Classical Music | Cello Music

Recorded on 08/14/2007, uploaded on 01/13/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

In his later years, Claude Debussy planned a series of six chamber sonatas under the title Six sonates pour divers instruments. Only three of the planned works, however, materialized—the two solo sonatas for violin and cello, and the chamber sonata for flute, viola and harp. Each is a testament to Debussy’s skill in the realm of chamber music, but also examples of the composer’s gradual progression toward absolute music and abandonment of the overtly visual and textual elements that had dominated nearly all of his earlier music.

First to be composed was the Cello Sonata in D minor, completed in 1815. Possessing a severe brevity (most performances last only eleven minutes), it is nonetheless filled to the brim with material. The sonata is structured in three movements, though the last two are played without break, but it is not to the familiar Classical sonata structure the Debussy turned for inspiration. Instead, Debussy adopted a plan inspired by the music of an even earlier period, namely that of François Couperin. Mixed with this Baroque influence, however, is Debussy’s modern compositional language of modes, whole-tone and pentatonic scales, and advanced techniques required of the soloist.

The opening Prologue begins with a declamatory statement of the movement’s principal theme in the piano answered, in turn, by a flourish from the cello. Much of the cello’s part is highly ornamental with the piano mostly resigned to harmonic support. This changes, however, in the movement’s central episode as the serene and lyrical music gives way to an animated ostinato in the cello and the piano takes on a somewhat more melodically important role. The peaceful music of the opening returns to round out the movement’s ternary design and closes with quiet harmonics from the cello. The ensuing Sérénade is an unusual movement with a majority of the solo part played pizzicato. Save for a few arco passages in the opening section, only the middle episode features any prominent use of the bow. A truncated reprise of the opening gives way to a bowed passage that serves as a transition to the sonata’s finale. An energetic movement, the finale is not without its moments of tender beauty and much of it is indeed lyrical.       Joseph DuBose

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Sonata for Cello and Piano in d minor (1915)        Claude Debussy

Prologue; Serenade; Finale

The Cello Sonata was the first of a group of six projected sonatas for various instrumental combinations, of which Debussy only completed three before his death.

This Sonata evokes the 18th century of the poems of Verlaine and the paintings of Watteau. It is said that the Cello Sonata was originally to be titled "Pierrot fâché avec la lune" (Pierrot angry with the moon). This brief work is marked by the clarity and concision one has come to expect from French composers. It is modeled on the Baroque sonata, rather than the complex, large-scale works of Beethoven and Schubert. The overall mood is sad, yet ironic. The second movement framed by a prologue and finale Serenade is particularly striking in the use of the cello to suggest a guitar or lute being strummed and plucked: Pierrot serenading the moon.     Kenneth Olsen

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.