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1 Nuages [‘Clouds’]
2 Fêtes [‘Festivals’]
3 Sirènes [‘Sirens’]

The Nocturnes had an unusually long period of compositional gestation as Debussy struggled to find new ways of exploring colour and timbre to convey fleeting images and moods. First conceiving the work in 1892 as Trois scènes au crépuscule (‘Three scenes at twilight’), he was originally inspired by the dream-like imagery of the Symbolist poems of the same title by his friend Henri de Régnier, but then discovered the darkly atmospheric series of night-time landscapes by the Paris-based American artist James McNeill Whistler – a sort of Baudelaire figure of the visual arts – from whom Debussy borrowed the title Nocturnes. Encouraged by his discoveries in the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894) which opened new compositional paths in terms of harmony, instrumental colour and form, Debussy finally completed his Nocturnes in 1899. In his programme note for the first complete performance by the Orchestre Lamoureux under Camille Chevillard in 1901, Debussy wrote: ‘The title Nocturnes … is not meant to designate the usual form of the nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and special effects of light that the word suggests.’

Mysterious and subdued in steadily oscillating crotchets, the tonally ambiguous ‘Nuages’ evokes what Debussy called ‘the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones tinged with white’. Debussy got the idea in Paris while standing very late one night on the pont de Solférino watching a moonless sky, the Seine below ‘without a ripple, like a tarnished mirror’.

‘Fêtes’ is more exuberant, with its dance-like triplet movement and joyful themes which portray Debussy’s ‘dazzling and fantastic vision’ of a festival procession in the Bois de Boulogne, but as seen from afar through the trees; crowds run and resplendent horsemen of the Garde Républicaine sound their bugles before disappearing into the gloom.

‘Sirènes’ looks forward to La mer (1903–5) in depicting the sea and what for Debussy were ‘its countless rhythms’. Among the waves, silvered by the moonlight, a wordless female chorus evokes the mysterious song and wistful sighs of mythical Sirens, supernatural beings who lured sailors to their doom.

Programme note © Caroline Rae