Presentation

If one considers the matter closely, anticipations of the new style in the late works of Debussy can already be detected in the Six epigraphes antiques of 1914, in the Trois poèmes de Mallarmé and in pieces like Les tierces alternées (from the Second Book of Préludes), which is in fact already an étude ante litteram.
But it is above all in the extraordinary revival of activity in 1915 (unluckily coinciding with the most anguished, both physically and morally, moment in the composer’s life) that we witness the birth of a genuine new language, in Debussy and more generally in French music.
This is thanks to a handful of surprising instrumental creations: the suite of three pieces En blanc et noir for two pianos, the twelve Études for piano and the first two sonatas of the planned set of six: those for cello and piano and for flute, viola and harp (the last one to be completed, the violin sonata, came two years later).
The novelty of these works is already apparent in the abstract, impersonal titles: “in black and white”, studies, sonatas. This was unusual for one of the most evocative musicians of music history, who here turns his back on landscapes and artistic or literary suggestions in search of a kind of “new classicism” that is reminiscent of Busoni.
Among the influences we can cite not only the renewed interest in Couperin (as we find also in Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin) and, more generally, in the 18th-century French harpsichordists, but above all the recent experience of revising Chopin’s own studies for the publisher Durand.
Indeed Debussy was in doubt as to whether to dedicate Études to Couperin or Chopin (in the end the latter won the day).
There is no doubt that Debussy’s masterpiece stands as the final pillar in an ideal “art de toucher” that began with Couperin’s harpsichord works and reached a peak with Chopin’s Études.
In that brief, yet intensely fertile, period of exalted creativity Debussy – who at the time signed himself “musicien français” – was perhaps also motivated by a desire to bequeath all he could to a country battered and offended by the War (his sensations and horror are well expressed in the central movement of En blanc et noir). And it was this feeling of exalted patriotic desire that elevated him, albeit momentarily, from the depression that had kept inactive him for a couple of years.
Today, after almost a century, the Études are universally acknowledged as a masterpiece of compositional ingenuity and refined abstract poetry, but they still fail to occupy the place they deserve on concert programmes or to be fittingly appreciated by those who identify Debussy with “impressionistic” (a term he himself hated) visionary suggestions.
Only after the composer’s death was their impact on instrumental method and (more fundamentally) structural, compositional technique truly understood. Significantly it was from the Études, and more generally from late Debussy, that French 20th-century music (that of Messiaen and Boulez) took its cue.
Nor could the titles of the twelve pieces – limited to the technical aspect – be more eloquent: the five fingers, thirds, sixths, octaves, chords, etc.
This reminds one of the composer’s initial desire to do without titles in his earlier preludes (eventually, though almost polemically, he placed them at the end of each piece).
In these studies there are also particular technicalities that offer innovative approaches, also in matters of sonority and timbre: for example, the “fourths” (an interval disregarded by the Romantics), the “eight fingers” (i.e. without the two thumbs), the “embellishments” (a tribute to Couperin?), or the “opposing sonorities” (where we are treated to the “impressionist” Debussy).
In the  Études the attempt to codify the piano technique of his day successfully coexists with the highest degree of formal perfection, distillation and essentiality.
It is unfortunate that he should have arrived at this sensational turning-point at a time when life no longer permitted him to develop it.

Riccardo Risaliti
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