SKU: FA.MFCC034
SKU: FA.MFCD007PN
8.27 x 11.69 inches.
Debussy's friendship with the versatile poet and playwright Gabriel Mourey began in 1899, and in July 1907 Mourey offered Debussy a libretto based on Le roman de Tristan - Joseph Bedier's adaptation of a twelfth-century Breton romance by the Anglo-Norman poet known as Thomas - which had recently been published in Paris. Debussy enthusiastically outlined the four-act plot to Victor Segalen that October, and the main differences from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde are that none of the action takes place in Cornwall and that Isolde of the White Hands is found guilty of cuckolding King Marc with Tristan, who has to rescue her from the leper colony in which she is abandoned in Act 1. She also betrays him when he goes mad at the end.The idea of a Tristan that restored its 'legendary character' and had no connections with Wagner, appealed to Debussy, who was extremely moved by the circumstances of Tristan's death. Even if he thought that Mourey's poetry was 'not very lyrical and many passages do not exactly invite music', he did work on the libretto and the music that summer and sent his publisher, Jacques Durand, 'one of the 363 themes for the Roman de Tristan' in a letter sent from Pourville on 23 August, 1907. The present prelude grows from this theme, together with the poignant Breton folksong Le Faucon. After a short atmospheric introduction, Debussy's dance-like theme (which is definitely not a leitmotif) gradually gains momentum and after it reaches its ecstatic climax, representing the transient happiness of the lovers, it dissolves into an expressive coda and an elegiac close (all growing from Debussy's opening, off-stage trumpet calls), leaving us with the ultimate tragedy of their ill-fated affair.Unfortunately, Mourey's actual libretto has been lost and the project eventually foundered because Bedier's cousin, Louis Artus, wanted Debussy to use the scenario he had prepared and copyrighted for the stage, and would not allow him to proceed with Mourey's version. Debussy, it need hardly be said, would never have dreamed of collaborating with the author of the vaudeville hit La culotte (The pants)!
SKU: FA.MFHM002
210 x 297 inches.
An important bridge between the Classical and Romantic periods, Helene de Montgeroult was the first female professor at the Paris Conservatory. As recorded by Nicolas Horvath for Grand Piano.
SKU: FA.MFGPC052
SKU: FA.MFJFK022
SKU: FA.MFHM001
SKU: FA.MFJFK020
SKU: FA.MFHM010
An important bridge between the Classical and Romantic periods, Helene de Montgeroult was the first female professor at the Paris Conservatory.
SKU: FA.MFPRW018
SKU: FA.MFCC090
SKU: FA.MFJTB039
SKU: BT.MFHM012
SKU: FA.MFCPC009
Parts available on rental from the publisher.
SKU: FA.MFHM007
SKU: FA.MFGPC011
SKU: FA.MFCC033
SKU: FA.MFCD015PN
A seven-movement suite for orchestra taken from sketches for Debussy's music for King Lear and completed by Robert Orledge. As recorded by Nicolas Horvath on << The Unknown Debussy >> (GP822).
SKU: FA.MFCC201
SKU: FA.MFTB017
SKU: FA.MFGI004
SKU: FA.MFGT053
Written around 1920 after a short vacation to Biarritz, it was dedicated to Marianne Singer, Jean Cocteau's cousin. It was probably the fruit of piano improvisations during this holiday trip.
SKU: FA.MFJHM003
SKU: FA.MFHM009
SKU: FA.MFCD014PN
Fetes galantes was actually planned as a hybrid opera-ballet to a libretto by Debussy's friend Louis Laloy. For this, Laloy arranged selected poetry by Paul Verlaine into three tableaux, replacing an earlier (unstarted) Debussyan project with Charles Morice entitled Crimen amoris. During his last productive summer of 1915, Debussy set a sequence from the start of the first tableau, 'Les Masques', involving stanzas 1 and 3 of the opening song for Mezzetin in Verlaine's comedy Les Uns et les autres. The action is set in a park a la Watteau late one summer afternoon as Mezzetin attempts to entertain a group of nonchalant masqueraders with only the aid of his voice and a mandolin.This appears to have been prefaced by a slower, elegiac introduction reminiscent of the opening of the comtemporary Cello Sonata and it leads to a danced minuet by the masqued dancers which has clear echoes of the piano piece L'Isle Joyeuse (1904). Following Laloy's scenario, the mas-queraders then sing extracts from Verlaine's 'A la promenade' (from Fetes galantes itself). The minuet returns at greater length before being cut short by a chilly gust of wind, after which the park returns to its orginal state (and music) as though nothing had really happened.
SKU: FA.MFCC130
SKU: FA.MFWAM001CL
SKU: FA.MFMR003
SKU: FA.MFJYM016
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