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.”