Performance by wouter79 from Recital #37 - 2015-02-15

• Performer: wouter79
• Location:
• Experience: 5.5 years I think
• Composer: Achille-Claude Debussy
• Piece: La cathedrale engloutie (sunken cathedral)
• Duration: 397
• Music Link: click to play
• Video Link:
• Music Source: sheet music, mostly memorized
• Instrument: Grotrian-Steinweg 189
• Recording Method: DPA4060, EMU0404, Jecklin Disk, Macbook Pro
• Info: 'Sunken cathedral' is about a cathedral that rises up from the sea. Debussy gives a few hints in the piece, like "Perfectly calm" and "coming out of the fog", sketching the initial situation but the rest is not marked so explicitly so feel free to use your imagination. But to me it's easy to hear all the elements. [spoiler=my interpretation] It starts with the waves calming down to perfectly flat, the moon and silence over it (yes, music to depict silence!). Then the day breaks with a bit of fog and the cathedral appears. The sun comes out and the organ plays. You can hear church bells, and some also hear the monks praying (I don't hear them). Then the water starts rising again, first with a bubbling sound and then you can hear the echos of the organ (some hear this as the organ playing under the water but that must be nonsense as organs won't work under water). Just before it all disappears, the church bells in the top of the church tower ring one last time. [/spoiler] There are a few suggestions as to what inspired Debussy to write this piece. One is that it is based on the legend of Ys. In the legend the devil, disguised as a knight, opens the gates of a sinful city during high tide and the waves swallow the city. On clear mornings with no wind and low tide, the cathedral of the city rises up from the sea. Another suggestion is that Debussy visited the island Mont St. Michel a number of times in his youth: [img]http://www.pianoworld.com/Uploads/files/mont.jpg[/img] Mont st. Michel around 1900. Picture from wikipedia. Two techniques that Debussy is famous for and also uses often in this piece are the pentatonic scale (eg, the waves in the beginning) and parallel chords (the organ). The time signature of this piece is odd. He writes "6/4 = 3/2". Now of course this is nonsense in music, counting to 4 is very different from counting to 2. But luckily we have a recording of himself playing the piece, from which it appears that he basically doubles the tempo at a number of places. I copied this interpretation from him. But I use a lot more rubato and tempo changes, I think the piece needs that.