Hear Debussy Play Debussy: A Vintage Recording from 1913

Great French composer a century ago claude debussy sat on a device called Verte Mignon’s piano reproduction and recorded a series of performances for posterity. This machine is designed to encode the nuances of a pianist’s playing, such as pedaling and dynamics, into a piano roll for later reproduction.

Debussy recorded 14 songs on six rolls in Paris before November 1, 1913. According to Debussy enthusiasts, Steve Bryson’s websiteThe composer was delighted with the quality of the copy and wrote in a letter to Edwin Werthe: “It is impossible to achieve a more perfect copy than that of the Werthe apparatus. Let me in this sentence vouch for my surprise and admiration at what I heard. I am, my dear Excellency, faithfully Claude Debussy.”

The selection above is “La soirée dans Grenade” (“Night Grenada”) from Debussy’s 1903 trio of works. estampor “Prints.” Debussy was inspired by Symbolist poets and Impressionist painters who sought to go beyond the surface of their subjects and evoke the emotions they radiated. “Grenade Night” is described by Christine Stevenson as follows: Notes from the pianist As a “sound picture” of Moorish Spain:

Although Debussy had little first-hand experience of Spain at the time, he immediately evokes the country by opening the song softly and subtly, using the rhythm of a convincing habenera dance. It creeps into our consciousness by quietly asserting a C sharp repeated in different registers. Around it is a languid Moorish arabesque with a nasal augmented second and a nagging semitone that tugs at the center of the note, punctuated by occasional murmurs of semi-quarter notes. [16th notes] and diatonic bass passages. Debussy wrote: Commercer lentement dans un rythme nonchalamment gracieux [Begin slow­ly in a casu­al­ly grace­ful rhythm] At first but later tress rhythm [Very rhyth­mic] In brightly lit A major, dance emerges from the shadows, ff [Fortissimo–loudly]the click of castanet and the sound of stomping feet.

Debussy was 52 years old and suffering from cancer when he recorded Piano Roll. He died less than five years later on March 25, 1918. Since then, his beautiful and evocative music has secured his place as one of the most influential and popular composers of the 20th century. Roger Hecht writes: classical net“Debussy was a dreamer, and his music dreamed with him.”

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