The Engulfed Cathedral

Composer: DEBUSSY, Claude
  • La cathédrale engloutie (“The Engulfed Cathedral” or “The Sunken Cathedral”)1 is no. 10 of Debussy’s Preludes, Book 1, published in 1910.2
  • The title refers to the cathedral in the mythical lost city of Ys on the coast of Brittany. According to legend, the city was engulfed by the ocean as a punishment for the population’s evil deeds. Each morning at sunrise, the cathedral of Ys would rise from the ocean to recall the people’s misdeeds, then it would sink again into the ocean at evening.3
  • Debussy placed narrative instructions in the score to indicate what was happening in the story. For example, the opening is marked “Dans une brume doucement sonore” (“In a gently resonant mist”) and later the score is marked “Peu à peu sortant de la brume” (“Little by little emerging from the haze.”)4
  • Several pianists and scholars have also suggested that Debussy may have taken inspiration from the French island castle Mont St. Michel, which he did visit several times.

Sources

  1. Maurice Hinson, Guide to the Pianist’s Repertoire, 3rd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 249.
  2. 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.
  3. Janet Bass Smith, “Solving Performance Problems in Debussy’s La Cathédrale Engloutie” (American Music Teacher 56, no. 1, 2006), 18. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43539198.
  4. Terry Lynn Hudson, “Uncovering Magic: Exploring Selected Préludes of Claude Debussy As Performance and Teaching Vehicles” (American Music Teacher 63, no. 4, 2014), 27-28, JSTOR, https://wwwjstor.org/stable/43543736.

Cut IDs

42871 45455