Registers

Claude Debussy: L’après-midi d'un faune

L’après-midi d'un faune (The Afternoon of a Faun) by Claude Debussy (1862–1918) is far greater a landmark work in the history of music than its ten-minute length would suggest. The writer and critic Paul Griffiths even went so far as to say that the first four bars on the solo flute marked the birth of modern music. The piece was originally to have served as the prelude to a three-movement work for orchestra based on a poem of the same name by Stéphane Mallarmé, but the second movement (Interlude) and finale (Paraphrase) were never forthcoming. Tonality and regular rhythms become as hazy in the piece as the faun slumbering lazily in the hot summer’s afternoon. The critics at the time borrowed a term, impressionist, from painting to describe it, and though this is a word frequently used in speaking of Debussy, he personally rejected it. In vain, as we know so well. 

Nico Muhly: Register

Register by American composer Nico Muhly (b. 1981) was co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Gustavo Dudamel, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Southbank Centre. It was also inspired by his organist friend and colleague James McVinnie, who premiered it at the Walt Disney Hall in 2018.

“I’ve always treated the organ as an early version of the synthesizer,” says Muhly. “Like in speech, changes in tone and style can be subtle or jarring, with sudden asides and rapid shifts in tack. The piece is built around three distinct cycles of chords: one, large and ascending, with a sense of slight menace; the second, bright, descending, and brilliant; and the third, a sparkling perpetual-motion machine, in whose genetic past is a Pavane in G minor by Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625). Despite the power of the modern organ, the piece ends with a glance towards the Jacobean period, with strings played without vibrato, and the organ in its smallest, most understated register.

Maurice Ravel: Ma mère l’Oye

Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) draws on well-known age-old folk tales. It was originally a suite in five movements for piano four hands dedicated to a friend’s two children but Ravel later expanded it into a half-hour ballet by orchestrating it and adding a prelude and interludes. Like the stories on which it is based, Mother Goose has become a classic.

The prelude leads us into an enchanted garden, giving us glimpses of the characters we are about to meet. The first is the Sleeping Beauty: we see her prick her finger on the spinning wheel and fall into a hundred-year sleep (scenes 1 & 2). Scene 3 presents the dialogues between Beauty and the Beast, who turns out to be a handsome prince in disguise. Scene 4 features Little Tom Thumb, who gets lost in the forest because the birds have eaten the crumbs he sprinkled along the path to show him the way home. Scene 5, the climax of the ballet, is based on the story of Laideronette, a pretty little girl who gets turned into an ugly one but breaks the spell and becomes pretty again as the Empress of the Pagodas (not temples but little porcelain figures). A trumpet calls us back to the enchanted garden. It is morning, the birds are singing and the Prince has come to wake the Sleeping Beauty with his kiss. Our journey in the land of dreams has ended.