The following article is the introduction to my Masters dissertation.  Please get in touch if you are interested in reading the rest!

Déclencher l'Esprit Debussyste;  How Studying the Changing Trends in Archival Recordings of Debussy Song Can Enlighten Modern Performance

'In a time like ours, when the genius of engineers has reached such undreamed of proportions, one can hear famous pieces of music as easily as one can buy a glass of beer.  It only costs ten centimes, too, just like automatic weighing scales!  Should we not fear this domestication of sound, this magic preserved in a disc that anyone can awaken at will?  Will it not mean a diminution of the secret forces of art, which until now have been considered indestructible?'[1]

Claude Debussy, 15 May, 1913

The aesthetic of our time influences how we perceive music; it dictates how we want our music to be played and what we expect to hear when we go to a concert or turn on the radio.  Aesthetic is a sort of artistic frame of reference- the result of an accumulation of past traditions and modern influences, from which we cannot escape.  Aesthetic is also an ever-changing thing, and much ink has been spilled on the subject of performance practice and aesthetic. What did the premiere sound like? What were the composer’s intentions? How would a contemporary performer have interpreted it?  But the study of performance practice attempts to find concreteness in the abstract, for while it is possible to read all the treatises, short of traveling back in time, it is impossible to know exactly what a contemporary performer would have done… until the 20th century.  The advent of recording provides us with something concrete, as 'recordings are the hardest evidence of performance practice imaginable'.[2]  Although by no means completely reliable, archival recordings provide important insight into the aesthetic and performance practice of the time.  

Claude Debussy was composing at an extremely exciting time in terms of technological development in sound engineering.  He is among the first generation of composers for whom we have hard evidence in the form of archival recordings, giving a previously elusive look into their interpretive world.  With a such a rich array of contemporary recordings, memoirs, letters and reviews, Debussy is the first composers for whom we can unravel the mysteries of his performance in a definitive way.[3] There are many recordings commercially available today of Debussy's preferred singers, those he worked closely with and composed for, those whose interpretations of his music he most admired.  We are even so fortunate as to have recordings made in 1904 of the soprano Mary Garden with Debussy himself accompanying her at the piano.

It is these Garden/Debussy recordings which first drew me to the topic of changing aesthetic in the performance of Debussy song; these recordings give us a performance which might be called 'ridiculous' by a modern audience.  They are indeed so different from today's interpretations that as I listen I have visions of Mary Garden and Claude Debussy being laughed off the platform at the Wigmore Hall by a modern audience.  And yet, this is the composer himself at the piano! How did we drift so far from what must have been the composer's intentions?

In this paper I will follow this changing performance aesthetic as it evolves through the 20th-centrury, carrying us further and further from what we can interpret as the composer's intentions and indeed, the aesthetic of the time.  Using the Garden/Debussy recordings of two of the songs from Debussy's Ariettes oubliées as a starting point, I will look at a selection of recordings of these same songs throughout the last century, finishing with some modern performances by today's interpreters of French art song. I will look in particular at tempo, treatment of written rhythms, and use of pitch bending in the form of portamneti and 'scoops' to show that what was a 'standard' performance of the repertoire in the early 20th century is no longer an acceptable or even pleasing performance to the modern ear. I will also look briefly at what this means to the modern performer.  Is there room for 'historically informed performance' of Debussy songs, and is this even desirable?  Is the role of the performer then, to be true to the aesthetic of the composer and his time or to give the modern audience what they are accustomed to hearing?

[1] C. Debussy, R. Langham Smith, trans and ed, Debussy On Music (London, 1977), 288

[2] R. Taruskin, 'The Modern Sound of Early Music', Text & Act (Oxford 1995), 168

[3] C. Timbrell, Charles, 'Debussy in Performance', Cambridge Companion to Debussy, ed. Simon Tresize (Cambridge, 2003), 259