Download a PDF of the program notes

Friday, May 8, 2015 at 8pm
NEC’s Jordan Hall
Stephen Hough, piano
Notes on the Program
The earliest compositions of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) reflected his training at the Paris
Conservatoire and his fascination with Richard Wagner. Debussy soured on Wagnerism in 1889, and just
then he encountered a new set of influences that changed the course of his music. At the Universal
Exposition held in Paris, Debussy soaked up Asian influences, especially Javanese gamelan music.
Around the same time, he began circulating with the Symbolist poets, including Stéphane Mallarmé and
Paul Verlaine, whose ideas about sounds and symbols in language shaped Debussy’s evolving approach
to music.
By the time Debussy composed La plus que lente in 1910, he was France’s most famous composer. This
short work for solo piano was a bit tongue-in-cheek, playing with a popular fad of the day, the “valse
lente” or slow waltz. Debussy’s title, which translates literally as The More than Slow, sets out the
implied task for the music: to be more heartbreaking, more sentimental, and more beautiful than all the
other slow waltzes reverberating through France’s salons at the time.
Debussy maintained close contact with the artists of his generation, and his music often touched upon
visual themes and imagery. For the piano collection Estampes (Prints), composed in 1903, Debussy
offered a dedication to the French artist Jacques-Émile Blanche. The three movements paint vivid scenes
from different parts of the globe; as Debussy wrote while he was working on the score, “If one cannot
afford to travel, one substitutes the imagination.” The first movement, Pagodes (Pagodas), uses the
characteristic pentatonic scale that appears in the music of China, Japan, and other Asian locales where
one finds the tiered houses of worship known as pagodas. La soirée dans Grenade (The Evening in
Granada) transports the scene to an old Moorish stronghold in southern Spain, an opportunity for
Debussy to use hypnotic rhythms and sultry scales borrowed from Arabic culture. Jardins sous la pluie
(Gardens in the Rain) returns to Debussy’s native France, with relentless piano figurations representing a
drenching rainstorm.
Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) was a piano prodigy who published his first works at age seven. Though
essentially self-taught as a pianist, he received training in composition at Warsaw’s High School of
Music. Chopin left Warsaw in late 1830 for what was meant to be his first European tour, but a populist
uprising in Poland and the subsequent crackdown by Russian forces ruled out the possibility of Chopin
returning to his homeland. His travels eventually brought him to Paris, where he made a name for himself
performing at exclusive salons (though rarely in public concerts), teaching private students, and
publishing a steady stream of piano music. His most significant romantic attachment arose in 1838, when
he began a nine-year affair with Amantine Dupin, who wrote under the name George Sand. His health
was poor for much of the last decade of his life, and he finally succumbed at age 39 to tuberculosis,
without ever having returned to his native Poland.
Chopin’s output centered on works for solo piano, primarily compact genres such as Nocturnes,
Mazurkas, Polonaises, and Waltzes. He also invented the genre of the Ballade, borrowing the title from a
centuries-old form of narrative poetry. The ballad style in question did not refer to slow love songs, which
is a more recent application of the term; for Chopin, a Ballade implied storytelling and adventure. Chopin
completed four Ballades between 1835 and 1841, establishing a tradition carried forward by Liszt,
Brahms, Fauré, and many others since.
In 1839, Chopin dedicated his Ballade No. 2 in F major, Opus 38, to Robert Schumann, returning the
favor after Schumann dedicated Kreisleriana to Chopin. There is no specific story associated with this
Ballade, but the distinctive themes and shifting keys are full of innate drama. The primary theme,
delivered sotto voce, establishes a gently rocking triplet pulse and a sweet harmonic base in F major, but
soon episodes in faster tempos—marked Presto con fuoco (Very fast and fiery) and Agitato (Agitated)—
intervene to disturb the calm. The slower music is irreparably altered in the end, closing the Ballade in the
key of A minor instead of F.
The Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Opus 23, might have been inspired by the poetry of another Polish exile,
Adam Mickiewicz, at least according to a story recounted by Schumann. (Claims made by Chopin’s
contemporaries and later historians link all four Ballades to various Mickiewicz poems, but Chopin left no
definitive programs for the works.) The First Ballade begins with a fascinating introduction, laid out in
plain octaves and ending with two harmonized measures. The last rolled chord sustains a dissonance so
pungent—E-flat over the root note of D—that some early editors tried to “correct” it. Resolution arrives
with the start of the Moderato section in a six-beat time signature. Unlike the many tempo changes in the
Second Ballade, the First Ballade develops its material continuously and organically, until a Presto coda
provides a wild, manic conclusion.
Chopin’s Ballade No. 3 in A-flat major, Opus 47, is often associated with Undine, a ballad poem by
Adam Mickiewicz. This claim can be traced to the pianist Jean Kleczyński, a Chopin expert who studied
with several of the composer’s former students in the 1860s (and who quite possibly invented the Undine
connection himself). In European mythology, an Undine is a water nymph; the classic tale has the fairy
creature exacting revenge on her human husband after she discovers his cheating. The delicate, flowing
themes at the start of the Ballade could certainly match the beautiful water spirit, although the work’s
bright disposition and buoyant ending seem far off from the fate of suffocation that befalls Undine’s
husband.
The Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Opus 52, begins deceptively with a few phrases in C major, which makes
the arrival at the home key of F minor all the more melancholy. No. 4 is the longest and most nuanced of
the Ballades, and also the most introspective, holding at dynamic levels of piano or even softer for
extended passages. As in its three predecessors, the Fourth Ballade sways with a six-beat pulse, often
phrased in the same iambic (i.e. short-long, short-long) patterns that appear in Mickiewicz’s poetry.
Debussy’s daughter Claude-Emma—or “Chouchou,” as her family called her—was born in 1905. Over
the next several years, her father assembled a whimsical piano suite in her honor titled Children’s
Corner. The opening movement, Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum, makes light of a tradition in music
pedagogy of instructional works called Gradus ad Parnassum, with the pianist’s hands racing through
arpeggios in what Debussy jokingly described to his publisher as “health-oriented, cumulative
gymnastics.” The second movement, Jimbo’s Lullaby, takes its name and lumbering mood from
Chouchou’s toy elephant. Serenade for a Doll pays tribute to another of Chouchou’s toys; the pentatonic
modes are in character with the clear, smooth surface of a porcelain figure. Following the wispy strains of
The Snow is Dancing, The Little Shepherd (another plaything) is notably pensive. The suite ends with
Golliwogg’s Cake-Walk, Debussy’s sendup of an American dance style that paved the way for ragtime
and jazz. The golliwogg was a bushy, black-faced rag doll that was extremely popular in Debussy’s time,
a troubling relic from the age of minstrelsy.
For L’isle joyeuse, composed in 1903-04, Debussy was inspired by Watteau’s The Embarkation for
Cythera (1717), a landmark rococo painting that depicts couples in a fantastical outdoor scene. In Greek
mythology, the island of Cythera was the birthplace of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Debussy
completed the work on his own “joyous isle” in 1904, when he and Emma Bardac stayed on the island of
Jersey off the Normandy coast. Debussy had left his wife Lilly for Emma, causing a terrible scandal
among their friends and prompting the happy couple to hide out abroad for the summer. L’isle joyeuse
flits through a profusion of bright themes, with whole-tone scales and other exotic modes contributing to
the music’s wild and giddy character.
© 2015 Aaron Grad