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1. The image of a girl with flaxen-coloured hair has been utilized in fine art as a symbol of innocence and naivety. Musical writers have suggested that Debussy's successful portrayal of these emotions was tied in with the musical simplicity of the prelude—specifically, the technical and harmonic elements.
2. This is my recently released version of this sweet work, ‘The Girl with the Flaxen Hair’. Inspired by a poem by Leconte de Lisle, Debussy had written a song on this poem in his youth. Here, in his mature years, he returns to the idea of sweet innocence for this piano solo interpretation of the same idea.

The Girl With the Flaxen Hair (La fille aux cheveux de lin) is the eighth of Claude Debussy's Preludes, Book I (1909-1910), for piano. It is gentle, fluid, and full of light, flowing harmonies.

Des pas sur la neige is a musical composition by French composer Claude Debussy. It is the sixth piece in the composer's first book of Préludes, written between late 1909 and early 1910. The title is in French and translates to 'Footprints in the Snow' The piece is 36 measures long and takes approximately three and a half to four and a half minutes to play. It is in the key of D minor. The prelude was, along with Danseuses de Delphes, one of the preludes Debussy believed should be played 'entre quatre-z-yeux' (literally 'between four eyes') meaning intimately, as if privately.

Background and influence[edit]

The piece is one of four Debussy preludes in both books whose title origins are unknown.^[1][2]David Schiff suggests that the inspiration for the title could have stemmed from a painting depicting a snowy landscape. This was an extremely popular backdrop among Impressionist artists like Claude Monet or Alfred Sisley; the latter painted Snow at Louveciennes.^[3] Furthermore, Debussy's inspiration from Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky is evident in this piece through his utilization of a 'block-like dissonant chord' just before the middle part of the piece.^[4]

History[edit]

Debussy dated this prelude December 27, 1909, a day after he wrote Les collines d'Anacapri.^[5] Critical music writer Victor Lederer states how the dates Debussy wrote at the top of some of his preludes are more likely the date he completed the pieces rather than the day he started writing them, given that some of them were quite long and musically complex.^[6] The piece was first published in April 1910, along with the rest of his preludes from Book I. It premiered later that year at the Salle Érard in Paris, with Debussy himself performing the work.^[7]

Musical analysis[edit]

Claude Debussy The Girl With The Flaxen Hair Analysis Involves

Placement within Preludes, Book I[edit]

Debussy was known for being extremely particular in organizing his preludes.^[4] Pianist and musical writer Paul Roberts asserts that this prelude, along with the two that immediately follow it, forms 'the central arch'^[1] of Book I's structure, since the three pieces provide the most 'dramatic contrast'^[1] out of all the preludes in the first book. The seventh prelude, Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest (What the West wind saw), brings about a violent and tumultuous feeling, while the La fille aux cheveux de lin (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair)—the eighth—evokes a feeling of warmth and gentleness.^[8] In complete contrast to these two, Des pas sur la neige exudes a sense of isolation, with Lederer describing the prelude as a 'stark expression of loneliness and desolation.'^[4] By placing these three preludes in this particular order, Debussy ensured that arguably the most technically challenging composition of the collection (Vent d'ouest) was sandwiched in-between the two that are the simplest to play out of the twenty-four.^[8]

Composition[edit]

The prelude is in binary form, which was one of the most common forms that Debussy composed in.^[9] The A section lasts from bars 1–15, followed by the B part in measures 16–31 and finally a coda in the last five bars.^[10] Although the prelude stays in its home key and does not modulate, it goes on to explore all twelve semitones in the octave throughout the piece.^[11] It also makes use of different modes, specifically the A♭scale in Mixolydian and Dorian modes, as well as the whole tone scale in C.^[12] Its texture consists of three layers that remains unbroken for almost all of the prelude.^[1]

The piece begins with a three-note motif based around the tonic pedal of D, rising to E and then F,^[13] constantly shifting between dissonance and resolution.^[1] It has been suggested that the D–E and E–F pattern throughout the prelude symbolizes the footprints made in the snow by both the right and left foot in alternating fashion.^[14] The middle section sees the utilization of complex dissonant chords leading up to the climax of the piece, which evokes a sense of sorrow. The opening motif then repeats itself with increased dissonance, before arriving at a new passage where the ascending melody withdraws from the 'sighing' chords.^[4] Although the melody at the end is firmly rooted in G minor, the last chord is in the tonic of D minor. Coupled with the morendo and piano pianissimo dynamic markings, this gives the impression that the prelude simply flickers off without resolving itself.^[1]

References[edit]

Footnotes

1. ^ ^abcdefRoberts, Paul (2001). Images: The Piano Music of Claude Debussy. Hal Leonard Corporation. pp. 252–255.
2. ^Cummins, Linda (January 1, 2006). Debussy and the Fragment. Rodopi. p. 158.
3. ^Schiff, David (January 7, 2012). The Ellington Century. University of California Press. pp. 41–42.
4. ^ ^abcdLederer 2007, p. 97.
5. ^Nichols, Roger (April 28, 1998). The Life of Debussy. Cambridge University Press. p. 131.
6. ^Lederer 2007, p. 92.
7. ^'Préludes (Premier livre)'. Debussy.fr. Centre de documentation Claude Debussy. 2007. Retrieved September 6, 2012.
8. ^ ^abLederer 2007, p. 98.
9. ^Reti 1951, p. 204.
10. ^Hinson, Maurice, ed. (2004). Anthology Of Impressionistic Piano Music: Intermediate to Early Advanced works by 20 Composers. Alfred Music Publishing. p. 6.
11. ^Smith, Richard Langham; Potter, Caroline, eds. (2006). French Music Since Berlioz. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 208.
12. ^Tymoczko, Dmitri (February 21, 2011). A Geometry of Music: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice. Oxford University Press. p. 322.
13. ^Bruhn, Siglind (January 1, 1997). Images and Ideas in Modern French Piano Music: The Extra-musical Subtext in Piano Works by Ravel, Debussy, and Messiaen. Pendragon Press. pp. 89–96.
14. ^Brunk, Jeremy Matthew (2007). Reflection of Debussy: A Comparative Analysis of Solo Marimba Works by Jacob Druckman and Richard Rodney Bennett. ProQuest. pp. 14–15.

Bibliography

• Lederer, Victor (2007). Debussy: The Quiet Revolutionary. New York: Amadeus Press. ISBN978-1-57467-153-7.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Reti, Rudolph (1951). The Thematic Process in Music. New York: Macmillan. ISBN0-8371-9875-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Claude Debussy The Girl With The Flaxen Hair Analysis Summary

External links[edit]

• Des pas sur la neige by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli on YouTube

There she sat, in the tender caress of dawn. A flaxen waterfall falling gently over her shoulder. Each stroke I added was a touch of sunlight on her hair. Hope and memory in her eyes, her lips speaking the unspoken.

As I painted a copy of oil painting Little Irene by Pierre Auguste Renoir, I knew I had finally found the girl with the flaxen hair.

I first came to know her in my piano class three years ago. La fille aux cheveux de lin, translated to “the Girl with the Flaxen Hair”, is a famous piano piece from the first book of Preludes by 20th century French composer Claude Debussy. My piano teacher Mrs. Lyu regarded it as one of her favorite pieces, passionately describing this girl of pure beauty she saw in music. I was attracted but confused: how can you “see” something (or even someone!) in something that’s heard? Back then, for me, sight and hearing were in separate worlds.

My performance of the piece was fluent and skilled, but Mrs. Lyu told me the girl of the flaxen hair was not there. I was yet to find the soul of the music. Frustrated and confused, I did some research in the hope to “see” the girl in the music.

To my surprise, after I typed the title into my search engine, an oil painting popped up beside Debussy’s piano piece. The moment I saw it, I felt it was an ideal visualization of the girl with the flaxen hair. It was named Little Irene, painted in 1880 by famous French impressionist Pierre Auguste Renoir as a portrait of Banker Cahen D'Anvers’s 8 year old daughter. Irene, with flaxen hair, sits in a garden in serenity, wearing a white dress with a sky-blue hue. Her skin is fair and her lips are cherry. Her eyes look forward into somewhere no one but her knows. That’s the girl I’d love to see in my music.

I tried hard to keep the image in mind as my fingers moved on the piano keys, but I still found the connection vague and abstract. How could what you hear relate to what you see, when one is constantly flowing whereas the other is frozen? I could tell the girl I saw in Renoir’s painting was not in my music, though I had no idea how I could possibly find her. I almost gave up with the piece until I got to paint a copy of Little Irene in the summer, several months after I came to know it.

Painted by numerous swift and broken strokes without any distinct lines, Little Irene was representative of impressionistic style, which sought to capture the instant fluidity of light and air in the imperceptible elapses time. I re-experienced the process of Renoir’s creation of Irene as I added each stroke to the canvas. Suddenly, she was not sitting still but moving with life. I could feel sunlight dancing on her flaxen hair with each stroke of brush. As I lit up her eyes with a dip of bright paint on the brush, a light of innocence and hope unique to a little girl glittered in her eyes.

Then I suddenly understood why Debussy was known as the founder of Impressionism in music. Wasn’t the process of the painting just like the procession of the music? Notes in Debussy’s music, overlapped and interweaved on the palette of music, were just like strokes in Renoir’s painting. Both Debussy’s piano piece and Renoir’s oil painting vividly depicted the girl with the flaxen hair and captured the fluidity of light, which was the essence of Impressionism.

I finally understood the very true old saying, “music is the flowing art, art is the frozen music.” Music is in time while art is in space. Sight and hearing are separable but not separated. Both are ways in which we approach, perceive, and express the world. When I played the piece again, the girl in the painting and the girl in the music were one.

Recently, I learnt that Debussy was deeply fond of art and poetry. He once used some impressionistic paintings for covers of his music albums. In fact, his lovely prelude The Girl with the Flaxen Hair was inspired by a poem with the same title by a French poet Charles-Marie René Leconte de Lisle. Here is the first stanza of the poem:

“On the grass, sitting in flowers
Who sings since the fresh morning?
It is the maiden with the flaxen hair
The lovely one with lips like cherries.”

The poem painted a vivid image that left me with a similar impression as Little Irene. The girl with “the flaxen hair” and “lips like cherries” walked out from the lines. No wonders people call poetry “the art of words.' As I read through the poem, painted Little Irene, and played the music piece, I felt an innocent beauty that transcended all forms. The girl with the flaxen hair was really alive in both worlds of sight and hearing. After all, the two worlds are in fact one world, the one we live in. Music, painting, poetry, and more. All come from life and can bring the same idea back to life.