Author: cohler
Date: 2008-10-26 20:05
Here are my notes on the Debussy and vibrato from the CD booklet of Rhapsodie Francaise (copyright Ongaku Records, Inc. provided with permission). These notes are part of a 20-page booklet that ties together the entire French school represented on the CD, so some of it refers to composers and things that were discussed previously in the notes.
I hope you enjoy the notes!
Best,
Jonathan
Claude-Achille Debussy (1862-1918)
Première Rhapsodie (1910)
Claude Debussy, while not a child prodigy like Saint-Saëns, nonetheless entered the Paris Conservatory at the young age of ten in 1872. He spent 12 years at the Conservatory, but from the beginning, Debussy was pugnacious and wanted to go his own way in terms of composition. He studied organ and harmony with César Franck, whose music is known for its frequent and somewhat predictable modulations. In fact, Franck’s students recount that his most frequent admonition in class was “Modulate!” In response to one of these admonitions, Debussy is said to have replied, “Why should I, when I am perfectly happy in this key?” and subsequently changed teachers. Debussy’s independent and unorthodox ways also rubbed Saint-Saëns the wrong way and the two had little regard for each other.
Upon graduating from the Conservatory in 1884, Debussy won the Prix de Rome and he went for the standard four-year residence at Villa Medici in Rome. Debussy had a terrible time there, and in a letter from June 1885 during his stay there he wrote, “I am sure the Institut would not approve for naturally it regards the path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamored of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas.” Debussy was much more interested in color, texture and subtlety in music — sensibilité — and not so much in form. Once asked by a teacher what rules he followed in composition, Debussy replied, “Mon plaisir” (my pleasure). He was indeed outspoken in his thoughts on music albeit on the opposite end of the spectrum from Saint-Saëns.
I am more and more convinced that music, by its very nature, is something that cannot be cast into a traditional and fixed form. It is made up of colors and rhythms. The rest is a lot of humbug invented by frigid imbeciles riding on the backs of the Masters — who, for the most part, wrote almost nothing but period music. Bach alone had an idea of the truth.
Like Saint-Saëns he developed anti-German and anti-Wagner feelings over time and during World War I, he made a statement drawing a stark contrast between the Germanic musical values of length and heaviness with the French values of clarity and elegance. “To a Frenchman, finesse and nuance are the daughters of intelligence.” The Premiére Rhapsodie recorded here is the perfect example of Debussy’s beloved clarity, elegance, finesse and nuance from first note to last.
He wrote the Première Rhapsodie from December 1909 to January 1910 for the 1910 Concours and it was dedicated to Prospère Mimart the eighth professor of clarinet at the Conservatory from 1904 to 1918. The Concours took place on July 14, 1910 and Debussy sat on the jury hearing eleven clarinet students. Only one impressed him; he described the other performances as “straightforward and nondescript.”
Mimart subsequently played the evidently inspiring official premiere on January 16, 1911 in Salle Gaveau, as it was after this performance that Debussy decided to orchestrate the work in that same year. Debussy was no doubt moved by Mimart’s artistry and his beautiful, large and expressive vibrato (which can be heard in a performance of Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock on Grenadilla RGP-1008CD The French Clarinet School Revisited), something that many clarinetists and pedagogues incorrectly claim is not part of the French clarinet tradition. Not only is vibrato part of the tradition, but it was used by one of the most prominent proponents of the tradition (see Note on Vibrato below). Interestingly, Mimart also used a double-lip embouchure with the mouthpiece positioned so that the reed was facing upwards.
Another small controversy that surrounds this work is whether the first two notes of measure 201 are D-sharp and E-natural or D-natural and E-flat as printed in the Durand clarinet/piano edition of the work. Dennis Nygren resolved this issue to my satisfaction in his paper of 1982, The Music for Accompanied Clarinet Solo of Claude Debussy: An Historical Analytical Study of the “Premiere Rhapsodie” and “Petite Piece” (Northwestern University). He shows very clearly that of the four sources, (1) the clarinet/piano autograph, (2) the Durand clarinet/piano edition, (3) the orchestral autograph, and (4) the Durand orchestral score, only (2) shows the D-natural/E-flat.
Nygren points out that Debussy had Durand send him a copy of the published clarinet/piano version (containing D-natural/E-flat) so that he could complete the orchestra version while on vacation in August 1911. It seems highly unlikely that Debussy would change those two notes in the orchestral edition unless to correct an error. Furthermore, the corrected notes agree with the original autograph and are used in several passages throughout the piece. Nowhere else in the piece does the D-natural/E-flat combination occur.
In fact, the only arguments in favor of the D-natural/E-flat are those based on word-of-mouth tradition, which by nature is highly suspect. As children, we have all played the game of “telephone” where you sit in a circle and the first person whispers something in the ear of the next person and so on around the circle. When the message comes full-circle, it is often unrecognizable. Toscanini was so suspect of oral tradition, in fact, that he called it the “memory of the last bad performance.”
Another aspect of this work that has been controversial over the years is the tempi. We know that Debussy was a stickler for tempi, and score markings in general, and he provided precise metronome markings throughout the work. He was often quoted as saying, “There are people who write music, people who edit it, and some … who do what they feel like!” Once when someone suggested an “artist of genius” to Debussy for a part in Pelléas et Mélisande, he replied, “A faithful interpreter is all I need,” a comment very similar to ones made by Igor Stravinsky around the same time.
Despite the clear and consistent markings in all of the scores and parts for the Première Rhapsodie, many French players, and consequently many of their students from all over the world, have for decades ignored these markings because of word-of-mouth traditions handed down through multiple generations of French teachers. I find this highly suspect as there is no documentary evidence of any kind that supports the extremely fast tempi that they advocate in sections that are marked quite a bit slower by Debussy. Furthermore, when played at these fast tempi that diverge widely from Debussy’s markings, it becomes virtually impossible to bring out all of the numerous and important other details in the score.
Debussy made the famous remark about metronome marks to his publisher Durand in a letter of October 9, 1915, “You know what I think about metronome marks: they’re right for a single bar, like roses, with a morning’s life. Only there are ‘those’ who don’t hear music and who take these marks as authority to hear it still less!” So evidently, he doesn’t advocate strict metronomic playing throughout, but the metronome markings are a clear indication of where to begin each marked section.
NOTE ON VIBRATO
Prospère Mimart’s generous use of vibrato draws a curious parallel to that of Richard Mühlfeld and the Brahms clarinet works. Most modern-day clarinetists and pedagogues believe fervently that vibrato should not be used on the clarinet, and especially not on German music such as Brahms on Mozart, but it was, in fact, the big and expressive vibrato of Mühfeld that most likely inspired Brahms to write his clarinet pieces (see program notes in More Cohler on Clarinet, Ongaku Records 024-102). There is even some good evidence dating back to the days of Mozart and his clarinetist Anton Städler that shows he probably also used a healthy vibrato in the playing of the instrument.
Of course, this is what one would logically expect. Vibrato has developed independently on every instrument (that can vibrate) in every kind of music everywhere in the world. In fact, the only kind of music where vibrato is absent is the early music of the church where vibrato was forbidden precisely because it introduced too many earthly connotations into the music.
I have written about the subject of vibrato at length in a 1995 posting to the Klarinet mailing list (klarinet@woodwind.org) and for those who are interested, a copy of it is extant at:
http://www.woodwind.org/clarinet/Study/Vibrato.html
In that article, I did not give any reasons for why it is that most people like and prefer vibrato in music to non-vibrato. In fact, practically to a person, everyone I have met during my lifetime, other than clarinetists who have been trained to believe the opposite, prefers vibrato to non-vibrato. I have come to believe that there are two very important reasons why vibrato is so clearly preferred by virtually everyone.
First, vibrato creates an acoustical impression that is very similar to that of reverberance. In a reverberant space (like a concert hall), the sound bounces off the walls and ceiling and comes at the listener from all directions, adding together to give the pleasant sensation that one is enveloped in the complete sound of the instrument. In a non-reverberant space all we hear is the sound that comes directly at us, which is naturally only a portion of the instrument’s spectrum and it has a very “laser-like” and annoying quality. Vibrato accomplishes a very similar acoustical effect to reverberation.
Second, vibrato adds an entirely independent dimension to the sound. I liken it to color TV (music with vibrato) versus black-and-white TV (music with no vibrato). On a black-and-white TV, you can see everything and understand the action, but it is monochromatic throughout. When color TV came along, it didn’t take long before everyone switched and the movie companies began to colorize all the old classics. One can vary the size, speed and intensity of the vibrato (including using no vibrato at all) independently of all the other musical variables such as loudness, articulation, tempo and tone color. This gives the performer an infinite number of additional combinations that he or she can apply to shape and color the music, and shape and color, after all, is the essence of music as Debussy so aptly points out.
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