The Debussy Premiere Rhapsodie for clarinet and piano (or orchestra) has been in my repertoire since I was 16 years old. I won two concerto competitions in High School with it, and performed it with the National Symphony and Baltimore Symphony. I have also performed the Rhapsodie with the Columbus Symphony, and am a featured artist playing the it on the CD 'CSO Showcase'. Yet the music, however deeply ingrained in my psyche and body, still thrills and challenges. A friend of mine in the Columbus Symphony said to me after playing it, 'Wow, it's a wonderful piece of music. I was reminded of 'Afternoon of a Faun'.

• Rhapsody

The Debussy Premiere Rhapsodie for clarinet and piano (or orchestra). Beyond the notes, the Debussy Rhapsodie is deceptively challenging.

I have had several chances to play it the past few weeks, and will have two more in the next week. (4 total) It's quite a luxury to have so many live performances of a solo piece, especially for an orchestral musician. And it's also a luxury to play it with good pianists. The piano part is notoriously difficult. 'It's all flats!'

One pianist exclaimed. Written in 1910 as a competition test piece for clarinetists seeking to graduate from the Paris Conservatory, Debussy composed the piece with piano first, and orchestrated it a year later. Though the full 'Boehm' inspired key system had been around for decades when Debussy composed this piece, I am still impressed at Debussy's facility in writing to the edge of the instrument's technical abilities. Much of the piece requires great facility 'over the break' meaning where the clarinet moves from one register to another. Fingerings in this area can be awkward. Also, near the end of the piece, the composers writes a passage which uses all seven key choices for the pinky fingers of both hands. It's sort of a finger 'tongue twister'.

• Notes on Debussy's Premiere Rhapsodie. Clarinet Solo of Claude Debussy: An Historical Analytical Study of the 'Premiere Rhapsodie' and 'Petite Piece.
• Clarinet Sheet music › Clarinet, Piano › Claude Debussy: Previous sheet. View Download PDF: Claude Debussy - Premiere Rhapsodie (Clarinette et Piano).

Here is that passage. Technical flourish using all pinky keys French culture emphasizes and expresses subtlety more than most cultures, and it's not surprising that Debussy aimed to test more than just the technical note possibilities.

He writes numerous extremely soft and high notes in liquid lines, demanding absolute breath and tone control. In order to really play the dynamics he notates, the player must have all his technical and tonal facilities at full steam. Beyond the notes, the Debussy Rhapsodie is deceptively challenging.

To achieve the vast variety of colors, musical characters and development, the player must astutely pace the music so that it builds in layers to its final bluesy climax. In about 9 minutes, Debussy presents several thematic 'nuggets' and develops them rhapsodically (freely) toward a vastly different modd in the end. The opening bars create a floating, enigmatic mood, with the clarinet stating a 3 note idea, which then leaves the listener hanging. The next few bars allow this little idea to continue into something only slightly more substantial.

Main theme, and Soaring theme at key change The music begins to rise rhapsodically toward yet another theme, one with great skips in it, reaching low and then soaring high in its arching shape. This theme becomes the piece's favorite, and also creates the most challenging sections for tone and breath control. By transposing the theme ever higher each time it appears, the player must rise to control it ever more, maintaining the effortless fluidity it demands to be musically effective. The next section speeds up the pace a bit, using a slightly altered version of the first three note theme. Here Debussy expertly creates subtle variation using specific and varied articulations. The impish mood quickly returns to the second theme, an octave higher, and greater challenge, before moving to the next section, a mini 'storm' of only a few bars and lots of notes, before returning again to yet another version of the first three note theme. Middle section developing 3 note theme playfully Only a few bars later, this miniaturized tone poem moves to yet another familiar scene, the soaring theme with great skips across the instrument.

This time it's at the high end of the clarinet's 'altissimo' range. Marked pianissimo, this is the rhapsodic peak of this first half of the piece. The music continues beyond the arching theme to extend the magical floating mood even further. Debussy suggests 'Plus retenu' 'even slower'. Time seems to stop. Scherzo theme based on 3 note chromatic tail Debussy continues to develop this idea for another 20 bars, before returning briefly to the soaring theme.

Then the whole scene comes unraveled as the music returns to the first theme, ultra placid, especially after all the excitement of the intervening music. However the music takes yet another turn, building with great dynamic and harmonic tension (and the most difficult part for the pianist) to another virtuosic flourish of riffs for the clarinet before entering the final impish dance which builds with bacchanalian fervor to a final 'bluesy' statement of the very first three note theme before coming to a crashing close.

Cover of the 1905 edition, based on English The Sea, three symphonic sketches for orchestra Catalogue 109 Performed 15 October 1905 ( 1905-10-15) Movements three La mer, trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre (French for The sea, three symphonic sketches for orchestra), or simply La mer (i.e. The Sea), 109, is an composition by French composer. Composed between 1903 and 1905, the piece was initially not well received, but soon became one of Debussy's most admired and frequently performed orchestral works. Trezise, Simon (March 2000). 'Review of 'La mer by Claude Debussy '.

56 (3): 783. Huscher, Phillip.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Program Notes. Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Retrieved 14 November 2012. Trezise, Simon (1994). Debussy: La mer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rhapsody

'He had not composed an orthodox symphony, but neither did he want La mer to be known as a symphonic poem. so by calling it 'Three symphonic sketches'. Debussy must have felt that he had deftly avoided association with either genre. Monsaingeon, editor (1998), Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations, p. Monsaingeon, p.

Monsaingeon, p. Monsaingeon, p. Monsaingeon, p. score. Archived from on 4 February 2012. Retrieved 15 August 2013.