Dans une brume doucement sonore

di Nicola Giaquinto - 25 Novembre 2024

Discussing French music with Roy Howat

Every well-rounded artist knows that the process of gaining more insight is, much like our universe, constantly expanding towards infinity. While the day someone magically unlocks all the secrets of the millenary history of music and performance practice is no more than a tale of fantasy, we can safely say that there are individuals who managed to get closer to the truth behind some of the scores that we know and love today.

Tireless research, evergrowing thirst for knowledge and a direct link to the composers behind the music are but a few elements that make people like Roy Howat a major figure when it comes to a better understanding of the French repertoire.
Besides an international concert life, the Scottish pianist and musical scholar has published two major books (Debussy in proportion, 1983, and The Art of French Piano Music, 2009), numerous other book chapters, and has edited critical editions of music by Debussy, Fauré, Chabrier and Chopin. He can be heard on numerous CD recordings, and holds the posts of Keyboard Research Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music (London) and Senior Professorial Research Fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (Glasgow). He is also an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College Cambridge, and Visiting Professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

I had the chance to meet and work with Prof. Howat during a masterclass on French repertoire hosted by the Lucerne School of Music (HSLU) and given our shared passion for this parenthesis of music history, I could not resist asking him a few questions about his relationship to it and the works of the Quatre Grands: Chabrier, Fauré, Debussy and Ravel.

N.G. What makes French music so irresistible?

R.H. It appeals to the senses with its beauty, but at the same time it is logically conceived. A bit like French food! Elegance combined with practicality; this is the French character.

Since my lesson earlier that day was about a selection of Debussy’s Préludes, I decided to start asking questions about the infamous composer.

N.G. It is impossible to think about French music without including Claude Debussy. What is your stance on the composer and his music?

R.H. My mother, who was Czech, loved French culture and had spent some time there too. She encouraged me to learn the language, so it was only natural that I would eventually get closer to the music.

I was given Debussy’s music to learn when I was very young by a good teacher and liked it instantly. 

N.G. Debussy detested being labeled an impressionist, why is that?

R.H. The term was coined as an insult by art critics who did not like what the impressionist painters were doing.  Truly, the basis of impressionistic painting is very scientific. It is based on a deep understanding of how light works, optics and the refraction on the eye.

The music of Debussy is equally as scientific, in fact one could say that his true impressionistic side stems from his preciseness. He always fully conscious of what he is doing.

The music of Debussy is equally as scientific, in fact one could say that his true impressionistic side stems from his preciseness. He always fully conscious of what he is doing.

N.G. What is Debussy’s biggest contribution to the evolution of piano music?

R.H. His textures are very compatible with the physics of the piano.  You have long sustained notes in the bass and shorter notes as you move up the keyboard.

Acoustically speaking, he took this technique from the gamelan gongs and bells that he came to know and appreciate. You can notice this big textural difference in his mature writing, from Estampes onward.

N.G. What makes his music so unique when you compare it to his contemporaries like Chabrier and Ravel? 

R.H. The funny thing is that it is not so unique when you compare it with Chabrier, because you suddenly see where it is coming from!  Chabrier brought bigger changes to harmonic language than any other composer in french music history… It was Ravel that said so.

What Debussy added to this was a new conception of rhythm and texture, that is why he sounds like nobody else.

On the evening of the first day of lessons, Prof. Howat gave a very interesting lecture (in German!) on Debussy, Ravel, Fauré and Chabrier in the Konzertsaal Salquin; highlighting peculiarities, common aspects and unique character traits of each of the four. His passion for Chabrier was definitely palpable, so I decided to dig a little deeper.

N.G. Very rarely do we hear of Chabrier’s music being performed or let alone acknowledged today, what is your opinion on it?

R.H. I hope it’s being performed more now, and have been doing all I can to support that, including a Dover edition of his piano music, and the 2009 Yale book (The Art of French piano music). My opinion of Chabrier is reflected in his presence in that book’s title, on a par with Debussy, Ravel and Fauré. (Poulenc shared that evaluation of him) Chabrier’s music features in almost every concert I play.

N.G. What are some key aspects that make his music so recognizable and unique?

R.H. See chapters 7 and 13 especially of my Yale book. He never writes a dull bar or a dull note, the music’s absolutely cogent, incredibly original, often very witty, and emotionally gripping – in many ways like Ravel but up to 40 years earlier.

N.G. What is impressionistic about Ravel’s music? 

R.H. It certainly makes an impression, which is how the word was first used. In the ‘artistic’ sense of ‘impressionism’, Ravel felt a very close affinity with Manet (who was a very close friend of Chabrier). Like Manet and Chabrier, Ravel had no time for vagueness or inexactitude of purpose or technique.

N.G. In your lecture, you referred to Ravel as “the artisanal”, what is the meaning of that?

R.H. He didn’t like words like ‘genius’, and would say he was an ‘artisan’, like anybody in any profession who applied professional skills with dedication and quality control.

Gabriel Fauré is seen as the godfather of the twentieth century French musical sphere. Most major composers of the time were either his pupils or had some sort of direct contact with him and his works. In more than one way, he projected music towards new horizons through his unwavering sincerity and a sophisticated musical language which is simultaneously full of detail and devoid of excess. Most of Fauré’s Critical editions published by Peters are edited by Roy Howat.

N.G. Composers like Ravel, Florent Schmitt and Charles Koechlin were taught by Fauré, how big of an impact did he have on his pupils?

R.H. A big impact, in terms of musical integrity and practicality, discovering their own artistic nature, and ensuring they wouldn’t write boring, academic or pretentious music. Honesty was at the core of his teaching, and of course his pupils in that class also included Enescu, Henry Février, and Roger-Ducasse.

N.G. Do you think Fauré’s music is fully understood? Is there more about it that you discovered?

R.H. Sometime it’s understood. I’ve heard some lovely recent performances by violinist Irène Duval (who led his String Quartet brilliantly), and Steven Isserlis, both Fauré devotees. But his music has long been portrayed (and performed) in many quarters as vague or dreamily mysterious, and played slower and quieter than Fauré marked, making nonsense of it (as Fauré’s son often protested).

Fauré wanted his music played with straightforwardness and appropriate vigour.

Fauré wanted his music played with straightforwardness and appropriate vigour. I’ve also seen people put off Fauré’s music by misguided critics’ recommendations, for example of recordings by the pianist Germaine Thyssens-Valentin. She never knew Fauré but had a lifelong obsession with his music, and used to play all 13 Nocturnes or 13 Barcarolles in a single recital, to the dismay of Fauré’s family who felt compelled to attend and be polite afterwards. (One of their reported diplomatic responses was “Madame, quel effort!”) Mme Thyssens-Valentin did play strongly, but had very little sense of musical structure, couldn’t keep in time, and repeatedly misread key signatures and accidentals. At worst it often sounds like someone passionately playing something that doesn’t quite make sense.

I hope my Fauré editions also contribute to better understanding by correcting the numerous misprints and inaccuracies in older editions, including many unreliable tempo markings. My experience is that when the musical score is accurate, one can play in time straight off the page and much of it immediately works. It does still need a lot of careful voicing and phrasing, while keeping it all in time, as Fauré’s own colleagues all emphasised.

After briefly discussing the importance of Chopin’s work on the creative output of all of these composers, I decided to ask Prof. Howat a few questions about his work as a researcher and his book “The Art of French Piano Music“, published by the Yale University Press.

N.G. As a pianist and researcher, what have you learnt from studying Debussy’s original scores?

R.H. How meticulous and careful he was. The manuscripts are beautifully written, he cared to do it as well as he possibly could, making sure everything was right. Much like Ravel, he was a precision engineer in his music.

N.G. Another direct contact we have with most of these composers are piano roll recordings. What do you think about the recordings of Debussy?

R.H. There are two sources of his playing. 

The audio recordings where he plays the piano for Mary Garden give us a truthful idea, but the quality is not so good, whereas the piano is not so faithful to the performance itself. Particularly in the sound recordings he was a very classical player, very much in time with both hands together… no time for rubato!

The piano rolls are tricky to tell, because they do not always sound good.  His stepdaughter, after receiving them, said that they did not resemble Debussy’s playing in the slightest. You can find a more in depth look on Tihomir Popović’s book about the topic.

N.G. In your book you describe the importance of body language at the piano. What can you tell our readers?

R.H. We need to work out our technique so that the music can play us with the least physical and mental interference from us. If we can play without physical stiffness, the way the music lies under the hands, arms and fingers can conveys much about how the composer played and treated the instrument. Chapter 20 and other parts of my Yale book are all about that.

N.G. If you could recommend a piece by each one of these four composers, what would they be?

R.H. It would depend on whom I’m recommending it to, if they have big hands or how fluent their technique is. And it changes every day.  But here’s one for today: Fauré Pièces brèves no. 1; Chabrier ‘Sous bois’; Debussy ‘Hommage à Rameau’; Ravel ‘Ondine’.

N.G. Any advice to pianists aspiring to play a piece of French music?

R.H. It depends partly on the composer, but most of the best told performers to play close attention to what is written on the score and play it in time!