Inspirations Behind Claude Debussy’s Nocturnes
Called by one critic ‘America’s first great master of the night’, James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) started his series of night views with paintings of the River Thames around 1870. He used the word ‘nocturne’ to describe these paintings, taking the word from music, where the idea of a ‘nocturne’, i.e., night music, had been around since the 18th century. It started as defining an ensemble work in several movements, usually played at evening parties and was intended to be heard, but not listened to, existing solely as background music. Mozart wrote several under their Italian name, notturno.
Walter Greaves: James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1871
In the 19th century, the form moved from ensemble instrumental music to the piano, first by the Irish composer John Field. The characteristic of the 19th-century piano nocturne is a singing, cantabile melody over an arpeggiated accompaniment, which might even suggest a guitar accompaniment. He was most notably followed by Chopin. The form continued into the 20th century and was then changed by Béla Bartók, whose ‘night music’ evoked the sounds of birds and nocturnal creatures.
In the middle, however, is Claude Debussy, who wrote three nocturnes for orchestra and female choir. Completed in 1896, they were intended for the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. Originally entitled Trois scènes au crépuscule (Three Scenes at Twilight), taking their title from the poet Henri de Regnier, they were intended to be an experiment in ‘the different arrangements of a single colour…a study in grey’, as he wrote to Ysaÿe in 1894.
Nadar: Claude Debussy, 1900 (Gallica btv1b53118843k/f1)
When Debussy finished the work, however, there was no longer a part for a solo violin, but the idea of a colour-study, as Whistler had been doing, remained. Debussy aimed for a sense of mystery, not a sense of imagery. He wanted to leave his audience with the idea of a diversified impression and special lights, conveyed through the title of Nocturnes.
The first Nocturne, Nuages (Clouds), in Debussy’s words, was NOT to be heard as clouds drifting over the Seine, as seen from the Place de la Concorde, and the English horn’s solo should not be heard as a stylized sound of a tugboat’s horn. Debussy didn’t want the prosaic origin of the idea to detract from how the audience heard the work. It should be heard in a subtle and indicative way, as the colour of the evening’s sunset, the gradual darkening of the surroundings, with things becoming more and more invisible.
One of the Whistler works associated with Debussy’s Nocturnes is his Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket of 1875.
Whistler: Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, 1875 (Detroit Institute of Arts Museum)
Depicting a fireworks display at the London pleasure resort, the Cremorne Gardens, the work is a glorious depiction of the glories of a fireworks display. Vertical lines take our eyes up, light splashes across the sky, and, as the title indicates, it’s a study in Black and Gold. The figures at the bottom of the picture are very Japanese in nature, with the women’s kimonos filling the ground behind them.
Claude Debussy: Nocturnes – No. 1. Nuages (Lyon National Orchestra; Jun Märkl, cond.)
The second movement, Fêtes, should NOT be heard as a depiction of Bois de Boulogne at the end of day as the Republican Guard sounds their trumpets to send everyone scurrying for the exits before the Park is closed. Instead, we should take the rushing and rhythm of the people and hear it as if they were passing through a festival and blending with it. The festival’s music blends with that of the people and gives us a ‘luminous dust’ and the ‘universal rhythm of all things’.
Claude Debussy: Nocturnes – No. 2. Fêtes (Lyon National Orchestra; Jun Märkl, cond.)
The final movement, Sirènes, refers to the human-like women from the Odyssey where they call to the sailors but are defeated by Odysseus’ precautions to block his men’s ears. In Christian art, they symbolise the dangerous temptation of women to lead men astray.
Debussy said that the movement ‘depicts the sea and its countless rhythms and presently, amongst the waves silvered by the moonlight, is heard the mysterious song of the Sirens as they laugh and pass on’.
Another Whistler work associated with Debussy’s Nocturnes is his 1866–1874 work Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Valparaiso. Begun in 1866 as a daylight painting done in Valparaiso, Chile, when the Spanish fleet attacked the city, he reworked it into a night scene in 1874. Two elements are unique in the painting: the high horizon and the diagonal of the wharf have no precedent in European art, but take their inspiration from late landscapes by Hiroshige (1797–1858).
Whistler: Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Valparaiso, 1874 (Smithsonian: National Museum of Asian Art)
It is in this third movement that Debussy adds in his choir, who are textless, but bring forth the idea of the sirens on the shore, calling to the sailors at sea. As the work ends, the harp calms the waters, and the voices fall silent.
Claude Debussy: Nocturnes – No. 3. Sirenes (Lyon National Orchestra; Jun Märkl, cond.)
Debussy was very aware that removing the mystery from the music removed its ability to make the audience imagine what they were hearing. He felt that simply writing program music would make the audience laugh at both the music and him. By summoning up shapes moving in the dark, obscured by the shadows of night, he could evoke a far more interesting image in the listener’s mind than any pre-written programme would reveal.
In 1910, Debussy declared about music ‘…I try to set it free from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art, gushing forth, an open-air art, an art boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea! It must never be shut in and become an academic art’.
Given its difficult gestation and long development, the seven years that it took to bring Nocturnes to fruition, it’s satisfying that the premiere of Nos. 1 and 2 was so successful. No. 3 couldn’t be performed for lack of a female choir. One reviewer, Pierre de Bréville in the Mercure de France, wrote, ‘It is pure music, conceived beyond the limits of reality, in the world of dreams, among the ever-moving architecture that God builds with mists, the marvellous creations of the impalpable realms’.
Debussy continued to work on the music to the end of his life, revising the orchestration, adjusting passages here and there. Many of his changes were to better integrate the women’s choir into the orchestral sound. His experiment in sound and colour was a success.
For more of the best in classical music, sign up for our E-Newsletter
