Debussy faune nijinsky biography
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Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune: 'the awakening of modern music'
It's a sultry, Impressionistic orchestral masterpiece. But it's much more than that. The Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, by the great French composer Claude Debussy, was what we'd now call a 'disruptor' to the musical landscape of the very late 19th and early 20th century. With its apparent lack of structure and almost improvisatory feel, it deserves the epithet given by one famous fellow French composer, that ‘modern music was awakened by L’après-midi d’un faune’.
What is Debussy’s Prélude a l’après-midi d’un faune?
It is a symphonic poem (or tone poem), based on Stéphane Mallarmé’s 1865 poem L’après-midi d’un faune. Beginning with an alluring, chromatic solo on the flute, it then intoxicates the listener over ten minutes with its lushly layered score depicting a faun enjoying the pleasures of a warm afternoon.
When did Debussy compose the Prélude a l’après-midi d’un faune?
Debussy first began toying with the idea of writing music based on Mallarmé’s poem in 1890. Discarding one or two more grandiose ideas along the way, he completed the Prélude in 1894. Ironically, this orchestral portrayal of the heat of the summer sun was premiered in the heart of winter – in Paris on 2
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L'après-midi d'un faune
Few ballets have enjoyed as sensational a first night as The Afternoon of a Faun by the Ballets Russes at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, to music by Debussy with scenery and costumes by the Russian painter Léon Bakst. The ballet was choreographed and dominated by the 22-year-old Vaslav Nijinsky, who took the leading role of the amorous faun pursuing a group of shy, but delicious, nymphs who are on their way to a nearby lake. It broke electrifyingly with tradition and most of the other dancers did not enjoy it. Nijinsky would not let them act and told them: ‘It is all in the choreography.’ The production has been described as an attempt to fashion ‘a new language of movement’ and it heralded the modern era in ballet.
Nijinsky’s dancing was both supremely graceful and staggeringly spectacular (Dame Marie Rambert once said she did not know how high his leaps were, but they were all ‘near the stars’) and the short performance, with only about 11 minutes of dancing, was designed to resemble scenes from Ancient Greek vase paintings. At the same time it was intensely erotic and culminated in an org
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Afternoon of a Faun (Nijinsky)
Ballet by Vaslav Nijinsky
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