Printemps, Suite symphonique, L. 61 (orchestrated by Henri Büsser)

Program notes

About the Work

Printemps (Spring) is young Debussy, and a work with one of the odder histories in his catalogue. He composed it in 1887, at the age of twenty-four, as one of the obligatory ‘envois’ (proof-of-work submissions) required of Prix de Rome laureates during their residence at the Villa Medici. His stated aim was to depict not a postcard spring but ‘the slow and laborious birth of beings and things in nature’ (gestation first, blossoming after) without leaning on any literary programme.

The Académie des Beaux-Arts was not pleased. Its official report rebuked the young composer for indulging in ‘vague impressionism’, ‘one of the most dangerous enemies of truth in works of art.’ It is the earliest known association of the word ‘impressionism’ with Debussy’s music, and the label, intended as a reprimand, would follow Debussy for the rest of his life, much to his annoyance.

The original version was scored for orchestra with wordless chorus, but that manuscript was lost, and only a reduction for chorus and piano four hands survived. The work therefore had to wait a quarter of a century: between 1909 and 1912 the composer and conductor Henri Büsser reorchestrated Printemps from that reduction, working under Debussy’s supervision, folding the former choral lines into the instrumental fabric and retaining a prominent part for piano four hands inside the orchestra. This version, the one performed tonight, was premiered at the Salle Gaveau in Paris on 18 April 1913, conducted by Rhené-Baton.

What to Listen For

Printemps is in two linked movements, and the seed of the whole work is sown in the first minute: a gently winding theme, first heard against shimmering figuration, that will be transformed throughout both movements, an early instance of the cyclic thinking Debussy absorbed from his teachers and soon made entirely his own.

The first movement (Très modéré) is the ‘slow and laborious birth’: the music gathers itself out of soft, hovering textures, the main theme surfacing and submerging, growing in warmth without ever quite arriving. Listen for the piano duet glinting inside the orchestra (a colour effect, not a concerto) and for harmonies that already point toward the Faune, still seven years away. The second movement is the blossoming: a dance of quickening rhythms that Debussy described as the joy of being born into new life. The cyclic theme returns transfigured, what was tentative now radiant, and the work ends in an uncomplicated burst of light that the mature, more elusive Debussy would never quite permit himself again. Heard between Poulenc’s fables and Zemlinsky’s mermaid, it is the afternoon’s hinge: French clarity warming into the sumptuous late-Romantic sea to come.