800 Words
“La Mer”
Claude Debussy
If memory serves, I was in high school, ushering for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the first time I heard Claude Debussy’s La Mer, under the baton of Maestro Thomas Michalak. My initial reaction to the piece was very much like those Parisians who first heard the work in 1905. Pierre Lalo, critic of Le Temps, an admirer of Debussy's work, wrote, "I do not hear, I do not see, I do not smell the sea". Another Parisian critic, Louis Schneider, wrote, "The audience seemed rather disappointed: they expected the ocean, something big, something colossal, but they were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer.” You have to admire French criticsm!
At the time of the premiere, Debussy’s personal life was as turbulent as the erupting sea. His wife, Rosalie Texier, had tried to commit suicide after the composer had left her for a married woman, Emma Bardac, who was pregnant with his child. It was a huge social scandal that left many Parisians looking down their noses in judgement. Perhaps the public criticism on that first night had more to do with right and wrong than it did with the “raging surf” of La Mer.
Debussy quipped at one point in his life that he was destined to be a sailor, but fate led him in another direction. The composer had fond childhood memories of the beauties of the sea, but when composing La Mer he rarely visited the ocean, spending most of his time far away from large bodies of water. He drew inspiration from art, preferring the seascapes available in painting (especially Katsushika Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa”) and literature to the physical sea. Debussy completed La Mer in March 1905 at, of all places, the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, on the English Channel coast, which he described to his publisher, Durand, as "a charming peaceful spot: the sea unfurls itself with an utterly British correctness."
Debussy entitled La Mer "three symphonic sketches," deliberately avoiding the term symphony. Simon Trezise, in his book Debussy: La Mer, comments, "He had not composed an orthodox symphony, but neither did he want La Mer to be known as a symphonic poem ... [and by calling it] 'Three symphonic sketches' ... [Debussy] must have felt that he had deftly avoided association with either genre.” While Debussy and his fellow composer Ravel hated the word ‘impressionism”, La Mer is about water, moving water, and the music is most certainly an impression of such water.
During those high school years, I was too musically immature to appreciate the harmonic instability of La Mer; hoping instead for musical themes I could whistle on the way home. Whole tone scales were foreign to my imagination longing instead for the tonic to move to the sub-dominant, the dominant and returning to the tonic. As I have grown older, and perhaps a bit wiser, I have a greater fascination and appreciation for this magnificent piece which moves from moment to moment with no reference to the past or anticipation of the future. The rapidly shifting melodies and harmonies of La Mer are in fact a metaphor for living life fully in the present moment as well as a musical description of the everchanging play of the oft mysterious ocean waves.
Of the three sketches which comprise La Mer, I am personally drawn to the first entitled, "De l'aube à midi sur la mer" (“From Dawn to midday on the Sea). There are three truly brilliant moments in this sketch that continually make me pause and reflect.
The first is the opening section which begins with tympani and basses playing a low b-natural while two harps and strings join in the predawn silence of the ocean. The mysterious quality of the writing engages my imagination and encourages me to ponder and reflect on the secrets and beauty of the ocean’s deep as well as the images and contrasts of the darkness against the morning’s first light.
Four and a half minutes into the first sketch comes the second memorable moment that is only two bars long. It arrives and passes so quickly that if you are unaware your ear misses it. It is indicated in the score, “Un peu plus movement”. The cellos are divided into four groups and play a theme like waves skipping across the water. This is punctuated by tympani and French horns that give the impression of sound echoing back across the water. It is magnificent in every way.
Finally, the fifth segment at the end of the first sketch describes the sun cutting through the fog to reveal the awesome immensity of the sea at midday. This portion of the work is only ten measures in length but filled with multiple images to engage one’s imagination. The horn chorale builds to an unexpectedly powerful climax. Out of this splendid sound, a solitary brass chord winds the music into silence.
The sea exerts an irresistible attraction on the human mind and has been a stimulus to man’s creative instincts since the dawn of time. In La Mer, Debussy portrays the sea through sonorities as he seeks to stir the memories, emotions and imagination, permitting each listener a personal perception of the sea.
June 27, 2019
