Claude Debussy
Prélude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune

A note as a prelude: this comment of mine concerns Debussy's work without specific references to the various interpretations (this would neither be the place nor the case) or to the different recordings, which moreover tend to combine various compositions different from each other, all to the detriment of the uniqueness of the work of art, in the era of "technical reproducibility".

The "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune", presented by Debussy in 1894, is a "mise en musique" of the famous poem by Stephane Mallarmé, which appeared in 1876 after a long literary gestation. The musical work, like the poetic one, inherits from Theocritus and Virgil, from bucolic and rural sensibility, which played a significant part in the affirmation of some canons of nineteenth-century culture. However, how much Debussy's art has contributed to the sublimation of such a specific artistic "pietas", is demonstrated by the abyssal gap that separates a composition like the "Prélude" from Beethoven's majestic Symphony No. 6, called "Pastoral", which is only seemingly similar, and in reality, is driven by completely different aesthetic intents.

In 1894, Debussy simply inaugurated a new, sublime musical language, which we habitually (and reductively) call Impressionism, borrowing the illustrious iconological definition. The prelude is short: nine minutes of profound musical introspection, dominated by satirical winds and water lily-like harps, described by cadenced and fleeting motifs, which in the final part, when the faun surrenders to a languid sleep, become very delicate.

The compositional lightness is then reflected in the instrumental choice, where faint percussions (triangles), subdued woodwinds, and "plucked" cellos masterfully recreate the atmospheres and "impressions" of a drowsy afternoon. Particularly the initial theme, masked and reprised throughout the composition, shows an exceptional imaginative power, and it almost seems to see the faun, playing at the foot of a tree, among fragrant leaves. The melodic play is divine, and gently cradles the listener's imagination, until losing them in the twilight lights of an ancient forest, crossed by the gurgling of waters from a distant spring, while the echo of the faun's syrinx fades away in the distance.

An artistic manifesto, an immortal work.