Children's Corner

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Golliwogg's Cake-walk: the ragtime theme

Children's Corner (English, in German "Kinderecke") is a work by the French composer Claude Debussy ; the subtitle is Petite Suite pour Piano seul (French, in German "Small Suite for piano alone").

Composition and performance history

In 1880, at the age of eighteen, Debussy was the resident pianist and travel companion of the wealthy and art-loving Nadezhda von Meck , pen pal and Tchaikovsky's patron . It was probably during these months that he got to know Mussorgsky's song cycle Kinderstube , about which he wrote in 1901: "Nobody has spoken in a more tender, deeply moving tone of the most precious thing that is in us ... Never has such a refined feeling been expressed with such simple means ..."

Debussy himself pursued similar, albeit more lighthearted, goals in his Children's Corner cycle , composed from 1906 to 1908 - after completing the symphonic sketches La Mer (“The Sea”) and at the same time with the second series of his Images (“Pictures”) for piano. The front cover of the beautiful first edition , published by A. Durand & Fils , bears a drawing by the composer in his own hand and the words “Juillet 1908” (“July 1908”). Debussy dedicated the cycle to his daughter Emma-Claude, born in 1905, known as Chouchou (“sweetheart”). The dedication in the mentioned first edition with the red outlines of a plush elephant is called: “A ma chère petite Chouchou, avec les tendres excuses de son Père pour ce qui va suivre” (“My dear little Chouchou, with her papa's loving apologies for what follows").

Possible models for the undertaking include Schumann 's Children's Scenes and Fauré's four-handed cycle Dolly . The Kinderszenen , unlike the Album for the Young by the same composer, no educational work. The same applies to Children's Corner - specialists note that the piano setting of the six pieces is little or no virtuoso, but sensitive and filigree. The work can hardly be mastered by children in terms of sentence and content, and "ultimately reserved for the mature player". Fauré's four-hand cycle, on the other hand, bears its title in honor of Emma-Claude's half-sister Hélène, who was born in 1892, known as Dolly (“little doll”). Emma Bardac, the mother of the two girls, had an affair with Fauré in the 1890s; a relationship with Debussy from 1904 onwards led to the marriage in 1908.

The premiere of Children's Corner took place on 18 December 1908 in Paris by the renowned British pianist Bauer Harold . In 1911 Debussy's former student André Caplet created an orchestration of the work. In 1912 the composer himself recorded the entire suite on a Welte Mignon reproduction piano.

The individual pieces

The single track I jokingly goes back to music history , the single tracks II – VI describe Chouchou's toys ; the (not consistently correct) use of the English language was probably an homage to Dolly Gibbs, Chouchou's English governess . Incidentally, the individual titles in the price list, in the table of contents and in the music section of the first edition do not match. The version of the price list is the most convincing. The table of contents is the same as in this version, but all Latin and English words are capitalized. Additional errors have crept into the music section, as the following comparison shows:

number Title according to the price list Title according to the music part Tempo designation Time signature
I. Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum Modérément animé 4/4
II Jimbo's Lullaby (Berceuse des éléphants) Jimbo's Lullaby Assez modéré 2/2
III Sérénade for the doll (Sérénade à la poupée) Serenade of the Doll Allegretto ma non troppo 3/4
IV The snow is dancing (La neige danse) The snow is dancing Modérément animé 4/4
V The little shepherd (Le petit berger) The little shepherd Très modéré 4/4
VI Golliwogg's cake walk Golliwogg's cake walk Allegro giusto 2/4

The slightly different spellings below correspond to the compromises that The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians has found.

Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum

A piece awarded a doctorate opens the cycle. Gradus ad Parnassum (Latin, in German “Level to Parnassus ”, to the Mount of Muses in Greek mythology ) was the name of a teaching on counterpoint by Johann Joseph Fux , then above all an extensive series of piano etudes by the Italian composer Muzio Clementi . The C major piece, accounting for the middle section, which sinks into the B keys, manages in 37 of 64 bars without any black keys. The slender piano movement with its organ points , broken chords and the continuous sixteenth note movement is reminiscent of several Bach preludes in C major; just as noticeable is the influence of the simplest “hiking exercises” by Charles-Louis Hanon , for example , which sequentially screw their way up and down. Debussy commented: “This is a kind of hygienic and progressive gymnastics; it is therefore advisable to play the piece soberly every morning, increasing from modéré to animé . "

Jimbo's Lullaby

With “Jimbo” the English elephant name “Jumbo” is certainly meant; In French pronunciation, the two words are confusingly similar. The cuddly toy’s lullaby initially sounds unanimously in an appropriately low register. The tonality remains in the balance: the children's song-like chant third f – d right at the beginning, which sounds like fifth and third of a major pentatonic on b, turns out to be the octave and sixth of a major pentatonic on f; the accompaniment that comes later, in turn, sweeps over the major pentatonic scale on b.

Further elements are interspersed large seconds and a diatonic falling theme in the quarters , characterized by repetitions of notes, which passes through whole-tone and half-tone fields and finally connects naturally with the lullaby melody.

Serenade for the Doll

The Far Eastern character of the “ evening serenade for the doll” results from a pentatonic melody that jumps back and forth on the black keys along with exotic fourths. The fifth accompaniment e – h, on the other hand, is at home on the white keys (at the beginning it looks up, at the end it oscillates); the combination results in a Lydian scale. As with all pieces from Children's Corner , the serenade is based on a not too obvious arch form .

The snow is dancing

"The snow is dancing" - maybe in a snow globe . This pianistically particularly demanding piece plays with soft non-legato sixteenth notes in a zipper-like hand change: one note on the left, one note on the right. A note that surprisingly appears in the tritone ratio turns out to be part of the conventional D minor note set. In the middle section, the left hand has to take over all sixteenths, the right hand plays triplet , softly plaintive repetitions. The continuous sixteenth-note chain, suggesting a long day of snow, is only interrupted once, shortly before the end, in the sixth from last bar.

The Little Shepherd

"The Little Shepherd" was described as a character that smelled of "resin and still fresh paint". The composition is reminiscent of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune from 1894 in its pastoral mood and very specifically in its unanimous, mischievous opening. The unusual tritone motif at the beginning is gradually revealed (similar to The Snow is Dancing ) as part of a completely conventional set of notes, in this case the A major scale. The unanimous opening is followed by a gracefully dotted melody, which is accompanied by tones unrelated to the ladder, but ends in the purest A major. A second, very similar part ends in E major, the third part ends in a harmonious uncertainty - but then the same bars follow that already rounded off the first part.

The piece can comfortably fit on two sheet music sides, making it the shortest in the suite.

Golliwogg's cake walk

Golliwogg's Cake-walk: the Tristan quote

" Golliwogg " is a children's book character by the British illustrator Florence Kate Upton with a black face and black hair. On Debussy's title page drawing, Golliwogg appears as a balloon with round white eyes, a large red mouth and a daring wig; for the pianist Alfred Cortot he has the character of a jumping jack.

The final piece of Children's Corner is a ragtime composition with a typical prelude and a middle section that quotes the first notes from the opera “ Tristan und Isolde ” four times without transposing it , “avec une grande émotion” (“with great feeling”), each time but instead of the original Tristan chord leads to trivial sounds: the first and third time the composer sets a dominant seventh chord by reinterpreting the Tristan chord (fh-dis-gis) (f-ces-es-as) and a des as Adds the root note , thus transforming an unusual sound into an ordinary one with the least amount of resources; the second and fourth time the corresponding tonic sounds on G flat, provided with a sixth ajoutée . This creates an unexpected connection between the cakewalk , a fashion dance of the time, and Richard Wagner, who was well received in France at the turn of the century . The cheeky chromatic suggestions, reminiscent of a laugh, seem to illustrate Debussy's ambivalent relationship to the German composer.

Information base

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cortot quotes these sentences on p. 25, Reclam's piano music guide on p. 578 (see literature).
  2. ↑ In any case, the Cortot suggests on p. 25.
  3. ↑ Cortot, p. 28.
  4. ↑ Konzertbuch , p. 261.
  5. ↑ Reclam's piano music guide , p. 579.
  6. ^ The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , p. 312.
  7. ↑ Quoted from Reclam's piano music guide , p. 579.
  8. ↑ Cortot, p. 28.
  9. ↑ Concert Book , p. 262.
  10. ↑ Cortot speaks on p. 28 of the "contortions" of a jumping jack.