As for Pelléas and Mélisande, we believe it to be the perfect example in opera of music wedded to words and situations, an opera more remarkable in this respect than even Tristan and Isolde.
“PRÉLUDE À L’APRÈS-MIDI D’UN FAUNE” (ECLOGUE DE STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ)
Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun is a masterpiece of imaginative poetry in tones; it is a thing of flawless beauty. It matters not whether the symbolism of Mallarmé be cryptic or intelligible. It matters not whether the explanation of Gosse or of another be ingenious and plausible. The title is enough to give a clue to the hearer, if a clue be needed. Debussy himself has composed nothing more charming in strictly orchestral music.
There is the suggestion of sunlight and warmth, forest and meadow dear to fauns and nymphs. There is the gentle melancholy that is associated with a perfect afternoon. There is the exquisite melodic line, and there is harmonic suggestion with inimitable coloring that is still more exquisite.
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, completed in 1892, was played for the first time at a concert of the National Society of Music, Paris, December 23, 1894. The conductor was Gustave Doret. According to Charles Koechlin, there had been insufficient rehearsal, so the performance left much to be desired, and the acoustics of the Salle d’Harcourt were unfavorable. When the second performance took place at a Colonne concert, a critic wrote: “This composer seems to dread banality.” “And yet,” says Koechlin, “the charm of this music is so simple, so melodic. But every new melody should be heard several times. Besides, even the construction—a supple melodic line that is expanded—could be disconcerting. For certain writers about music, Debussy was a dangerous artist with a diabolical fascination: the worst possible example. Diabolical or not, the work has lasted. It has the votes of the élite: that is enough.”
The second performance was at a Colonne concert, Paris, October 20, 1895. In the Annales du théâtre, we find this singular note: “Written after a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé so sadistic that M. Colonne did not dare to print the text; young girls attend his concerts.”
To Debussy is attributed a short “explanation of his Prelude, a very free illustration of Mallarmé’s poem”: The music evokes “the successive scenes in which the longings and the desire of the Faun pass in the heat of the afternoon.”
Stéphane Mallarmé formulated his revolutionary ideas concerning style about 1875, when the Parnasse contemporain rejected his first poem of true importance, L’Après-midi d’un faune. The poem was published in 1876 as a quarto pamphlet, illustrated by Manet.
Gosse gave this explanation of the poem that suggested music to Debussy: “It appears in the florilège which he has just published, and I have now read it again, as I have often read it before. To say that I understand it bit by bit, phrase by phrase, would be excessive. But, if I am asked whether this famous miracle of unintelligibility gives me pleasure, I answer, cordially, Yes. I even fancy that I obtain from it as definite and as solid an impression as M. Mallarmé desires to produce.