Substituting glisses for arpeggios in Trio Sonata?

[Sylvain Blassel]

For the first performance of Debussy Sonata (december 10, 1916), it was
with Albert Manouvrier (fl), Darius Milhaud (alto), and Jeanne Dalliès
(chrom. hpe).
It was not really a concert, but the first audition, in the house of Jacques Durand (his editor).
Debussy
didn’t like a lot this Pleyel harp, but Jeanne Dalliès was not so bad
for him, as we can read it on this letter for Jacques Durand, December
14, 1916 : “Vous
m’avez écrit des choses charmantes sur la Sonate pour Fl, Alt et Harpe. Seulement l’expérience n’est pas complète, à cause
de la harpe chromatique qui n’a jamais le poids sonore de la harpe à pédale,
mais qui trouve le moyen d’être lourde. Pourtant Mademoiselle en joue aussi
bien que possible.” — sorry, I can not translate…

Pierre Jamet
was the first performer to play on pedal harp, just one year after, and
he write to Jacques Durand (letter of Mars 22, 1917) that he prefers
really Erard harp : “J’ai
pu constater une fois de plus la supériorité de la harpe à pédales sur
la harpe
chromatique qui, si j’ose m’exprimer ainsi, n’enveloppe rien, et rend
les
délicieux son harmoniques, pareils à un tambour voilé”

I’ve
seen the manuscrit of the sonate, it’s not glissando, but arpeggios,
exactly the same than in the edited

[carl-swanson]

de la harpe chromatique qui n’a jamais le poids sonore de la harpe à pédale, mais qui trouve le moyen d’être lourde. Pourtant Mademoiselle en joue aussi bien que possible.”

Translation: “You wrote charming things to me about the Sonate for Flute, Viola, and Harp. Unfortunately the experience is not complete, due to the chromatique harp which never has the acoustic weight of the pedal harp, which finds the means to have more weight. Although Mademoiselle(Dallies) played it as well as possible.”

******************
“J’ai pu constater une fois de plus la supériorité de la harpe à pédales sur la harpe chromatique qui, si j’ose m’exprimer ainsi, n’enveloppe rien, et rend les délicieux son harmoniques, pareils à un tambour voilé”

Translation: “I can tell you one more time of the superiority of the pedal harp over the Chromatique harp which, if I dare say, surrounds nothing, and reduces the delicious harmonic sounds to that of a covered drum.”

[Sylvain Blassel]

Thanks Carl !

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

Carl, that’s exactly why Salzedo called it an aeolian flux, not a glissando, because it is not just a slide up and down. You have to sound each individual note clearly and evenly, and blend each note and shape and contour the whole. It is definitely not easy. That’s why Scintillation is much harder than it may look. It is also quite hard to make the change in dynamics and pedals in the middle of the passage, so I don’t think it is an easy out option at all. I do like the intricacy of the original, though, and have only performed it that way, so far.

[Author]

Posts