- This work was inspired by a poem entitled L’après-midi d’un faune by Stéphane Mallarmé.
- In addition to being one of France’s leading poets, Mallarmé hosted a salon in his home which drew many important arts figures in late 19th C. Paris.
- Mallarmé originally intended L’après-midi d’un faune to become a theatrical work, and he approached Debussy in 1890 write music for the project. Though the theatrical work did not pan out, Debussy completed his Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune in 1893, after attending Mallarmé’s salon for a couple of years.
- Translation and analysis of Mallarmé’s poem.
- Musicologist Arthur Wenk found that the number of bars in Debussy’s Prélude and the number of lines in Mallarmé’s poem are identical.
- Debussy’s Prélude premiered at the Sociéte Nationale in Paris in 1894.
- in 1912, Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed and danced in a ballet entitled The Afternoon of a Faun, set to Debussy’s Prélude. Léon Bakst designed the scenery and the (controversially revealing) costumes.1
Sources
- François Lesure and Roy Howat, “Debussy, (Achille-)Claude,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed February 23, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000007353.
Cut IDs
40213 40272 40785 40822 49289 11773 14809 14521 23692