It's a sultry, Impressionistic orchestral masterpiece. But it's much more than that. The Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, by the great French composer Claude Debussy, was what we'd now call a 'disruptor' to the musical landscape of the very late 19th and early 20th century. With its apparent lack of structure and almost improvisatory feel, it deserves the epithet given by one famous fellow French composer, that ‘modern music was awakened by L’après-midi d’un faune’.
What is Debussy’s Prélude a l’après-midi d’un faune?
It is a symphonic poem (or tone poem), based on Stéphane Mallarmé’s 1865 poem L’après-midi d’un faune. Beginning with an alluring, chromatic solo on the flute, it then intoxicates the listener over ten minutes with its lushly layered score depicting a faun enjoying the pleasures of a warm afternoon.
When did Debussy compose the Prélude a l’après-midi d’un faune?
Debussy first began toying with the idea of writing music based on Mallarmé’s poem in 1890. Discarding one or two more grandiose ideas along the way, he completed the Prélude in 1894. Ironically, this orchestral portrayal of the heat of the summer sun was premiered in the heart of winter – in Paris on 22 December, 1894, conducted by Gustave Doret.
At just ten minutes long, why is it such an important work?
In short, because it rewrote the rulebook. Although various musical cells are repeated throughout, there is no apparent structure to the work, and at times it appears almost improvised. Many years later, composer Pierre Boulez described its composition as a seminal moment, saying that ‘modern music was awakened by L’après-midi d’un faune’.
What is the Prélude a l’après-midi d’un faune by Debussy about?
Like Mallarmé’s poem itself, the imagery in Debussy’s music is gloriously vague. A faun awakes from a dream on a sultry afternoon with images of beautiful nymphs floating around in his consciousness – were they real, or just imagined? After mentally pursuing these erotic but elusive objects of his desire for a while, the faun eventually sinks back into sleep. Beats your average afternoon in the office, frankly.
What is the story of Debussy’s Prélude a l’après-midi d’un faune?
A young flautist blows a rough-sounding C sharp for a few seconds, dribbles down a scale and up another way, landing back on the bad note on which he began. The scale is foreign, exotic, oriental perhaps, with no sense of key. Next, a harp enjoys a mildly discordant arpeggio, and horns undulate aimlessly in the background. Separated by puzzling silences, the harp and horns repeat their initial gesture.
The flautist blows another C sharp (the bad note, unfingered, as anyone who has ever had a lesson on the flute might know). He spins more ornamental phrases: one might call them arabesques. The chords beneath seem to be hung from the flute’s long notes – pencilled in rather than driving the piece forward.
Welcome to the world of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Now imagine the audience’s reaction one evening in 1894 when it was given its first airing at Paris’s Salle Harcourt. All this either captivated or repelled those listeners who couldn’t understand anything that veered too far from traditional convention.
'The glimmer of a new dawn'
Those with more open minds saw the glimmer of a new dawn, the shimmering orchestral colour changing kaleidoscopically; strings tremolando bowed over the fingerboard, woodwind instruments melting one into another, and again those touches from the harp… Such sensuality!
Those that realised that this piece was a landmark may have noticed that it transcended any previous concepts of how music could be close to a literary text without being a narrative symphonic poem: certainly groundbreaking in this respect.
Originally a dramatic scene in a rhymed and rhythmic form, Mallarmé’s Afternoon of a faun tells of a faun’s vain attempts to seduce two nymphs, one rather shy, and one more forward.
His antics take place against the backdrop of a hazy, humid landscape of rushes and reeds. A cello in the score of the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune by Debussy seems to imitate a frog, and above there are some bird calls. Trilling woodwind recall the ‘Forest Murmurs’ of Wagner’s opera Siegfried.
The key role of the flute
In the poem the faun not only plays the flute: he has made it himself, fashioning it out of a reed. He tunes it and voices it, refining it to the point where it becomes an instrument of seduction. If it’s properly tempered, the nymphs will, despite themselves, succumb. Our concert flautist isn’t just portraying the faun: he is the faun.
Even in his early twenties Debussy was drawn to the idea of ‘real’ music within the music. An early setting of part of a verse-play Diane au bois (Diana in the woods) by Théodore de Banville has Eros as the protagonist.
He, like the faun, takes a flute and plays a melody so wonderful that Diana, the goddess of both hunting and chastity, melts at his advances. Mallarmé heard Debussy’s piece and wrote to congratulate him finding ‘no conflict with his text’. Quite the reverse, in fact. For him Debussy’s music ‘went still further into the poem’s nostalgia and light, with finesse, malaise and richness’.
Its innovations must have been obvious to the first audience: its saving of the full orchestra for most of the piece; its delight in almost chamber music textures; and its deliquescent ending. Such elements were admiringly singled out by several 20th-century composers.
What did other composers think of the Prélude a l’après-midi d’un faune by Debussy?
Leonard Bernstein discussed the piece at length in his 1970s Harvard lectures finding ‘not just stylistic but radical change: Mallarmé’s dream come true’. Even in the faun’s first notes he found that malaise the poet identified.
For Pierre Boulez, it was again the poem which was the catalyst for this ‘miracle of proportion, balance and transparency: the awakening of modern music’. His emphasis on the formal reminds us of Debussy’s interest in proportion, evident in Faune through his teasing number-game of capturing the 110 lines of the poem with exactly the same number of bars.
Another marker of its innovations was its lively afterlife when Nijinsky revived it as a ballet with novel pseudo-Hellenistic choreography. Debussy disapproved, but the synthesis of gesture, costumes, music and the wonderful Léon Bakst backdrop have secured it a special place in ballet history.
'Why do we play it so slowly today?'
Our new century awaits an exciting future for the piece. What did it sound like at its first performance with all those wind instruments of the time: Buffet clarinets, Louis Lot flutes and Erard harps? And what kind of a sound did that 18-year-old flautist make at the piece’s premiere? (He was, by the way, none other than George Barrère, later to champion the platinum flute and persuade Edgar Varèse to write a solo piece for him, named after its density, 21.5).
And why, incidentally, do we play it so slowly today? Our faun has slowed down during the century – perhaps the poor chap’s in need of a dose of Viagra. Early recordings and a tempo-marking by Debussy suggest it was originally played in a more fleeting way. It seems more logical that it should float above and not sound too consummate: in the poem the faun never gets his nymphs, and reverts to wondering whether the whole event wasn’t just a waking dream…
Did you know?
In 1912, the great Russian dancer Nijinsky choreographed the work as a ballet, playing the part of the faun himself at the premiere given by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company. Nijinsky didn't hold back, and the production caused a major stir.
That 1912 Ballets Russes season also featured the premiere of another major work: the sensuous, exotic ballet Daphnis et Chloé by Debussy's compatriot Maurice Ravel.
Best recording of Debussy Prélude a l’après-midi d’un faune
There are plenty of gorgeous, opulently sensuous recordings of the Prélude in the catalogue. For sheer orchestral lushness, though, we'd opt for the 1976 recording by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (one of the best orchestras in the world) and their distinguished longtime conductor Bernard Haitink. Conductor and orchestra achieve an extraordinary delicacy in this work, creating a feverish, almost otherworldly atmosphere.
Better still, it forms part of a delicious all-Debussy survey by these forces, also including Images, La mer and 3 Nocturnes.
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Haitink
On Debussy: Orchestral Music - Philips 438 7422 (2 discs)