LDV84

PHILIPPE BIANCONI 21 In Debussy’s case, the pedagogical goal does not seem to me to have been totally achieved – apart perhaps from the étude Pour les tierces (For thirds). I’m not convinced that anyone will really make progress in the technique of sixths or octaves by working on his études. In Pour les accords , the difficulty doesn’t lie in the chords themselves, but in the incessant acrobatic shifts of position they require. To such an extent that one often seems to be distracted from the intended aim, as if the Études presuppose that the performer has already mastered the difficulties they claim to help him or her to overcome. The real difficulties often lie elsewhere: in very awkward positions and perverse formulas requiring agility, flexibility and reflexes. And of course the combination of timbres and sonic textures, the infinite variety of attacks and colours call for boundless digital control and imagination. In the end, onewonderswhether, evenmore than studies for the pianist, the Études are not actually studies in composition. I like to imagine that Debussy challenged himself to compose pieces out of elementary material, such as a simple interval. And from the interval of the fourth, for example, he went on to write one of his most extraordinarymasterpieces. On the subject of Pour les quartes , Debussy wrote to his publisher about ‘special sonorities’ and ‘unheard-of things’. And indeed one marvels at the infinite variety of new sonorities, the absolute freedom of form, and the limitless imagination of this piece, at once amazingly modern and full of strange, hypnotic poetry.