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10-13 Mahler:Layout 1 10/3/11 11:38 AM Page 34 Jeux: Poème-dansé Ibéria, from Images for Orchestra Claude Debussy Claude Debussy developed a knotty relationship with the stage. He carried out work in each of the three principal stage genres: opera, ballet, and incidental music for plays. Yet he managed to complete only a single example of each — Pelléas et Mélisande, Jeux, and Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien, respectively, leaving numerous other attempts in various stages of incompletion. So far as ballet is concerned, he had essentially fulfilled a commission (between 1910 and 1912) for a piece titled Khamma for the choreographer Maud Allan, though he left the orchestration to his fellow composer Charles Koechlin; but the piece never received even a concert performance until 1924 (six years after Debussy’s death) and did not reach the stage until 1947. It remains largely unheard today. Two other ballet scores also remained incomplete: the children’s ballet La Boîte à joujoux of 1913 (which made it up to the orchestration stage), and No-ja-li (Le palais du silence) of 1913–14. In posterity, the score for Jeux (Games) has made up for the lack of the others. It is Debussy’s last completed orchestral work, and it has been cited as an essential point of departure for a certain strand 34 New York Philharmonic In Short of later composers. Pierre Boulez maintained that it signified: the arrival of a kind of musical form which, renewing itself from moment to moment, implies a similarly instantaneous mode of perception. Debussy composed it for the impresario Serge Diaghilev, whose Ballets Russes — launched in Paris in 1909 — became quickly identified with the vanguard of the European arts scene. Diaghilev soon commissioned new ballet scores, of which the very first was Stravinsky’s Firebird, premiered in 1910. More Stravinsky followed, including Petrushka, premiered in 1911, and Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) on May 29, 1913 — a date that earned legendary status thanks to the riot that broke out at its premiere. That event eclipsed the more minor disappointment that precisely two weeks earlier had attended the premiere of Jeux, with a score by Debussy. Born: August 22, 1862, in St. Germain-en-Laye, just outside Paris, France Died: March 25, 1918, in Paris Works composed and premiered: Jeux: composed 1912–13, but largely in August 1913; premiered May 15, 1913, in a staged production by the Ballets Russes at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Pierre Monteux, conductor; it was given the following year in concert form by the Orchestre des Concerts Colonne, conducted by Gabriel Pierné. Ibéria: begun in 1905 as a piano duet; completed as an orchestral work on December 25, 1908; premiered February 20, 1910, Gabriel Pierné conducting the Orchestre des Concerts Colonne in Paris New York Philharmonic premieres and most recent performances: Jeux: premiered January 13, 1938, Georges Enesco, conductor; most recently performed March 18, 1986, Pierre Boulez, conductor Ibéria: premiered January 3, 1911, Gustav Mahler, conductor; most recently performed February 13, 2007, Alan Gilbert, conductor Estimated durations: Jeux: ca. 18 minutes; Ibéria: ca. 20 minutes
10-13 Mahler:Layout 1 10/3/11 11:38 AM Page 35 The concept of Jeux was expounded by the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky over lunch with Diaghilev and the designer Léon Bakst at the Savoy Hotel in London, the notes being jotted down on the tablecloth. The event was recounted to the painter Jacques-Émile Blanche, who, in his memoirs, related the scenario drawn up on that occasion: There should be no corps de ballet, no ensembles, no variations, no pas de deux, only boys and girls in flannels and rhythmic movement. A group at a certain stage was to depict a fountain, and a game of tennis was to be interrupted by the crashing of an aeroplane. Nijinsky also detailed this work’s genesis in his diary, adding the detail that the action would depict the story of “three young men making love to each other.” It fell to Blanche to telegraph the concept to Debussy. The composer immediately responded “I should not dream of writing a score for this work,” but then amended his answer to say that he could find a way to write it after all, if his fee were to be doubled. In the end, the plane crash was blessedly eliminated and the three young men Nijinsky imagined were turned into one young man and two young women. Nijinsky ended up falling out of love with the project, but Debussy seems to have warmed to it, producing his score with uncharacteristic speed, apparently within the course of about three weeks in August 1913. Near the end of the month he wrote to his friend, the composer André Caplet: How was I able to forget the cares of this world and manage to write music that is nevertheless joyous and alive with droll rhythms? Nature, so absurdly harsh, sometimes takes pity, it seems, on her children. Sources and Inspirations Nijinsky’s initial inspirations for the ballet Jeux underwent a considerable amount of refinement, eventually yielding this scenario, which was supplied to Debussy as the foundation on which he should construct his score: In a park, at dusk, a tennis ball goes astray; a young man, then two young women hurriedly try to find it. The artificial light of huge electric lamps casts its fantastic gleam about them and suggests the idea of children’s games; they play hide-andseek, run after each other, quarrel and sulk for no good reason; the night is warm, the sky bathed in gentle light, they kiss. But the spell is broken by a tennis ball thrown by some malicious hand. Surprised and frightened, the young man and two young women disappear into the depths of the night-enshrouded park. Nonetheless, Debussy hated Nijinsky’s choreography and he was glad to be rid of the ballet, which was poorly received. While the performance was underway on opening night, he left his box to smoke a cigarette outside. Almost 10 years earlier the final work on this program, Ibéria,, had been premiered. The Spanish composer Manuel de Falla wrote in an article he contributed to an all-Debussy issue of the Revue musicale, published in December 1920: Without knowing Spain, or without having set foot on Spanish ground, Claude Debussy has written Spanish music. He came to know Spain through books and paintings, through songs and dances performed by native Spaniards. He continued, replete with admiration: Debussy, who did not actually know Spain, spontaneously — I dare say unconsciously — October 2011 35
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