Images (oubliées) [antikvár]

PREFACE Under the title Images (oubliées), three unpublished works of Debussy are now being made available for the first time in print. The composer wrote them at the end of 1894and gave them the title of/mages. The autograph was part of the collection of the pianist, Alfred Cortot, and has been known hitherto only through his recordings of Debussy's complete works for piano. The composer did publish, subsequently, two series of pieces for piano under the same title: Images I (1905), which includes /fefleK dans l'eau. Hommage a Rameau. Mouvement: Images II (1907-1908), Cloches a travers les feuilles. Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut. Poissons d'or. Last to appear were the Images for orchestra, written between 1906 and 1912, and comprising three scores: Gigues. Iberia (in the form of a triptych). Rondes de printemps. The Images "oubliées" were conceived while Debussy was working on the first version of Pelleas et Mélisande (1893-95) and on the Prelude a I' Apres-midi d' un faune (1892-94). They follow a series of pieces that do not constitute the most important part of Debussy's contribution to the literature of the piano (except perhaps for ttK Arabesques of 1888, Danse of 1890, Clair de lune from the Suite bergamasque. Marche écossaise of 1891); they precede the suile Pour le piano (1896-1901), his first truly characteristic work for piano. The Images of 1894 are dedicated to Mademoiselle Yvonne Lerolle, whom Debussy had met at the home of her father, the painter Henri Lerolle (1848-1929). Ever sensitive to the "eternal feminine," the composer must certainly have nurtured a tender feeling for the entrancing dedicatee of his Images, a fragile girl whose gentle charm, shining with the radiance of her 17 years, has been captured, in all its harmonious traits, by the paintbrush of Maurice Denis. It was at the end of the year 1894 that the Images were addressed to their dedicatee with the inscription: May these "Images" be accepted by Mademoiselle Yvonne Lerolle with a little of the joy that I have in dedicating them to her. When the second of the Images appeared under the title of Sarabande in the music supplement of the Grand Jounal du Lundi (17 February 1896), Debussy retained the dedication "to Mademoiselle Yvonne Lerolle." Memory of her endured in the heart of the musician, since the revised Sarabande, the second piece in the suite Pour le Piano of 1901, carries the heading: To Madame E. Rouan (née Y. Lerolle). The autograph of the Images, in oblong Italian format, comprises 13 pages plus a cover page contain --dedication and the following recommendation: These pieces would fare poorly in "les sak lamment illuminés" where people who do music usually congregate. They are rather ' ' bet This shows the ironic Debussy, who also sprinkles these Images with several annotations in the manner of— although not quite as caustic as—Satie. Always concerned with perfection, severely self-critical, Debussy had not thought it opportune to have the manuscript published. The first piece. Lent (mélancolique et doux). an Image truly "oublie'e," is, however, not unworthy of the composer. A kind of prelude, with subtle harmonic sensibility, it maintains a dreamlike grace in the gait of its supple rhythms.