The Debussy Dances were commissioned by Pleyel to show off their chromatic, cross-strung instrument; in competition, \u00c9rard asked Ravel to write the Introduction et Allegro<\/em> for the double-action harp. Commercial and artistic growth are not mutually exclusive, and it’s unrealistic (and a bit reductive) to claim they should be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Debussy:<\/a>That said: the Debussy sonata for flute, viola and harp L. 137<\/a> wasn’t commissioned by a luthier, and hasn’t got virtuoso instrumental display on its agenda. It was not commissioned at all, but rather was part of Debussy’s late series of six sonatas for various instrumental combinations, inspired by the French baroque clavecin. As Debussy emerged from his creative paralysis of 1914, his music became pared-down, meticulous; a harbinger of the Neoclassicism \/ absolute music of the interwar period. Debussy never liked the term Impressionism (calling those who used it “imbeciles…particularly…the critics.”). Whatever you think “impressionist” means, the trio sonata bears little evidence of the composer’s earlier lush textures, infused with the exotic lights and sounds that had so delighted him at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Anneleen<\/a>The Debussy sonata, fin-de-si\u00e8cle masterpiece, invites thought-provoking co-programming of deeper thematic discourse than an intriguing combination of instruments. We were happy recently to send a harp for Anneleen Lenaerts<\/a> for one such concert with Adam Walker<\/a> (flute) and Timothy Ridout<\/a> (viola), at the Auditorium du Louvre on March 21st. This programme also featured Arnold Bax’s Elegaic Trio<\/a>. It seems eerily impossible that Bax could have heard Debussy’s trio before writing his own, so close together are the dates. More eerily still, the Elegaic Trio is also a response to political disaster: Bax’s sad homage to friends killed or imprisoned in\u00a0the Irish Easter Rising of 1916. We also heard Salzedo’s transcription of Ravel’s Sonatine pour piano (1903 – 1905): another neo-classical evocation of the grace and purity of the Antique world (particularly in the second mouvement de menuet<\/em>).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Toru Takemitsu’s And Then I Knew ‘Twas Wind<\/em>\u00a0projects us into 1992, but only chronologically. It’s another homage, this time to the Debussy sonata directly: “I am self-taught”, Takemitsu once said, “but Debussy is my true teacher.” The trio both depicts the wind, and via this also a sense of something more spiritual. So too can you read Emily Dickinson’s ‘Like Rain It Sounded Till It Curved’, from which Takemitsu takes his title.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If this isn’t enough to inspire your Debussy trio programming,\u00a0G\u00e9rard Chenuet – husband of V\u00e9ronique Chenuet – has made many fine arrangements for his wife’s fl-vla-hp “Trio M\u00e9lusine<\/a>“. These are all also from composers writing around the dawn of the twentieth century, and as such provide a lot of material for your trenchant windows on a complex age. Technically, they’re also more accessible than the Bax or Takemitsu. You can add Brazilian and Spanish flair with works by\u00a0Ernesto Nazareth<\/a>, and Manuel de Falla: Debussy was also keenly interested in Spanish music, as evidenced in the Serenade interrompue, Estampes<\/em> or Images<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Zemlinsky\/Chenuet:<\/a>You can also touch on the flourishing musical atmosphere of pre-war Vienna, with Chenuet’s transcriptions of Alexander Zemlinksy. “K\u00e4ferlied<\/a>” (Song of the Beetle), from Fantasien \u00fcber Gedichte von <\/em>Richard Dehmel<\/em> Op. 9, is strongly reminiscent of Brahms, while “Der Wasserman<\/a>” from the Vier Balladen<\/em> is an early work after a poem by Justinus Kerner. Both Paris and Vienna had, particularly in the face of the times, to contend with the death of Romanticism: what happened in the two musical centres was very different.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If after all this, your audience could also do with something different: Chenuet has also given some attention to the music of Frank Bridge (1879 – 1941), and Mel (M\u00e9lanie) Bonis (1858 – 1937). The Bridge transcriptions focus on various depictions of female figures: Rosemary<\/a>\u00a0and Columbine<\/a> from Three Pieces,\u00a0Nicolette<\/a> from Vignettes de Marseille no. 2, and Princess<\/a> from the Fairy Tale Suite. Mel Bonis drew much inspiration from heroic women of legend: Desdemona<\/a>, Phoebe<\/a>, Viviane<\/a> for example. Chenuet has also arranged the light-hearted Valses-Caprices<\/a>, and\u00a0Le Moustique<\/a> (the mosquito).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not every day that the harp is the recipient of a masterpiece from a great composer. And it\u2019s not always so easy to think of what to programme alongside it! We’ve been hearing some intriguing repertoire alongside Debussy’s Sonate en Trio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[778,552],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"Le Tombeau de Debussy: repertoire for flute, viola and harp - Camac Harps<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.camac-harps.com\/blog\/en\/news\/after-debussy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Le Tombeau de Debussy: repertoire for flute, viola and harp - Camac Harps\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It's not every day that the harp is the recipient of a masterpiece from a great composer. 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