- Debussy composed this piece for piano around 1890 as Tarantelle styrienne.
- It was published in 1891, then republished simply as “Danse” in 1903.1
- Maurice Ravel’s orchestration of this piece was published in Paris in 1923.2
- Genre: the tarantella is a dance of Italian origin from the town of Taranto. It is a fast dance in 6/8 time (According to the Harvard Dictionary of Music, the oft-cited connection of the genre with the “tarantula,” and dancing fast to cure its bite, is a myth)3
- Title: Styria (STEER-ee-uh) is a region in southeastern Austria, which makes this title rather odd, because the tarantella is an Italian dance, not something one would associate with Austria.
- In his essay “Russian Imprints in Debussy’s Piano Music,” Roy Howat suggests that Debussy is making a sly joke with this title. The piece’s time signatures frequently switch between 3/4 (the meter of a waltz or ländler, Austrian/Germanic dances) and 6/8 (the meter of a tarantella). Perhaps Debussy meant that this piece is a cross between the Styrian waltz and the Italian tarantella!4
- Listen for: unresolved 7th chords and 9th chords, which give the music an unsettled feeling.5
Sources
- François Lesure and Roy Howat, “Debussy, (Achille-)Claude,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 27, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000007353.
- Barbara L. Kelly, “Ravel, (Joseph) Maurice,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 28, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000052145.
- Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4th ed., s.v. “Tarantella” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003).
- Roy Howat, “Russian Imprints in Debussy’s Piano Music,” in Rethinking Debussy, ed. Elliot Antokoletz and Marianne Wheeldon (Oxford University Press, 2011), 49.
- Lesure and Howat, “Debussy, (Achille-)Claude,” Grove Music Online.
Cut IDs
16063 18779 40735 45447 49286