La mer

When it comes to roots, origins, sources, and influences, Claude Debussy is one of the most complex of composers. He was so sensitive to experiences of all kinds — and so absorbent of images and ideas — that we may well envy his capacity to select and marshal artistic impressions of many kinds and then fashion them into new works of art.

Both the outer and inner world contributed to this storehouse of expression, which implies, in the case of La mer (The Sea) that he was not only affected by his own image of the sea and his own contact with it, but that he was also stirred into creating this musical portrait by other artists, especially painters.

His actual contact with the sea was no more varied than that of other reasonably well-to-do Frenchmen of his generation. He spent holidays in Cannes and Arcachon and took advantage of a nearby seacoast during his time at the Villa Medici in Rome. In 1889, he suffered through an alarming voyage in a small boat off Saint-Lunaire, in Brittany.

Visits to London in 1902 and 1903 not only involved Channel crossings, but they also allowed him to see a selection of paintings by J.M.W. Turner, whose work he knew and admired but only then was able to study in depth. That prompted Debussy to begin working on La mer in summer 1903, completing the work two years later.

It was not only Turner whose vivid treatment of such subjects touched Debussy. The impressionists had always appealed profoundly to him, and his work is in many ways a musical counterpart to theirs, La mer especially. The Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, whose woodblocks inspired Monet, Degas, and Cassatt, also attracted the composer; the artist’s famous woodblock print, Under the Wave off Kanagawa, appeared on the cover of the full score at Debussy’s request.

“I have loved the ocean and listened to it passionately,” Debussy wrote, as the music instantly confirms. The surge and flow of the sea, the tiniest drops of spray, and its whole broad sweep are vividly portrayed. At the same time the three movements, while only claiming to be symphonic “sketches,” add up to a more than passable imitation of a traditional symphony, the outer movements (themselves connected by cyclic recall of earlier themes) enclosing a brisk and breezy scherzo.

The first movement, De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From Dawn to Noon on the Sea), evokes the sun rising to its full splendor over the ocean. It is the furthest from inherited ideas of formal rigor or musical structure, as it expands and progresses without ever going over its earlier material. Some striking ideas are heard many times, notably the abrupt little rhythm of two notes with which the cellos begin, and the rising and falling melody played very early by the trumpet and English horn in octaves. As the movement gathers momentum, the wavelike phrases are more recognizable, and a striking episode for 16 cellos stands out.

The second movement, Jeux des vagues (Play of the Waves), illustrates the intricate splashing and sloshing of waves. Debussy’s delicate orchestral skill is on full display, although there are episodes of disturbing force among the tracery of lighter textures.

The third movement, Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of Wind and Sea), portrays a discourse between the wind and the sea, with clear evocations of the first movement. A broad new theme, not unlike those written by Debussy’s compatriot César Franck, recurs in various guises; two cornets join the brass section, and the themes tumble over each other as the work reaches its shimmering conclusion.

— Hugh Macdonald