Claude Debussy: Debussy - The Ultimate Piano Collection: Piano: Artist Songbook

SKU: SU.00220526

Voice, Flute, Clarinet, Piano, Violin, Cello Duration: 16' Sephardic Songbook (translated by the composer) 1. A la una nací yo (At one I was born); 2. El mi querido bevió vino (My lover drank wine); 3. Al kenar de la nixava (Around the corner); 4. Pregoneros van y vienen (Town criers come and go); 5. Una matica de ruda (A little plant of rue); 6. Dolores tiene la reina (The queen has pains); 7. Avridme galanica (Open up for me, beautiful girl) Full Score and Parts: available on rental Composed: 1999 Published by: Subito Music Publishing.

SKU: BR.OB-5399-15

ISBN 9790004338346. 10 x 12.5 inches.

The three symphonic sketches La Mer are, after Prelude a Lapresmidi dun faune, no doubt Debussys most frequently performed orchestral work. This success derives in part from its formal resemblance to a symphony, which had already been noted by the composers contemporaries, and in part from its sound, which was associated from the very start with the shimmer and iridescence of Impressionism.Peter Jost takes all major sources into consideration. Ultimately, the musical text of his Urtext edition is based on a copy of the second edition of the score, published in 1909, in which the composer incorporated his experiences as auditor and conductor into a last authorized version. After the cool reception given La Mer at its world premiere, Debussy revised the work and conducted the extraordinarily successful performances of it in early 1908 in Paris,London and Rome.

SKU: BR.OB-5399-30

ISBN 9790004338391. 10 x 12.5 inches.

The three symphonic sketches La Mer are, after Prelude a Lapresmidi dun faune, no doubt Debussys most frequently performed orchestral work. This success derives in part from its formal resemblance to a symphony, which had already been noted by the composers contemporaries, and in part from its sound, which was associated from the very start with the shimmer and iridescence of Impressionism.Peter Jost takes all major sources into consideration. Ultimately, the musical text of his Urtext edition is based on a copy of the second edition of the score, published in 1909, in which the composer incorporated his experiences as auditor and conductor into a last authorized version. After the cool reception given La Mer at its world premiere, Debussy revised the work and conducted the extraordinarily successful performances of it in early 1908 in Paris,London and Rome.

SKU: FA.MFCD007PN

8.27 x 11.69 inches.

Debussy's friendship with the versatile poet and playwright Gabriel Mourey began in 1899, and in July 1907 Mourey offered Debussy a libretto based on Le roman de Tristan - Joseph Bedier's adaptation of a twelfth-century Breton romance by the Anglo-Norman poet known as Thomas - which had recently been published in Paris. Debussy enthusiastically outlined the four-act plot to Victor Segalen that October, and the main differences from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde are that none of the action takes place in Cornwall and that Isolde of the White Hands is found guilty of cuckolding King Marc with Tristan, who has to rescue her from the leper colony in which she is abandoned in Act 1. She also betrays him when he goes mad at the end.

The idea of a Tristan that restored its 'legendary character' and had no connections with Wagner, appealed to Debussy, who was extremely moved by the circumstances of Tristan's death. Even if he thought that Mourey's poetry was 'not very lyrical and many passages do not exactly invite music', he did work on the libretto and the music that summer and sent his publisher, Jacques Durand, 'one of the 363 themes for the Roman de Tristan' in a letter sent from Pourville on 23 August, 1907. The present prelude grows from this theme, together with the poignant Breton folksong Le Faucon. After a short atmospheric introduction, Debussy's dance-like theme (which is definitely not a leitmotif) gradually gains momentum and after it reaches its ecstatic climax, representing the transient happiness of the lovers, it dissolves into an expressive coda and an elegiac close (all growing from Debussy's opening, off-stage trumpet calls), leaving us with the ultimate tragedy of their ill-fated affair.

Unfortunately, Mourey's actual libretto has been lost and the project eventually foundered because Bedier's cousin, Louis Artus, wanted Debussy to use the scenario he had prepared and copyrighted for the stage, and would not allow him to proceed with Mourey's version. Debussy, it need hardly be said, would never have dreamed of collaborating with the author of the vaudeville hit La culotte (The pants)!