Claude Debussy alcanzó la mayoría de edad como compositor durante un periodo especialmente rico de la historia cultural francesa. Hacia 1887, el compositor de 25 años empezó a asistir a las legendarias veladas de los martes en el apartamento de su amigo el poeta simbolista Stéphane Mallarmé. Entre los invitados habituales figuraban el escultor Auguste Rodin, el pintor impresionista Claude Monet, los poetas Paul Verlaine y Paul Valéry, y escritores como André Gide y Marcel Proust. Estas asociaciones tuvieron una influencia duradera en la música de Debussy. Sus obras fueron moldeadas por las innovaciones en las artes visuales y la literatura de la época, un periodo en el que la estructura formal pasó a un segundo plano frente al estado de ánimo, la atmósfera y el color.

Debussy was quite taken with Mallarmé’s Afternoon of a Faun, a dreamy poem written in 1876 and inspired by Théodore de Banville’s pastoral play Diane of the Forest. The elaborately constructed poem is a rhapsodic monologue from the point of view of a faun, that mythological half-man, half-goat creature. In a Mediterranean valley of yore, the faun awakens from a nap in the forest on a sunlit afternoon. He tries desperately to remember a dream—or a real encounter—with a pair of amorous nymphs. As the afternoon grows warmer, the faun becomes drowsier and finally drops off to sleep, hoping to meet his elusive consorts in his dreams.

The hazy ambiguity of the poet’s words is magically mirrored in the fluid rhythms and tonal ambiguities of Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, composed during the years 1892 to 1894. In describing the Prelude as a free illustration of Mallarmé’s poem, Debussy said that his music sought to evoke “the successive scenes in which the longings and the desires of the faun pass in the heat of the afternoon.”

As the piece opens, the faun’s flute softly intones the languorously syncopated principal motive, consisting of scalewise passages, chromaticized within the range of three whole tones. Muted horns and soft harps answer. The emphasis is on the tritone, that most ambiguous of intervals. All these elements play a part in re-creating the dreamlike atmosphere of Mallarmé’s poem. The principal theme then passes through various instrumental colors while tremolando strings create a backdrop of slumbrous noontime haze.

Tras la introducción de un segundo y un tercer tema por parte de las maderas, la pieza alcanza lentamente su clímax. Vuelve el primer tema, más lánguido que nunca. Finalmente, un violonchelo solista, y luego un oboe, se unen a la flauta, mientras las trompas, los violines y las maderas tejen un cierre encantado, coloreado por frases repetidas para arpa y el tono de campana de los platillos antiguos, puntuado por un par de golpes de pizzicato bajos y susurrantes.

This quietly sensual score sparked a musical revolution when it premiered on December 22, 1894, at a National Society of Music concert in Paris. Nearly every aspect of this exquisitely wrought music of fragile beauty went against 19th-century musical conventions. A new fluidity of form was one of Debussy’s great contributions to modern music. In addition, the significant role that Debussy granted to instrumental color in his Prelude set it apart from all previous orchestral scores. As his great interpreter Pierre Boulez aptly noted, “The flute of Debussy’s Faune breathed new air into the art of music.”

—Kathy Henkel