Hear Debussy Play Debussy: A Classic Recording from 1913

A cen­tu­ry in the past, the nice French com­pos­er Claude Debussy sat down at a con­entice­tion known as a Welte-Mignon repro­duc­ing piano and document­ed a sequence of per­for­mances for pos­ter­i­ty. The machine was designed to encode the nuances of a pianist’s play­ing, includ­ing ped­al­ing and dynam­ics, onto piano rolls for lat­er repro­duc­tion.

Debussy document­ed 14 items onto six rolls in Paris on or earlier than Novem­ber 1, 1913. Accord­ing to Debussy enthu­si­ast Steve Bryson’s web page, the com­pos­er was delight­ed with the repro­duc­tion qual­i­ty, say­ing in a let­ter to Edwin Welte: “It’s impos­si­ble to realize a larger per­fec­tion of repro­duc­tion than that of the Welte appa­ra­tus. I’m hap­py to guarantee you in these strains of my aston­ish­ment and admi­ra­tion of what I heard. I’m, Pricey Sir, Yours Religion­ful­ly, Claude Debussy.”

The selec­tion above is “La soirée dans Grenade” (“Grena­da within the night”), from Debussy’s 1903 trio of com­po­si­tions titled Estam­pes, or “Prints.” Debussy was impressed by the Sym­bol­ist poets and Impres­sion­ist painters who strove to transcend the sur­face of a sub­ject to evoke the texture­ing it gave off. “La soirée dans Grenade” is described by Chris­tine Steven­son at Notes From a Pianist as a “sound pic­ture” of Moor­ish Spain:

Debussy’s first-hand expe­ri­ence of Spain was neg­li­gi­ble at the moment, however he imme­di­ate­ly con­jures up the coun­attempt through the use of the per­sua­sive Haben­period dance rhythm to open the piece–softly and sub­tly. It insin­u­ates itself into our con­scious­ness with its qui­et insis­tence on a repeat­ed C sharp in dif­fer­ent reg­is­ters; round it cir­cles a lan­guid, Moor­ish arabesque, with nasal aug­ment­ed 2nds, and a nag­ging semi­tone pulling towards the tonal cen­tre, occa­sion­al­ly inter­rupt­ed by mut­ter­ing semi­qua­vers [16th notes] and a whole-tone primarily based pas­sage. Debussy writes Com­mencer lente­ment dans un rythme non­cha­la­m­ment gra­cieux [Begin slow­ly in a casu­al­ly grace­ful rhythm] on the start­ning, however lat­er Tres ryth­mé [Very rhyth­mic] in a shiny­ly lit A significant because the dance comes out of the shad­ows, ff [Fortissimo–loudly], with the press of cas­tanets and the stamp­ing of ft.

Debussy was 52 years outdated and suf­fer­ing from can­cer when he made his piano roll document­ings. He died lower than 5 years lat­er, on March 25, 1918. Since then, his beau­ti­ful and evoca­tive music has secured a spot for him as one of the vital influ­en­tial and pop­u­lar com­posers of the twentieth cen­tu­ry. As Roger Hecht writes at Clas­si­cal Web, “Debussy was a dream­er whose music dreamed with him.”

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