La mer (Debussy)
La mer, trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre (French for The sea, three symphonic sketches for orchestra), or simply La mer (The Sea), L. 109, CD. 111, is an orchestral composition by the French composer Claude Debussy.
La mer
Composed between 1903 and 1905, the piece premiered in Paris in October 1905. It was initially not well-received; even some who had been strong supporters of Debussy's work were unenthusiastic, even though La mer presented three key aspects of Debussy's aesthetic: Impressionism, Symbolism and Japonism.[1] The work was performed in the US in 1907 and Britain in 1908; after its second performance in Paris in 1908, it quickly became one of Debussy's most admired and frequently performed orchestral works.
The first audio recording of the work was made in 1928. Since then, orchestras and conductors from around the world have set it down in many studio or live concert recordings.
Recordings[edit]
The first recording of La mer was made by the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, conducted by Piero Coppola in 1928. It has been reissued on LP and CD.[47] Recordings conducted by other musicians who had known and worked with Debussy include those by Monteux and Ernest Ansermet, who both conducted the work on more than one recording.[48] Well-known recordings from the monaural era include those by the NBC Symphony Orchestra and Toscanini, and the Philharmonia on recordings conducted by Herbert von Karajan and Guido Cantelli.[49] Of recordings from the stereophonic LP era, The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music singled out those by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Fritz Reiner, and the Berlin Philharmonic under Karajan.[50]
Of the many recordings available, a comparative survey for Classic FM (2018) recommended a short list of five, those by the Orchestre National de France and Jean Martinon, the Cleveland Orchestra and Boulez, the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle, the Seoul Philharmonic and Myung-Whun Chung, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink (its top recommendation).[51]
Influence[edit]
La mer has influenced a number of composers throughout the 20th century. British composers Frank Merrick and Hope Squire arranged La Mer for piano duet and performed it in 1915 in one of their new music recitals.[52] Luciano Berio quoted La mer in the 3rd movement of his composition Sinfonia in 1968.[53][n 8] John Williams used simplified versions of motifs from La mer in the score he wrote for Jaws (1975).[54] In 2002, the Norwegian composer Biosphere loosely based his ambient album Shenzhou around looped samples of La mer.[55]