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Claude Debussy - Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, L​.​86

from Winter 2018 by Redlands Community Orchestra

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The Dawn of Modernism
Just as painters of the early twentieth century abandoned representational images for abstraction, many composers of the same period abandoned the familiar harmonies of the tonal system for new combinations of tones. “Atonality,” broadly defined, is music that avoids those well-worn major and minor chords. Claude Debussy, in Paris, began feeling the pull of new harmonies. Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun revealed new possibilities in meandering modal harmony, spontaneous rhythmic development, and diaphanous orchestral color.
Influences
Debussy was influenced in his explorations by trends of his day, the revolutionary poet Stéphane Mallarmé, the chromaticism of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and the whole-tone sonorities of Javanese gamelan music first heard at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. In 1892, when Debussy was about 30, he began working on a large three-part composition inspired by the Mallarmé poem, Afternoon of a Faun, of which he only completed the Prélude. The work is not a direct setting of the words but an autonomous “prelude” suggested by the poem’s dense, drowsy eroticism. Mallarmé called his poem an “Eclogue” — a brief, nature-oriented lyric recalling the poems of Virgil. Its narrator-subject, the faun, is the half-man-half-goat exemplified by the god Pan, wonders how best to treasure the memory, or perhaps the dream, of two exquisite nymphs. He plays a song upon his flute, aware that music falls short of the viscerality of experience.
The Ballet that Shocked Paris
The Prelude did not gain notoriety until 20 years after Debussy composed it when Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed and danced it for the Ballets Russes with explicit depictions of the faun’s sexual daydreaming. Parisian viewers were shocked, foreshadowing the protests that would happen the following year at the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
What to Listen For
The Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun opens with one of the most iconic passages in classical music — a solo flute passage that ranks with the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as instantly recognizable and utterly universal. The phrase curls from a single flute like a wisp of smoke, falling in half-steps to delineate the mysterious tritone, once called diabolus in musica or the “Devil’s interval” and then rising again. Conductor, composer, and scholar Pierre Boulez cited this exquisitely dramatic entrance as a turning point in composition; “the flute of the faun brought new breath to the art of music.”
While this gesture comprises a melodic theme, it was without precedent in classical melodic treatment: tonal yet fluid, without a fixed origin or resolution, and not suggesting conventional development. Debussy thus resists the Germanic urge to develop his thematic material: the melody remains static while the accompaniment evolves. The strings savor long, flowing unison lines, like Indian ragas, seemingly surrounding the flute with soft, natural textures. The intensity swells and ebbs; as the tempo grows more animated, a new melody joins them, only to disolve into a mist. All this suggestion eventually coalesces into a voluptuous, full-orchestral love song.
The music shows like the river along whose banks the faun pursues his lovers, real or imagined. And, as always with Debussy, the best way to listen is simply to go with the flow.

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from Winter 2018, released March 11, 2018
Claude Debussy

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Redlands Community Orchestra Redlands, California

The Redlands Community Orchestra is a brand new orchestra in Redlands, California, where amateur musicians of all ages can play orchestral music together. We are an independent community organization which seeks to share the joy of music-making with our members and our audience.

Our conductor is James Benanti, Director of Instrumental Music at Redlands High School.
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