- Claude Debussy The Girl With The Flaxen Hair Analysis Review
- Girl With The Flaxen Hair
- Claude Debussy Songs
Claude Debussy’s “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair” ranks right up there alongside his “Clair de Lune,” “Beau Soir” and “Afternoon of a Faun” on my “favorite short classical pieces” list. In spite of their brevity, all of them immediately transport you, taking you to a vivid, sensual, evocative place that, once you’ve returned to the “real world” and the slog of daily life, you feel the piece’s presence still, a deep vibration in your core. I’ve blogged about the above three pieces before; you can find them HERE, HERE and HERE, respectively.
Performed to music by Claude Debussy, Maid with the Flaxen Hair premiered on April 18, 1926, at New York's 48th Street Theater. The solo work was performed by Martha Graham and was part of the program for her first independent concert. A review in the April 24, 1926, issue of Musical America said that Graham's art is 'in the last analysis, an art of mime and posture, varying radically. The Girl With the Flaxen Hair (La fille aux cheveux de lin) is the eighth of Claude Debussy's Preludes, Book I (1909-1910), for piano. It is gentle, fluid, and full of light, flowing harmonies.
“The Girl with the Flaxen Hair,” or “La fille aux cheveux de lin” in its original French, is the eighth piece in Book I of Debussy’s solo piano Préludes, written around 1910. The title was inspired by an 1852 poem by Charles-Marie René Leconte de Lisle, which I’ll post below.
Although it was written for solo piano, different arrangements abound. The first version I heard, actually, was Joshua Bell on violin with orchestral accompaniment. I discovered it a dozen years ago, mid-December, where Bell’s compilation CD slotted in nicely with the Christmas music I play regularly around that time. Best of all, once the holidays had passed, the Christmas CDs shelved for the year, Bell’s “Romance of the Violin” was still there for me. It’s a lovely CD, the perfect musical touch for those early January days when, much as the holidays exhausted you, you find yourself still yearning to light candles and plug in festive lights. (Or is that just me? Tell me some of you do the same.) Each year, now, it is my favorite January CD, and “Girl with the Flaxen Hair” my favorite. It always sounds fresh, nuanced and ephemeral. Within it, there’s a sense of space, of simplicity, and yet, it’s got all those trademark nuances that makes me adore Debussy’s music — its unexpected intervals, parallel chords, exotic scales, ethereal harmonies.
Here’s the arrangement — and the CD — I love so much (and HERE is the link to peruse and/or buy the CD yourself).
I was going to post Leconte de Lisle’s poem next, but before that, let’s pause to hear one more rendition that is amazing. The group is the Los Angeles based cello quintet, SAKURA (Michael Kaufman, Benjamin Lash, Gabriel Martins, Yoshika Masuda, and Peter Myers). This arrangement, for five cellos, is just stunning, fascinating to watch and listen to. Such a rich sound, from cellos alone. Who knew?! (Note to self: research SAKURA for a potential future blog.)
Now for the poem. English translation follows below.
La fille aux cheveux de lin
by Charles-Marie René Leconte de Lisle
Sur la luzerne en fleur assise,
Qui chante dès le frais matin ?
C’est la fille aux cheveux de lin,
La belle aux lèvres de cerise.
L’amour, au clair soleil d’été,
Avec l’alouette a chanté.
Ta bouche a des couleurs divines,
Ma chère, et tente le baiser !
Sur l’herbe en fleur veux-tu causer,
Fille aux cils longs, aux boucles fines ?
L’amour, au clair soleil d’été,
Avec l’alouette a chanté.
Ne dis pas non, fille cruelle !
Ne dis pas oui ! J’entendrai mieux
Le long regard de tes grands yeux
Et ta lèvre rose, ô ma belle !
L’amour, au clair soleil d’été,
Avec l’alouette a chanté.
Adieu les daims, adieu les lièvres
Et les rouges perdrix ! Je veux
Baiser le lin de tes cheveux,
Presser la pourpre de tes lèvres !
L’amour, au clair soleil d’été,
Avec l’alouette a chanté.
And now, the English version
Sitting amidst the alfalfa in flower,
Who sings in the cool morning hour?
It is the girl with the flaxen hair,
The beauty with cherry lips so fair.
Love, in the summer sun so bright,
Sang with the lark for sheer delight.
Your mouth has colors so divine,
It tempts a kiss, o, were it mine!
Come chat with me in the flow’ring grass,
Girl with the long lashes, silken tress.
Love, in the summer sun so bright,
Sang with the lark for sheer delight.
Do not say no, o cruel girl!
Do not say yes, far better still
To read your large eye’s longing gaze,
Your rosy lips which I so praise!
Love, in the summer sun so bright,
Sang with the lark for sheer delight.
Farewell to deer, farewell to hare!
And to red partridges! I shall dare
a kiss of your crimson lips to steal,
your flaxen locks to caress and feel!
Love, in the summer sun so bright,
Sang with the lark for sheer delight.
And, okay, I suppose I should include a solo piano arrangement, since that’s how Debussy composed it.
Which one is YOUR favorite?
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There she sat, in the tender caress of dawn. A flaxen waterfall falling gently over her shoulder. Each stroke I added was a touch of sunlight on her hair. Hope and memory in her eyes, her lips speaking the unspoken.
As I painted a copy of oil painting Little Irene by Pierre Auguste Renoir, I knew I had finally found the girl with the flaxen hair.
I first came to know her in my piano class three years ago. La fille aux cheveux de lin, translated to “the Girl with the Flaxen Hair”, is a famous piano piece from the first book of Preludes by 20th century French composer Claude Debussy. My piano teacher Mrs. Lyu regarded it as one of her favorite pieces, passionately describing this girl of pure beauty she saw in music. I was attracted but confused: how can you “see” something (or even someone!) in something that’s heard? Back then, for me, sight and hearing were in separate worlds.
My performance of the piece was fluent and skilled, but Mrs. Lyu told me the girl of the flaxen hair was not there. I was yet to find the soul of the music. Frustrated and confused, I did some research in the hope to “see” the girl in the music.
To my surprise, after I typed the title into my search engine, an oil painting popped up beside Debussy’s piano piece. The moment I saw it, I felt it was an ideal visualization of the girl with the flaxen hair. It was named Little Irene, painted in 1880 by famous French impressionist Pierre Auguste Renoir as a portrait of Banker Cahen D'Anvers’s 8 year old daughter. Irene, with flaxen hair, sits in a garden in serenity, wearing a white dress with a sky-blue hue. Her skin is fair and her lips are cherry. Her eyes look forward into somewhere no one but her knows. That’s the girl I’d love to see in my music.
I tried hard to keep the image in mind as my fingers moved on the piano keys, but I still found the connection vague and abstract. How could what you hear relate to what you see, when one is constantly flowing whereas the other is frozen? I could tell the girl I saw in Renoir’s painting was not in my music, though I had no idea how I could possibly find her. I almost gave up with the piece until I got to paint a copy of Little Irene in the summer, several months after I came to know it.
Painted by numerous swift and broken strokes without any distinct lines, Little Irene was representative of impressionistic style, which sought to capture the instant fluidity of light and air in the imperceptible elapses time. I re-experienced the process of Renoir’s creation of Irene as I added each stroke to the canvas. Suddenly, she was not sitting still but moving with life. I could feel sunlight dancing on her flaxen hair with each stroke of brush. As I lit up her eyes with a dip of bright paint on the brush, a light of innocence and hope unique to a little girl glittered in her eyes.
Claude Debussy The Girl With The Flaxen Hair Analysis Review
Then I suddenly understood why Debussy was known as the founder of Impressionism in music. Wasn’t the process of the painting just like the procession of the music? Notes in Debussy’s music, overlapped and interweaved on the palette of music, were just like strokes in Renoir’s painting. Both Debussy’s piano piece and Renoir’s oil painting vividly depicted the girl with the flaxen hair and captured the fluidity of light, which was the essence of Impressionism.
I finally understood the very true old saying, “music is the flowing art, art is the frozen music.” Music is in time while art is in space. Sight and hearing are separable but not separated. Both are ways in which we approach, perceive, and express the world. When I played the piece again, the girl in the painting and the girl in the music were one.
Recently, I learnt that Debussy was deeply fond of art and poetry. He once used some impressionistic paintings for covers of his music albums. In fact, his lovely prelude The Girl with the Flaxen Hair was inspired by a poem with the same title by a French poet Charles-Marie René Leconte de Lisle. Here is the first stanza of the poem:
Girl With The Flaxen Hair
“On the grass, sitting in flowers
Who sings since the fresh morning?
It is the maiden with the flaxen hair
The lovely one with lips like cherries.”
Claude Debussy Songs
The poem painted a vivid image that left me with a similar impression as Little Irene. The girl with “the flaxen hair” and “lips like cherries” walked out from the lines. No wonders people call poetry “the art of words.' As I read through the poem, painted Little Irene, and played the music piece, I felt an innocent beauty that transcended all forms. The girl with the flaxen hair was really alive in both worlds of sight and hearing. After all, the two worlds are in fact one world, the one we live in. Music, painting, poetry, and more. All come from life and can bring the same idea back to life.