“IBÉRIA”: “IMAGES” FOR ORCHESTRA, NO. 2
I. Par les rues et par les chemins (In the Streets and By-ways) II. Les Parfums de la nuit (The Fragrance of the Night) III. Le Matin d’un jour de fête (The Morning of a Festival Day)
The Images, of which Ibéria is the second movement, are remarkable in many ways and to be ranked among the first compositions of this genius. They are impressionistic, but there is a sense of form; there is also the finest proportion. This music is conspicuous for exquisite effects of color. There are combinations of timbres and also contrasts that were hitherto unknown. There are hints of Spanish melodies; melodies not too openly exposed; there are intoxicating rhythms, sharply defined, or elusive, and then they are the more madding.
This music is pleasingly remote from photographic realism. The title might be “Impressions of Spain.” There is the suggestion of street life and wild strains heard on bleak plains or savage mountains; of the music of the people; of summer nights, warm and odorous; of the awakening of life with the break of day; of endless jotas, tangos, seguidillas, fandangoes; of gypsies with their spells brought from the East; of women with Moorish blood. Ibéria defies analysis and beggars description.
What phrase-mongering, however ingenious, would impart the beauty of Odors of the Night to him that did not hear the music? The music that haunts should not be lightly or openly talked about. The impression made by it should be guarded or confided only to the closest friend.
To speak of Debussy’s use of instruments to gain effects, of his ability to reproduce what had not been heard by others, though they may have felt it feebly and had the wish to hear it clearly and put it in notation, would be a classroom task. To write of it for the general reader would be only to rhapsodize. Now Debussy is a rhapsodist of the rarest nature, and his musical speech is not to be translated by a rhapsody in words.
Ibéria is the second in a series of three orchestral compositions by Debussy entitled Images.
The first, Gigues—it was originally entitled Gigue Triste—was published in 1913 and performed for the first time at a Colonne concert, Paris, January 26, 1913. Ibéria was performed for the first time at a Colonne concert in Paris on February 20, 1910, Gabriel Pierné, conductor.
M. Boutarel wrote after the first performance that the hearers are supposed to be in Spain. The bells of horses and mules are heard, and the joyous sounds of wayfarers. The night falls; nature sleeps and is at rest until bells and aubades announce the dawn, and the world awakens to life. “Debussy appears in this work to have exaggerated his tendency to treat music with means of expression analogous to those of the impressionistic painters. Nevertheless, the rhythm remains well defined and frank in Ibéria. Do not look for any melodic design, nor any carefully woven harmonic web. The composer of Images attaches importance only to tonal color. He puts his timbres side by side, adopting a process like that of the Tachistes or the ‘stipplers’ in distributing coloring.” The Debussyites and “Pelléastres” wished Ibéria repeated, but, while the majority of the audience was willing to applaud, it did not long for a repetition. Repeated the next Sunday, Ibéria aroused “frenetic applause and vehement protestations.”
Ibéria is scored for these instruments: piccolo, three flutes (one interchangeable with a second piccolo), two oboes, English horn, three clarinets, three bassoons, double bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, side drum, tambourine, castanets, xylophone, celesta, cymbals, three bells (F, G, A), two harps, and the usual strings.
Debussy wrote on May 16, 1905, to Jacques Durand, his publisher, that he was preparing these compositions for two pianofortes: “I. Gigues tristes. II. Ibéria. III. Valse (?).” In September of that year he hoped to finish them. 1906, August 8: “I have at present three different ways of finishing Ibéria. Shall I toss up a coin or search for a fourth?” In September, 1907, the Images would be ready as soon as the Rondes were “comme je le veux et comme il faut.” In 1908 Debussy was hard at work on his opera, The Fall of the House of Usher, an opera of which, it is said, no sketches have been found. (Durand received Debussy’s libretto in 1917.) In 1909 he wrote that he had laid the Images aside “to the advantage of Edgar Allan Poe.” He also worked on an opera, The Devil in the Belfry.
In 1910: “I have seen Pierné. I think he exaggerates the difficulties in a performance of Ibéria.”
Debussy wrote on December 4, 1910, from Budapest, where he gave a concert of his works, that Ibéria was especially successful. “They could not play The Sea no more the Nocturnes, from want of rehearsal. I was assured that the orchestra knew The Sea, for it had been played through three times. Ah! my friend, if you had heard it!... I assure you to put Ibéria right in two rehearsals was, indeed, an effort.... Don’t forget that these players understood me only through an interpreter—a sort of Doctor of Law—who perhaps transmitted my thought only by deforming it. I tried every means. I sang, made the gestures of Italian pantomime, etc.—it was enough to touch the heart of a buffalo. Well, they at last understood me, and I had the last word. I was recalled like a ballet girl, and if the idolatrous crowd did not unharness the horses of my carriage, it was because I had a simple taxi. The moral of this journey is that I am not made to exercise the profession of composer of music in a foreign land. The heroism of a commercial traveler is needed. One must consent to a sort of compromise which decidedly repels me.”
ANTON
DVOŘÁK
(Born at Mühlhausen [Nelahozeves] near Kralup, Bohemia, September 8, 1841; died at Prague, May 1, 1904)
The winning and endearing qualities of childhood were in Dvořák’s best music: artless simplicity, irresistible frankness, delight in nature and life. His music was best when it smacked of the soil, when he remembered his early days, the strains of vagabond musicians, the dances dear to his folk. One of a happily primitive people, he delighted in rhythm and color. He was not the man to translate pictures, statues, poems, a system of metaphysics, a gospel of pessimism into music. He was least successful when he would be heroic, mystical, profound. It was an evil day for him when England “discovered” him, patronized him, ordered oratorios from him for her festivals, made him a doctor of music (as though he were a cathedral organist), and tried to turn this Naturmensch into a drawing-room and church celebrity. When Dvořák is dull, he is very dull. His Slavonic Dances and such a song as “Als die alte Mutter” are worth a wilderness of “St. Ludmilas” and “Heldenlieds.” And his work as a creative musician was no doubt at an end when he left this country to go back to his beloved Prague.
Some have been inclined to think lightly of Dvořák because his best and vital qualities were recognized by the people. This popularity irritated those who believe that pure art is only for the few—the purists; they forget Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Verdi, Wagner, Tchaikovsky. But this popularity was based on the quick recognition of essential qualities: melody, rhythm, color. Slavonic intensity has a purpose, an esoteric meaning. Dvořák might have replied to lecturers, essayists, and the genteel in Whitman’s words:
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well, I have—for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has.
Do you take it I would astonish? Does the daylight astonish? Does the early redstail, twittering through the woods?
Dvořák had his faults, and they were tiresome and exasperating. His naïveté became a mannerism. Like a child, he delighted in vain repetitions; he was at times too much pleased with rhythms and colors, so that he mistook the exterior dress for the substance and forgot that after all there was little or no substance behind the brilliant trappings. We believe that he will ultimately be ranked among the minor poets of music. His complete works may gather dust in libraries; but no carefully chosen anthology will be without examples of his piquancy, strength, and beauty in thought and expression.