Contains A Night in the House of Usher Un Jour affreux avec Le Diable dans le beffroi, Les accords de septi�me regrettent!!!, Petite Valse,F�tes galantes, and Pr�lude � ?L?Histoire de Tristan?

From Robert Orledge's notes:

My interest in the wonderful music of Claude Debussy began in the 1980s when I researched and published a book with Cambridge University Press entitled Debussy and the Theatre. During the course of my studies in Paris, I was amazed to discover that Debussy planned over 50 theatrical works but only finished two of these entirely by himself (the opera Pell�as et M�lisande in 1893?1902 and the ballet Jeux for Diaghilev?s Ballets Russes in 1912?13). Of the rest, many were never started musically (like Siddartha and Orph�e-roi with the Oriental scholar Victor Segalen, 1907); some had a few tantalising sketches (like the Edgar Allan Poe opera Le Diable dans le beffroi, 1902?03); some were half-finished (like his other Poe opera La Chute de la Maison Usher, 1908?17); while others were musically complete but had their orchestrations completed by other composers (like Khamma, by Charles Koechlin, 1912?13; or Le Martyre de Saint S�bastien and La Bo�te � joujoux by his ?angel of corrections? [?l?ange des Corrections?] Andr� Caplet in 1911 and 1919 respectively).

For it has to be admitted that what some scholars call Debussy?s ?compulsive achievement? could equally well be viewed as laziness, especially as far as the minute detail required for calligraphing his orchestral scores was concerned. It was as if creating the music itself was of greater importance than controlling its final sound, even if Debussy was an imaginative orchestrator when he found the time and energy to do it. It also seems true that Debussy also preferred inventing ideas to turning them into complete pieces. However, despite the lack of detail in many of his sketches (missing clefs, key signatures, dynamics, phrasing, etc.) the notes themselves are surprisingly accurate, whether or not they can be compared with a later draft. Thus, a large number of sketches exist for his Chinese ballet No-ja-li ou Le Palais du Silence and it is not too difficult to see which parts of Georges de Feure?s 1913 scenario (see below) inspired which ideas. But Debussy hardly made any attempt to join them together after the first few bars.

It was usually up to his publisher, Jacques Durand, to find solutions when Debussy risked a breach of contract. Debussy was supposed to supervise the orchestrations completed by others, but this supervision was usually very light and restricted to quiet, sensitive moments in which problems were easier to spot. Far from jealously guarding every one of his created notes, as Ravel did, Debussy once even went as far as to ask Koechlin to ?write a ballet for him that he would sign? on 26 March 1914 when he was hard-pressed to fulfil his lucrative contract for No-ja-li with Andr� Charlot at the Alhambra Theatre in London. In the end, Debussy (through Durand) sent Charlot the symphonic suite Printemps instead, whose orchestration had been completed by Henri Busser in the Spring of 1912.

So, when I was offered early retirement as Professor of Music at Liverpool University in 2004, I seized the opportunity it would give me to spend time trying to reconstruct some of Debussy?s lost potential masterpieces from his existing sketches and drafts?then orchestrating them in Debussy?s style when this was appropriate. I had begun this mission in 2001 with the most promising project, the missing parts of Scene 2 of La Chute de la Maison Usher and the sheer joy it gave me at every stage persuaded me to tackle other projects, especially when Debussy experts were unable to identify exactly where I took over from Debussy (and vice versa) in Usher.

Song List: Adoro Devote (th Century Plainsong) Allegro (Anon) Alman (Robert Johnson) An dro An Drochshaol (The Hard Times) An Italian Rant (John Playford) Andante (Anon) Aura Lee Ballade (Anon) Bear Dance (Anon) Beautiful Dreamer Believe Me If All Those Endearing Charms Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair Black Sunday Blessed Reunion Branle Double (Michael Praetorius) Cailin Deas Cr�ite na mB� (Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow) Call The Ewes Canarios (Gaspar Sanz) Carolan's Dream Carolan's Fancy Chanter's Tune Chestnut (John Playford) Childgrove (John Playford) Clancy's Wake Come With Me, My Giselle (Adam De La Halle) Coming Home Cooley's Reel Courting is a Pleasure Darling Nellie Gray Dont vient cela (Susato/Danserye ) Dowland's Ghost (W Bay) Down by the Sally Gardens Drowsie Maggie Endless Horizon Fair Flower Of Northumberland Fields Of Culloden Flint Hills Fortune My Foe (Anon) Gavotte (Michael Praetorius) Golden Fields Greensleeves (Anon) Greyfriars Bobby Grimstock (John Playford) Guardeme Las Vacas (Luis De Narvaez) Guilderoy Hard Times, Come Again No More Harvest Festival Hills Of Ireland I Dream of Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair I Went To Visit The Roses In The Pines Irish Prayer Jock O'Hazeldean John Anderson, My Jo Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier Just A-Wearyin' For You Just Before The Battle, Mother Kean O'Hara (First Air) Kemp's Jig (John Playford) La Folias (Gaspar Sanz) Lady Laiton's Almain (John Dowland) Land of Rest Londonderry Air Lorena Macdonald, Lord Of The Isles MacPherson's Farewell Mara's Theme Master Shardlake (W Bay) Meadowlark Meramec Echoes Mighty Lak' A Rose Moderato (Anon) My Irish Home My Lagan Love My Spirited Love Mystic Valley Ned Of The Hill New Day O Esca Viatorum (Louis Bourgeois) On The Cold Ground (John Playford) Once I Had A Sweetheart Ozark Memories Packington's Pound (Anon) Paper Of Pins Parson's Farewell (John Playford) Pastourelle (th Century French) Pigeon On The Fence Prairie Sunrise Prairie Sunset Pretty Peggy - O Quiet Summer Night Rainfall Remembrance Rose Of Sharon Saltarello (Vincenzo Galilei) Saturday Night Waltz Scarborough Fair Shady Grove She Moved Through The Fair Sheebeg and Sheemor Shenandoah Si pour t'aymer (Anon) Southwind Waltz Spagnoletta (Michael Praetorius) St Martin's (John Playford) Star of the County Down State Fair Storm Coming Summer Plans Sunflower Waltz The Bonny Light Horseman The Boys Of Ballisodare The Brave Lad The Church on the Prairie The Connachtman's Rambles The Flowers Of Sweet Erin The Green The Fragrance of Fall The Galway Shawl The Highlander The Highwayman's Reel The Lark In Clear Air The Lilting Banshee The Lonesome Dove The Long Road The Lost Child The Marsh of Rhuddlan The Mist Covered Mountain (Jig) The Mist Covered Mountains Of Home (Ballad) The Old Country The Old Homestead The Parting Glass The Rambling Pitchfork The Shearing's Not For You The Water Is Wide The Yearling TO a Wild Rose To Drive The Cold Winter Away (John Playford) Trail Of Tears Treasure Of My Heart Tutte Venite Armati (Anon) Village Meeting House Volte (W Bay) Wild Mountain Thyme Wilson's Wilde (Anon) Winfield Waltz

I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the celebrated pianist Nicolas Horvath for enthusiastically
bringing my Debussy works to public attention in their solo piano formats, both through his recent
recitals across France and through this Naxos Grand Piano release (GP822). In some cases these are
true piano pieces (like Toomai des �l�phants), in others they are piano reductions of orchestral scores
(like F�tes galantes), while in others they are piano solos in their own right that also exist in orchestral
versions (as in the incidental music for Le Roi Lear). Needless to say, most of these tracks are world
premi�re recordings, and this is certainly true of A Night in the House of Usher and its companion piece Un Jour affreux avec Le Diable dans le beffroi (?A Dreadful Day with the Devil in the Belfry?) which I arranged specially for Nicolas in November 2018 as a virtuosic, almost Lisztian paraphrase-fantasy. To remind us of the plot as the dramatic scenes unfold, Un Jour affreux avec le Diable dans le beffroi, like the start of No-ja-li) has a narrator (spoken in French by Florient Azoulay on the Grand Piano recording):

[After an overture rising from the underworld, with a polka and a citation of a chldren?s folksong Savez vous plantez les choux?, a carillon rings out]: Hearing it, the Dutch villagers start to count, with the bells of the belfry / 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 8, 9, 11, and 12 / Perfect! / 13!?!/ The bell rang 13 times / 13! / The Devil is here where the clock should be! / Damn! / The bells are cracked. / The Devil laughs fit to burst / He pulls from the pocket of his coat, a small dancing master?s violin / ?My God!? says the devil ? and he tunes his violin slowly / The Devil leads the villagers in a fantastic and relentless jig [making jokes at the expense of concertos by Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky] / The Devil directs the villagers towards the canal ? where he jumps to the other side, laughing all the time / The villagers try to imitate him, but they fall into the water. / [In Part 2] the villagers are transported to a hedonistic and lively Italian village. They are similarly transformed: the men have crooked hats ? the women have wide open bodices! They dance a mad Tarantella / 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 13 / shouting ?Hey there! (Hola?) / Jean, the young hero, makes a fervent prayer to God against the Devil / The prayer is answered and the bell again rings normally! / The expression of the Devil changes: he shudders! / Everything goes black / The devil disappears in a brief red glow ? / And the carillon and the bells chime as usual / 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 / Perfect! / But the Devil?s grinning face ap-
pears once again where the clock should be ? briefly

This is a transcription of the famous Willy Wonka theme as played by Bill Charlap in his 1998 studio album 'All Through The Night'.