L'Isle joyeuse (The Joyful Island) (Debussy). (Please read the possible narrative at the bottom).

Explaining a composer’s music by means of his life can be a dangerous business. In the case of L’isle joyeuse, for example, it has often been assumed that the ‘happy isle’ of the piece’s title was Jersey where, in July 1904, Debussy had eloped with Emma Bardac, after packing his wife off to her parents in Normandy. In fact, L’isle joyeuse seems to have been complete in some form or other as early as June 1903, when he played it to Viñes, who was to give its first performance in February 1905. All we know of its relation to Jersey is that Debussy was copying it out there for his publisher in early August 1904.
The other external influence on the piece often quoted is Watteau’s painting L’embarquement pour Cythère, which is one of the Greek islands. (Jean-Antoine Watteau was a French painter and draughtsman whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement, as seen in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens. He revitalized the waning Baroque style, shifting it to the less severe, more naturalistic, less formally classical, Rococo).
A letter from Debussy published only in 2003 shows this to have been true up to a point: an organist had written, asking for advice on how to play his music. Typically, Debussy refused to give any such blanket testimony but, after suggesting, with the merest whiff of vinegar, that the title might possibly be of help, Debussy went on to say that ‘there’s also a bit of L’embarquement pour Cythère with less melancholy than in Watteau: you find the masks of the commedia
dell’arte with young women singing and dancing; everything culminating in the glory of the setting sun’.
While not necessarily relevant to our enjoyment of the piece, Debussy’s awareness of the painting’s melancholy deserves to be acknowledged: as Edward Lucie-Smith has pointed out, the title would more correctly be ‘Departure from the Isle of Cythera’ and 'the three pairs of lovers in the painting represent, in fact, the different aspects of the same couple and the same relationship; the third pair, moving off, look back regretfully. One must nevertheless admit that the smiling ambiguity which allowed a radical misrepresentation of its subject-matter is a large part of the picture’s charm'.
The sparkling sensuality of the music, especially as orchestrated by Debussy’s friend Bernardino Molinari to the composer’s indications, brings it into the same sound world as La mer, in which it could almost occupy a place as an extra movement to that work.
According to Jim Samson (1977), the "central relationship in the work is that between material based on the whole-tone scale, the lydian mode and the diatonic scale, the lydian mode functioning as an effective mediator between the other two."
The tempo indication is Modere et tres souple (a moderate speed but very supple, elastic, flexible. non-rigid), coming after a cadenza-like opening. It is in 4/4 time.
(This loose wayward beat is clearly exhibited at 2'56'' where the left hand has five quavers to the bar, while the right hand tune wavers around the beat, supposedly like the style that Chopin often used when he played his own music.
This composition seems to have very little to do with islanders enjoying a happy event: Even the painting by Jean-Antoine Watteau seems to be simply about preparing to board a boat to go to the island of Cythera. However, it served as inspiration for the piece, with Debussy re-imagining a group's journey to the island, considered to be Aphrodite's birthplace, and their subsequent ecstatic unions of love upon arrival.
Personally, I think that the painting sparked an idea of portraying increasing excitement at a visit by an important personage, or even a successful celebrity, to a population where daily life was somewhat humdrum: in the first part of the composition there is a sense of the different inhabitants of the village, or island, intimating their feelings as to the imminent appearance of the, supposably, important visitors, some expressing their delight with dancing,! The excitement builds to a climax beginning at 5'19' with a fanfare at 5'59'' and cheering at 6'21''. The crowd is enraptured!!!)
GlynGlynn, realiser.
Feel free to leave any comments, be they good, bad, or indifferent as to whether the piece or the performance moved you in any way!
(Since music is an aural art, and not a visual one, it is best to listen to these pieces, and other artists performances, with eyes closed, so as to be able to listen intently as to how the music is portrayed).