Debussy, C :: 5. Bruyeres

Musicians Publications presents Claude Debussy's Bruyeres from The Preludes, Book 1 arranged for woodwind quintet by Bill Holcombe Jr.

The more one learns about Claude Debussy, the more the enigma grows a composer who revered Bach and Mozart, yet ultimately eschewed Teutonic formalism (witness his condemnation of Beethoven s Opus 131 Quartet in a letter to Pierre Louys, dated 2/22/1895); a composer who attempted to revive the French musical tradition handed down from Couperin and Rameau, yet who relished contemporary foreign musical influences; a composer who responded strongly in his early years to the sensuous excesses of Wagner, yet who rejected much of this esthetic shortly thereafter, striving for a simplicity, a distillation of these very same senses in his great opera, Pelleas et Melisande ; a composer very much of the avant garde', who knew the literature and the world of art of preceding eras better than many, if not most, of his contemporaries, yet who made precious little mention of any of his contemporary compatriots in art and literature in his copious, not to say voluminous, letters and critical writings. From these contradictions came an individual who changed the course of classical music.

Bruyeres (Heather) evokes pastoral bliss, an Arcadian landscape of peace and contentment. According to Debussy s good friend, the pianist Marguerite Long, it recalls the smell of sea mist mixed with coastal pines. Given the summer holidays that Debussy spent in the coastal towns of Normandy, this seems entirely plausible. Bruyeres awakens memories of The Girl with the Flaxen Hair . Both are in the key of A flat.

- Craig Sheppard, 2012