Jeux by Claude Debussy
Debussy wrote his last ballet and last orchestral work, Jeux, (or Games for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe, with Vaslav Nijinsky as choreographer and lead dancer. The first performance puzzled its audience, and as it took place only two weeks before the tumultuous premiere of Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps, it was nearly forgotten in the uproar.
On closer inspection, Jeux was every bit as revolutionary and forward-looking as Sacre and even more daring harmonically. Debussy’s most nearly atonal work, Jeux‘s formal structure depends to an unprecedented degree on orchestral color and texture rather than pitch relationships.
In this way, it points in the direction of Anton Webern’s pointillism, to the search for new sonorities from electronic instruments, and through the teaching of Olivier Messiaen, to the techniques developed by postwar composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez.
The story and choreography also refused to conform to any previous expectations, and it remains unclear whether the audience found the music or the ballet the more problematic.
In Nijinsky’s simple plot, boy loses tennis ball, finds two girls, forgets about the ball, and eventually wins both girls. By the end of the ballet, the three of them are kissing passionately. He made no room for fantasies, tutus and coronets, ensembles, or anything the audience might have expected to see. He showed nothing but three people in tennis outfits.
(And in 1913, men’s tennis outfits were baggy long-sleeved shirts and flannel slacks. Women wore long-sleeved ankle-length dresses with petticoats. It is difficult to imagine anyone successfully either dancing or playing tennis dressed that way.)
Some people found the ballet a refreshing change. Others, apparently including Debussy himself, found it disconcerting. Debussy was so annoyed with what he saw that he left the theater to smoke a cigarette.
Even without the ballet, the music bewildered audiences. To some extent, it continues to do so. Unlike anything else he ever wrote, listeners continue to find Jeux a difficult work. With its predominantly scherzando mood, it continues to play games with the audience’s expectations and requires repeated hearing to understand.
“On closer inspection, Jeux was every bit as revolutionary and forward-looking as Sacre and even more daring harmonically. Debussy’s most nearly atonal work, Jeux‘s formal structure depends to an unprecedented degree on orchestral color and texture rather than pitch relationships.”
“In this way, it points in the direction of Anton Webern’s pointillism, to the search for new sonorities from electronic instruments, and through the teaching of Olivier Messiaen, to the techniques developed by postwar composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez.”
This is a projection ‘a posteriori’ by post WW II modernism when the atonal avantgarde needed some justification for the incoherence of many of their works. ‘Jeux’ is not ‘forward looking’ but is entirely itself, it was impossible to follow in its footsteps because it is so original and so utterly Debussy. Jeux’ idiom has nothing of atonality since ALL the pitches are musically coherent and interrelated. The work is entirely ‘organic’ and convincing if you hear it played on the piano (there is an excellent piano version which is sometimes performed by a courageous pianist). ALL the orchestral effects are enhancing the musical narrative and not replacing it, as atonal modernism did. The reference is false.
In tonal / musical terms: in the background Debussy has the chromatic field from which diatonal themes and motives emerge, with an abundant fantasy and invention. Coherence is achieved by the chromatic background – most motives have something chromatic in them – and the rhythm ‘in three’ which is the basic rhythmic structure. The overall form is beautifully judged, going to a climax two times.
If the piece is not played well, the glittering surface falls apart and seems a bit random. Also the conductor has to meet the challenge to sustain the Schwung and to monitor the many tempo changes. One of the best performances is by Hindoyan and the Liverpool Phil:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0S5hNRbV1k
One can hear the influence of Stravinsky’s Petrushka. Both composers discussed details of their scores with each other, and Debussy loved the Petrushka score.
No wonder Debussy was disappointed by the premiere performance. He had given his very best, and had written the music in a short time and excited by the music he found in himself (as related in the biographies), and the occasion seemed to have gone over the heads of everybody concerned. It was the last orchestral score he completed and since he was inclined to inward gloom he must have been in a very bad mood indeed and feeling as if all his efforts had come to naught.
Only in the last years there are more and more performances which show the viability of this wonderful score. But you need a top orchestra and top conductor.
Thank you. This is a very old post, and if memory serves, I first wrote it as a program note for an orchestra concert in graduate school in the 1970s. In that case, my sources were program notes of major orchestras. I appreciate the value you have added to it. Listening to the video, it certainly sounds more like Debussy than Stockhausen or Boulez, or even Webern. I wonder if the post-war avant-gardists will ever have more than a niche audience.