“I must admit that I too, despite the sea and the garden, am feeling the desperate anxieties of the war…I want to work – not so much for myself as to provide proof, however small, that 30 million Boches can’t destroy French thought…I think of the youth of France, wantonly mown down by those Kultur merchants, and of [their] contribution to our heritage, now forever lost to us. The music I am writing will be a secret homage to them”

 

Debussy, letter to Jacques Durand (his publisher), 5 August 1915 

At the beginning of the First World War, Debussy lost all capacity to compose, seeing his role as pointless in the context of the war. In 2015, however, he moved from Paris to Pourville where his creativity rekindled, finding fresh conviction that what he might offer was hope and beauty to a world lost to darkness and war. Among the first manifestations of this rejuvenation of spirit were 12 Etudes, of which the tenth, ‘for the opposing sonorities’, is perhaps the most relevant to the theme of this year’s symposium. Throughout the piece, Debussy seeks fresh harmonies, juxtaposing traditionally conflicting intervals, and gifting them space for their resonances to find resolution. 

The performance will include multimedia presentation of excerpts from Debussy’s letters of the time

juxtaposed with diverse contemporary imagery and images from the score.