Abel Decaux - Clairs de Lune
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 มิ.ย. 2024
- - Composer: Abel Decaux (11 February 1869 -- 19 March 1943)
- Performer: Frederic Chiu (piano)
- Year of recording: 1994
Clairs de Lune, for piano, written between 1900-1907.
00:00 - No. 1 Lent (à Ferdinand Motte Lacroix) (1900)
05:08 - No. 2 Lent "La Ruelle" (1902)
09:52 - No. 3 Très lent "Le Cimetière" (1907)
16:16 - No. 4 Très large "La Mer" (1903)
Decaux’s biography is soon told, but is none the less surprising for that. Born in Auffay in 1869, the same year as Roussel and seven years after Debussy, he studied the organ with Widor and Guilmant and composition with Massenet at the Paris Conservatoire. For twenty-five years from around the turn of the century he was organist at Sacré-Cœur, then in 1923 he went to America and taught the organ at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. Out of this routine life came these four extraordinary pieces 'Clairs de Lune', plus a sketch for a fifth piece of the set, ‘La Forêt’. Only a handful of other works are known by him.
An epigraph from the writer Louis de Lutèce sets the scene, with its white moon gliding silently in space, its motionless ghosts, pale luminescences, mysterious shadows, the carcass of a yowling cat …. This is the world of Edgar Allan Poe, whose writings, translated by Baudelaire and Mallarmé, were the (masochistic) bedside reading of many a French artist of the fin-de-siècle, including Gide, Debussy and Ravel: Aloysius Bertrand’s Gaspard de la nuit belongs to the same company. Even Debussy ultimately found the task of setting The Fall of the House of Usher beyond him, but Decaux’s more limited ambition succeeded most remarkably in bringing to life this world beyond what we call reality.
He wrote the pieces between 1900 and 1907, but they were not published until 1913. Whatever the reason for the delay (perhaps no other publisher would take them seriously?), Decaux’s teacher Massenet died in 1912 and so was spared what would surely have been a rude shock, not so much at the technique-as Richard Taruskin has pointed out, everything stems from the two falling bell motives at the outset (major second, major third; minor second, minor third)-as at the extraordinary harmonies and the no less extraordinary syntax. Whole tone aggregations (as at the beginning of ‘La Ruelle’) and consecutive fifths were nothing so out-of-the-way around 1900, but some of Decaux’s chords seem to have been taken from a source such as the songs in Schoenberg’s Das Buch der hängenden Gärten; the only problem being that these weren’t written until 1909. Throughout, major and minor triads are scrupulously avoided or else, as in ‘La mer’, coloured persistently with a sharpened fourth. Again, this piece was written in December 1903, nearly two years before the premiere of Debussy’s La mer and six years before his similarly wild Prélude ‘Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest’.
Comments by Frederic Chiu himself:
- "Thank you for posting this and spreading the word about Decaux. If you like listening to this, please get the iTunes or MP3. You'll hear even more detail that is not here in this compressed version. Decaux was a visionary who wrote these atonal impressionist pieces before Debussy and Schoenberg had figured out Impressionist or Atonalism. There are number games and other symbolism as well. Then he married a socialite, demanding wife who sucked the inspiration out of him. (direct story from Decaux's grandson) Please share, and please purchase!"
- "Of all of my recordings, this is the program that I'm most proud of. Decaux as a bridge between Ravel and Schoenberg - he demonstrates that impressionism and expressionism were not mutually exclusive art trends, uniting the French and the Germanic." - เพลง
One of my favourite works ever.
Some of this requires an almost zen-like patience. But it is truly amazing to see that he wrote these around 1903. I'm afraid that he'll never have a large audience (I'm sure he didn't care).
These pieces seem mystical, like an aural depiction of the stuff we don't see at night.
Shocked that this isn't one of your most viewed videos. Can't stop coming back!
+Medtnaculus Haha well, I guess it's just that people are unfamiliar with his name, and they need to happen on this video, a chance encounter, when they're looking through my uploads.
I love that this music doesn't sound like anything else I've heard and actually is experienced as alive and present time. There are many moments here where I noticed an inner dialogue with the composer and the pianist. Where the music seemed to develop a recognisable pattern, my inner ear started to 'anticipate' a certain tone or a melody only to be shown something different by the composer. These dialogues gave me a lot of amusement.
Amusement = to be filled with the Muses
Music = the sounds created by the Muses
Quelle etrange et géniale inspiration... c'est magnifique. ❤
A translation made by a friend:
Piano, piano, pianissilo... White, the moon slips sliently in space... Chimneys, attics, gables, [roof]tops, tenebrous silhouettes on a dark azure field... Unmoving ghosts... Metallic corpse of a meowing cat... Grinning profile of a monstrous gothic gargoyle... Hesitating bat flight... Pasty carty to the sky... Bizarre dreams and nightmares... Nocturnal dreads...
Piano, piano, pianissimo...
Best musical surprise of the year for me
Wow!!! this guy was way ahead of his time. May I say this music is of a contemporary nature even today. Absolutely fabulous!!!💗💓🎶😅
I love the mystical ebb and flow of this piece of music.
this is a chef-d'œuvre
I've never heard of this man before. Extraordinary music. 1903? Mind>blown.
No. 4 (16:16) is sublime. Reminds me of Messiaen's "Cloches d'angoisse et larmes d'adieu"
This has a very modernist feel to it imo
i love how Dies Irae is used in the 3rd mvt - it's so beautiful
Left me simply speechless. I wish he had written something for orchestra.
A wonderful post! Both Beautiful and educational... Thank you.
16:00-16:10 This ending... so haunting...
I think it is so sad that there is no more music known by this composer, I find especially the third and fourth movement quite enthralling, and unlike anything else I have ever heard.
Estou descobrindo este canal há pouco tempo, mais mesmo assim, a já posso dizer sem medo de errar, que MARAVILHA de canal
.... meus parabéns a todos
An exceptional atonal work ... the musical construction is pure genius !
This is gorgeous. Completely taken aback by it, almost want to take up piano again just to learn it lol.
Passionnant.
12:40 damnnn this reminds me so much of the Rautavaara's 3rd piano concerto ( the 2nd mvt )
It uses the same tonic as well
Amazing!!!!!!!!!
God, this is transfixing… incredible
Congratulations on your 1000th subscribers!
+이한 Lee Han Thanks! :)
So many highlights, flourishing impressionist in Belle Époque. In meantime, it's gloriously realistic, almost seeing what would lie ahead with the post-modern concrete music, I guess.
from around 11:50, these phrases are used in Rautavaara's piano concerto 1, 2nd mvt
Wow! What a revelation and how original. Clearly a contemporary of Charles Tournemire. Anyone who does not know the piano music of Tournemire, look him up on TH-cam as well!
Een revelatie!
People always say Clair de lune, but they never ask whether there is another Clair de Lune
Hey! scororabin! ist!
Hey! agreed! Mr Scororabin!
I can't find it on iTunes.
Upon reading the title, my immediate thought was hey wait a minute I thought Debussy wrote that - as I come from a violin background I recognized the title immediately as it was transcribed for violin and recorded by Kreisler, Oistrakh, Heifetz, and many others. So I looked it up and it means light of the moon and is part three of Debussy's suite bergamasque written between 1890 and 1905 and was likely inspired by a poem by Paul Verlaine with the same title written in 1869. To my surprise Faure had written something with the same title also. The poem is quite beautiful if you Google it. Although the Debussy is worlds different than this, atonal impressionistic is an interesting description although it seems from what I can tell Decaux and Debussy were contemporaries while Faure's op46 no 2 composition of the same title was written in 1887. All of this only makes me more curious about Mr Decaux, his life, influences, and his other works. If I am correct to assume, the atonal / avant garde aspect of his sound does predate the efforts of Schoenberg, Scriabin, and Stravinsky?
+scottbos68 Yes indeed, he does predate the efforts of those you mention. But he is such a curious composer, like I wrote there are only a handful of compositions available from him, and this is (I think) the only recorded composition by him. One composition is not much to determine a composer's place in history... Also, the set is called 'Clairs' instead of 'Clair', so plural instead of singular.
+scottbos68 Verlaine's poem Clair de lune and Fauré's and Debussy's settings of it are in quite another psychological universe. Decaux's shifting moonlights take us to a very different, eerier place than Verlaine's dreaming birds and sobbing fountains.
Beauty
19:49
nice
L~O~V~E!
I hear a lot of late Liszt
Exquis
Wow this is my style! Does anyone know pieces like this or composers in this style?
+Yiğit Vural Maybe some Takemitsu, Schönberg's early atonal piano pieces, later Scriabin piano music.
Maybe "a prole do bebe 2" de H.Villa-lobos!
scriabin's 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th sonatas (9th is my favourite, but all of them are stellar)
@Miglior Fabbro Ma che c'entrano i Paisajes? Forse come poetica alla lontana, ma di certo non per linguaggio...
@@rag2458 don't forget vers la flamme! :)
12:30 - 14:05
😆🥺
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