Trois Poèmes de Mallarmé

Claude Debussy: Trois Poèmes de Mallarmé (1913) for high voice and chamber ensemble orchestrated by Klaus Simon (2021)

Claude Debussy's song cycle Trois Poèmes de Mallarmé was composed in 1913, as was Maurice Ravel's work of the same name. The selection of the first two song texts (Soupir and Placet futile) of their respective three-part cycle also happens to be identical. Was there an unconscious spiritual correspondence in the air? The simultaneity of two such important song settings on texts by the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) is an unusual stroke of luck in music history.

While Ravel chose a chamber ensemble of two flutes (the second also piccolo), two clarinets (the second also bass clarinet), piano and string quartet for his work, Debussy left it at a piano accompaniment in his last song oeuvre.

This instrumentation for almost the same instrumentation as Ravel's setting (I chose the harp instead of the piano) was created in 2021 for a concert program of the Holst-Sinfonietta in January 2022 under the motto "Paris 1913", in which exclusively works from that year were performed that were either composed or premiered in Paris. This included Igor Stravinsky's Trois poésies de la lyrique japonaise and Maurice Delage's Quatre poèmes Hindous, which were orchestrated for almost the same instrumentation. In addition to my instrumentation of these Debussy songs, I have also published Quatre Miniatures de 1913 on small piano pieces (Maurice Ravel: Prélude en la mineur https://www.universaledition.com/maurice-ravel-581/works/prelude-en-la-mineur-33561, À la manière de Borodine https://www.universaledition.com/maurice-ravel-581/works/a-la-maniere-de-borodine-valse-33563, À la manière de Chabrier https://www.universaledition.com/maurice-ravel-581/works/a-la-maniere-de-emmanuel-chabrier-33565 and Albert Roussel: Petit Canon Perpétuel https://www.universaledition.com/klaus-simon-3973/works/petit-canon-perpetuel-33577) for this scoring at the same time. The combination of this instrumentation of Claude Debussy's song cycle Trois Poèmes de Mallarmé with the previously mentioned pieces has proved very successful and is also naturally very suitable in a concert program.

May Debussy's last songs find their way into many concert halls in this new guise.

Denzlingen, July 2022

Klaus Simon

Performers of the world premiere on 25 January 2022 in the Ludwigskirche in Freiburg/D

Britta Stallmeister, soprano

Holst-Sinfonietta:

Julia Stocker - 1st flute; Claire Garde - 2nd flute, piccolo and alto flute.

Lorenzo Salvá Peralta - 1st clarinet; Nicole Krüger - 2nd clarinet and bass clarinet

Julia Weissbarth - harp

Sylvia Oelkrug - 1st violin; Cornelius Bauer - 2nd violin

Filomena Felley viola; Philipp Schiemenz - violoncello

Klaus Simon - Musical Direction