The rolling of the chords is a technique pianists of a certain era used on all music. I don't think it has anything to do with water.

Interestingly, the Welte-Mignon gives a number which I suppose is to set the roll at the right speed for the interpretation to be authentic. Mr. Caswell commented that he did not record the Debussy CDL of Mme. de Horvath because he could not get it to sound right. There could be some problem with the speed as he indicated.

One must be a somewhat lenient in judging playing from that period since more liberties were taken than is allowed now.
Frankly, some of the playing today is rather sterile and boring. The notes are correct but the individuality and passion are missing.

Given your dislike of the Debussy piano roll (performed by whomever) your opinion seems consistent. Really, there's nothing to talk about, but I wanted to point out that she performed this on a period instrument (replica).

I almost agree with your first sentence in general, but surely Debussy followed his own path and refused to follow the conventions of his era? That has always been my impression of him based on his written opinions and compositions, and now his recordings. Where are the rolled chords in Danseuses de Delphes, that "pianists of a certain era used on all music"? There are absolutely none in Debussy's recording. In La cathédrale engloutie, where are the rolled chords where the cathedral is above the surface (bars 28-40)? Nowhere; only when the cathedral is rising or sinking are chords broken. I can sometimes over-analyse things, but I honestly don't think I'm doing that here. There are specific things in these recordings that are strengthening my view of Debussy as a meticulous craftsman where very little is unplanned, or the product of tradition or the trends of the time.

@Fataliac: Many thanks; I've just finished listening to all the recordings. Fascinating stuff! With pieces like Le vent dans la pleine and La danse de Puck, while I enjoyed hearing the composer's take on them, I prefer Gieseking's recordings (1953, EMI, very good quality mono). Thanks to a direct comparison, I can hear how Gieseking's more sparing use of the pedal in Le vent dans la pleine succeeds in making the atmosphere more windy and vivid. The wind shifting direction in the grasses and intensifying just doesn't quite work the same when there's too much pedal. I think if Debussy had heard Gieseking play some of these pieces, he might have been impressed and a bit humbled.

Debussy followed his own compositional path...not the same as his own path in terms of playing the piano. "Used on all music" meaning music of all eras or at least starting on music of the Romantic era...not the same as on every composition(it's up to the player judgement when to roll chords) to the same extent or equally throughout a given composition.

If rolling the chords was representing water, then it would mean that when Debussy wasn't representing water he wouldn't roll chords. I think some of the chords in Evening in Grananda were rolled.

I agree with pianoloverus here. Composing and performing are two different things. Some great composers were also great performers, but not always. And simply because Debussy shirked a lot of compositional customs - "parallel 4ths and 5ths? Sacrilege!" - does not mean he also shirked the performance practices of the time. I think the likeness to water is a superimposed observation.

I have a number of Debussy attributed recordings using Welte-Mignon piano. He certainly is documented not only to have used Welte-Mignon, but found the experience agreeable. His great adversery Saint Saens did not [from memory] although I have a Saint Saens recording of Chopin's F minor nocturne and not only is his technique is right up with the great Prokofiev and Rachmaninov, but there is nothing wrong with the recording.

Debussy on the other hand sounds 2nd rate in comparison. He loused up a performance of La Plus De Lente and to my annoyance many performers have tried to mimmick his glaring errors "in the spirit of Debussy". This is taking nothing away from his compositions (some are amongst my all time favourite piano works), but he should have followed Schubert's lead as a performer in my opinion.

The only chords that Debussy breaks in his performance of Soirée dans Grenade are indicated in the score. It is clear from these piano roll recordings that Debussy does not fit remotely into the turn-of-the-century mold of rolling lots of chords (and playing the left hand ahead of the right hand too). One distinct exception shows up in these recordings, and that's the slight rolling of chords in the right hand in La Cathédrale engloutie, but only when the cathedral is rising and falling, not when it is above the surface. I didn't mean to suggest that the rolling chords were directly representing water, more that the rolled chords seem appropriate to the atmosphere, which in this case includes water but one could just as well say "shimmering" or "glistening" or whatever.

Also, just in case anyone resented the clip from Atlantis and thought, "Who the heck is this guy?!", it isn't my aim to try to impose a specific view of the piece, either, I was merely trying to express my strong support of Debussy's interpretations on two main counts: a) They're the product of an immensely original musician and owe barely anything to whatever performance habits/trends were going on at the time; b) To me, there's a completely natural reason for Debussy to roll the chords that he did.


Debussy wrote and spoke very extensively on the interpretation of piano music, including and especially his own. His views are suffused with keen insight, sensitivity, and a desire for his music to sound a certain way (including not only his piano works but also his orchestral music, the relationship between voice and accompaniment in songs, and what his aim was in writing the recitative of his opera the way he did). There are dozens of books filled with Debussy's views, both directly in his own words and related by students, musicians, and friends. Like Chopin, Debussy had thoughts of writing a treatise on piano performance but never completed one. Here's a website to jump into, with a sample of interesting quotes. The website has a good list of references too:

http://www.djupdal.org/karstein/debussy/method/m01.shtml

Debussy, in a letter: "One is often betrayed by so-called pianists! I mean it - I can't tell you the extent to which my piano music has been deformed; so much so that often I have a job to recognize it!"

George Copeland: "When I asked him why so few people were able to play his music, Debussy replied, after some reflection: 'I think it is because they try to impose themselves upon the music. It is necessary to abandon yourself completely, and let the music do as it will with you - to be a vessel through which it passes."

Debussy, in a letter to Sylvain Bonmariage: "So you really think a poem has only one meaning! Aren't you aware that each one of your poems is transformed by each of its readers? And it's the same with every musical score. You only have to listen to experts talking about them. You write poems as you like. We can draw from them the music that we like. And the listener, or reader, finds in them the charm that he likes. Everything is relative."

George Copeland: "The piano [...] was draped with a silk scarf held in place by a heavy cloisonné vase. I asked permission to move the vase, so that I might open the piano cover. 'Absolument non!' he replied with obvious annoyance. 'Do not touch it! I never permit that anyone should open my piano. As it is, everyone plays my music too loud.'"

Maurice Dumesnil: "At the crescendo leading to the climax, marked ff, he stopped at my side: 'Please do not overdo this crescendo. It sounds too dramatic; start more softly and you will reach the same effect without impairing the quality of your tone.'"

Maurice Dumesnil: "Remembering his previous remarks about dramatizing, I tried to keep the middle part [of Clair de lune] moderate. But I guess I still overdid it: 'No,' he said, 'you exaggerate both the crescendo and the rubato. The latter must be done within the entire phrase, never on a single beat.' And the expression had to remain dignified."

Maurice Dumesnil: "Also in Clair de lune it was important that the triplets were strictly in tempo, 'but within a general flexibility'."

Debussy, related by Maurice Dumesnil: "In those first bars I would like the right hand slightly more prominent than the left hand. Octaves sound flat when played with the same tone volume in both hands."

Maurice Dumesnil: "Debussy often thought in terms of orchestration. Concerning the second section of 'Clair de lune', he said, 'The left-hand arpeggios should be fluid, mellow, drowned in pedal, as if played by a harp on a background of strings.' But he did not tolerate any confusion and insisted on the purity of each harmonic pattern."

Debussy, related by Marguerite Long: "'The fifth finger of virtuosi, what a pest it is!' What he meant by that is that too often one hammers the melody without attaching sufficient importance to the whole harmony; harmony that, according to him, should never be sacrificed to the melodic idea."

Thanks! This is just as fascinating as Scriabin playing his 8/12 etude. In both cases I like the free and unique style of playing.
I find the music suitable to be played like this. Less precisely structured and timed makes it a more organic whole.

I don't see how this negates my point at all..,in fact, it reinforces what I said. Whether marked or not, he used rolled chords when he wasn't dealing with water. Yet you claim there's some special significance to the place he rolled chords in Cathedral, because he was trying to represent some watery scenario.


He plays many rolled chords in Golliwogs(most marked, others not). Same for Arabeque No.2. He also plays some LH notes before RH notes in Golliwogs.

If he marked rolled chords, instead of assuming/hoping the pianist would play some of them rolled, I don't see see how this would imply he didn't fit into the mold of rolling chords.




I don't see your point. None of this applies to rolling chords (whether marked or not) or whether he would have played piano in the style of his contemporaries.

I heard Debussy using slightly rolled chords in a piece where they aren't marked, exceptionally to my perception of the recordings I've heard, and I was enthusiastic that this minor exception seems very appropriate to the piece. I perceived somewhat hasty judgements being made in this thread about an extraordinary composer playing his own music, and I stepped in to defend and emphasize what I see as valuable and interesting things about the performances. What I found apt in the cathedral piece happened to involve water. Please let's not focus unduly on water or bring watery or non-watery into discussion of other pieces. If you still don't see my point, or don't think I've made one (or a worthwhile one), then let's just agree to disagree.


Let's put the Arabesque aside, as that isn't listed as a confirmed Debussy recording in any of the sources discussed earlier in this thread (other than CD listings). As to Golliwog's Cake Walk, I've listened carefully while reading the score and I don't see what you mean, unless lack of simultaneity to the tune of <0.05 seconds counts (i.e. nothing at all like the blatant chord rolling and LH anticipations common to that era) -- and those imperfections sound more like slightly flawed technique more than anything else. Would you mind giving a Youtube starting time, and/or a bar number in the score, so I know what to listen for?


Overall in Debussy's piano works, how often does he call for rolled chords? Very rarely, yes? How do some rolled chords in Soirée dans Grenade (which are surely ever-so-Spanish flourishes, not even worth debating) suddenly push Debussy towards the chord-rolling throng? Rolled chords are a very varied expressive device. Their very occasional use <> turn-of-century schmaltzy performance practice.

(Saving space by not re-quoting my carefully considered and thorough disagreement with this assertion)
I didn't find any direct Debussy statements regarding rolling chords, though Maurice Dumesnil speaks strongly against them in his book. But as I hoped would be obvious (sorry for snipping too much of your post though), my point is that Debussy very much followed his own path playing the piano. Just about everyone who ever heard him knew it and commented on it, and one only has to hear and play his compositions to realize that he was doing revolutionary things with tone and color and texture that are inextricably bound with a certain aesthetic and sound that is very much apart from late Romantic performance practice. I don't feel like saying "in my opinion", because the vast majority of musicians over a century seem to concur with me! You said something that seemed pretty outlandish to me, and I explained as best as I could why I disagreed.

I'm not going to try and go through each your points again at this point. Suffice it to say I find nothing in your latest post to convince me that any of the points in my previous posts are invalid.

I have given numerous examples of Debussy's use of rolled chords(both indicated in his scores and not)in many of his works he plays on videos. I think the only piece without rolled chords played that has been discussed is Prelude No 1. Both uses of rolled chords seem to indicate he was not against using this technique of the past (and probably of his teachers).

I disagreed first with your description of the rolled chords in Cathedral as relating to water and I gave logical arguments to explain why your example from Granada only made my point more convincing. You seem to have backed off this water description.

It's bizarre how you claim Debussy didn't like to use rolled chords yet he plays them them in abundance in his performance of Cathedral and every piece except Delphi Dancers.

Exactly, I like this roll interpretation. It's more straightforward, compared to some other more sentimental ones. Not that the others are not valid, just currently it fits.

I never claimed that Debussy "didn't like to use rolled chords"! But if asked to agree or disagree with this spin on my posts, then I'd say Debussy had a preference for not rolling chords in the turn-of-the-century, schmaltzy manner. When he did rolls chords, I'd say that it was in the vast majority of cases an expressive (or sometimes affected stylistic) gesture quite removed from typical performance practice of the time. Also, let me clarify (before anyone claims I said otherwise), I'm not saying that Debussy wasn't at all influenced by what was happening around him. If one were to try to quantify the source of Debussy's chord rolling in terms of personal versus external/traditional influence, I'm sensing a casual 50:50 attitude in some of the posters here. I respectfully disagree and I'd say it's probably a lot more like 98:2!


I can only wonder how we can hear these performances so differently! Youtube has at least nine of Debussy's piano roll recordings. In roll number order, here's a tally of discernable unmarked rolled chords that Debussy plays:

Golliwog's Cakewalk - none (you say he does, I invited you to point out where, you declined)

D'un cahier d'esquisses - none

La soirée dans Grenade - none

La plus que lente - just the 2nd beat of the theme in most appearances, and the four bars near the middle marked Cédez and Cédez encore plus

Danseuses de Delphes - none

La cathédrale engloutie - the RH slightly in the outer sections, none in the central section

La danse de Puck - a LH chord in bar 33 and again in bar 37, otherwise none

Minstrels - none

Le vent dans la plaine - none

Since you have raised the issue of marked chords in Debussy's music by saying "whether marked or not" in an earlier post, let me point out that only two of the above pieces have a significant number of marked broken chords. Both are in affected styles lying outside of Debussy's usual fare: one jazz (Golliwog's Cake Walk) and the other Spanish (or, more specifically, maybe a fusion of Andalusian and Moorish folk influence - La soirée dans Grenade). Neither could sensibly be said to show an affinity for the chord rolling of performance tendencies circa 1900, surely?


Your assumption that I claimed rolling the chords was literally "representing water" is a bit of a distortion of what I was saying, but even if I went along with this, the second part of your sentence does not follow logically from the first part. Water could potentially be one of many, many ideas/sensations/moods/images/etc. that could inspire someone to break chords rather than not.

I think you are right about my incorrect logic mentioned in your last paragraph.

But some other points I would disagree with. For example, there are other Debussy pieces with lots of rolled chords written...Arabesque No.2 is an example. Nor do I think the rolled chords in Cathedral are minimal. BruceD descirbed every chord on second page as rolled.

I listened to D's playing of Le Plus que Lent. It had numerous rolled chords. If many(not all) of them occured on a certain note in the theme, I don't see that as important and the theme is repeated many times. There are also some marked rolled chord at the end of that piece. There were also examples of Debussy playing the LH befor the RH.

Morodine said "I think the likeness to water was a superimposed observation", so she apparently also felt you had given the same significance to the rolled chords that I stated.

Would it surprise you to know that there are just 21 rolled chords in that 6 page piece? And there's only one broken chord in the whole of the last 2 pages. I think it's the abundance of lively triplets, perhaps combined with the rolled chords being played too obtrusively, as they often are, that can give the impression that there are more. (You may have highlighted a useful marker of whether a performance of this piece is a good one. If listeners are left with the impression, "Wow, there are a lot of rolled chords in that piece!" then in my opinion the performer has probably been playing them too brashly.) Anyway, to me, in this Allegretto scherzando piece, these are playful, "hoppy/skippy" broken chords, not the "schmaltzy" broken chords I associate with some early 20th century performances. There are a large number of solid chords, and the two significant, sober buildups of ascending sequences feature no broken chords at all.

Suite Bergamasque has 22 broken chords in total: 6 in the Prélude, 9 in the Menuet, 7 in Clair de lune, and 0 in the Passepied. Their use in every case is judicious and fascinating. For example, in the Prélude, they are all of the "attention, please!" kind, and I found the exercise of figuring out "Why here but not here?" very educational. In the Menuet they are all playful and harp-like. Only in Clair de lune are they the tenderly expressive kind associated with late Romanticism.


There are a lot of them in one particular passage, but I don't find them intrusive. Bars 1-13 are played completely "straight", then a few of the chords in bars 14-15 (starting at 0:59 in the Youtube recording) quiver ever so slightly, then bars 16-21 (1:11-1:40) feature gradually incrasingly rolled chords. From 1:40 to 1:56 (bars 22-27), Debussy straightens up again, and from that point on the chords are nearly all rock solid, with few exceptions (usually the highest note of melodic climaxes).


Yes, Le plus que lente is way more "traditional" in its performance style than the other recordings in the list! My impression is that Debussy is paying homage to salon waltzes, so he deliberately soups up his performance and plays in a salon style. This fits with the implied irony of his "Molto rubato con morbidezza" marking. I also find it interesting that one particular return of the theme is played completely straight (1:20-1:35 in the Youtube link). It's as if Debussy momentarily forgot to be schmaltzy and reverted to his normal playing style. I would prefer (admitting my bias, that I've heard enough chaste and idiomatic playing from Debussy recently that I'd like that to be his "main side"!), to view this as another case of him writing an intentionally stylized piece, in this case the slushy waltzes that were popular in Paris during his time, and performing it as such.


Indeed, point taken. With hindsight, I could and should have expressed myself more clearly.

I want to thank everyone for their input into this thread! I've been finding it most wonderful and informative! Been caught up in the Thanksgiving thing the past few days (Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it, btw) But I've been following along whenever I got a chance.

Also I'd like to say, I'm aware that I misspelled (clair"E" de lune) earlier. oops


Thanks SlatterFan for this:





Since we've sufficiently established that the recording probably isn't Debussy, and can't hear him play it himself , this is great insight on this song! Of particular interest to me as I've recently added it to my rep.

Please check this out everyone. There's a "Debussy/Clair De Lune" reference towards the end that i think is quite humorous in relation to this conversation. Great video overall too!!

"Harry's Music Mashup #5"

Debussy playing the 1st Arabesque has somehow made its way onto my mp3 player. To be disingenuous, I thought I was listening to a "pub pianist". Then it suddenly clicked. He had good technique, flair and intimate musical understanding of his own music. I believe he must have choked with nerves. The performance sounds like one that wants to be over and done with in the fastest possible time.

Unfortunately, I think we've established with reasonable probability that these are the only pieces Debussy himself made rolls of (Aside from the 4 accompaniment audio recordings):





The Arabesque pieces and Clair De Lune aren't listed (hate to say, but i hope and wish they exist somewhere!) Arabesque No. 1 is a great piece, but it was probably played by one of the following players (if a piano roll), as mentioned by SlatterFan:





Seriously, you all ought to check out the great Debussy tribute/parody towards the end of this vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ROzfIZSZWc

It's a great vid, and there are more of these if you like that one... ALL worth checking out!

This may be right. The Aberesque was performed very different to La Plus Que Lente. And I agree both Aberesques are amongst my favourite play/chill out pieces