Œuvres complètes de Claude Debussy: editing the Sonates (1915-17)
When I was 19 I had a cello lesson with William Pleeth at his house in Finchley that changed the direction of my life. We were working on Debussy’s cello sonata and he was encouraging me to be more actively inventive in how each small phrase was built. In grappling with the enormous variety of instructions in this score he opened my eyes to the powerfully suggestive invention of Debussy’s use of language and notation. The music of the last years of Debussy’s life is particularly rich in this dimension. This music became the focus of my doctoral thesis and the questions it raises have fundamentally shaped my teaching practice.
In editing the sonatas for the Œuvres complètes de Claude Debussy I am endlessly drawn into the complex ramifications of the communication embedded in these scores. Debussy knew his own mind and had an exceptionally clear vision of how most of the material would be articulated but it’s fascinating to see him grappling with the practicalities of making things work. There isn’t much of a literature on this aspect of his working process so we have to see what we can glean from the documents themselves. Here are just a few details from the first and third sonatas that raised an eyebrow!
This little note, that the pianist should never forget that they are not ‘fighting’ the cello but ‘accompanying’ it, sits at the bottom of a page of the continuity draft of the Finale of the cello sonata, suggesting that it must have been workshopped at some stage – but when, where, with whom?
I’d like to find a cellist who could play this passage as proposed in harmonics! (The tempo is crotchet = 92.) Debussy’s ‘solution’ in the final version: play it sul ponticello. Knowing this first version gives a useful hint about losing the ‘fundamental’ in ponticello…
This is an excerpt from Debussy’s corrected proofs for the violin sonata. Looking at the fair manuscript of this passage it seems likely that Debussy had intended the material in the first bar of the second system here to be pizzicato. It’s difficult to make it work in practice and what appears in the corrections here is probably a fudge…
When is a ‘rest’ not a ‘rest’?
I can understand why the engraver didn’t like these indications of resonance in the cello and piano into the third movement of the cello sonata (even though Debussy indicates a ‘subito’[!] attacca). The ‘solution’ in the first edition was to scrap them but I think they are needed to keep the sense of continuity. (Even recent critical editions omit them, without comment in critical notes.) The third movement has already been signalled some bars earlier and Debussy liked these kinds of ‘cinematic’ transitions.