Debussy’s La mer is a unique mix of tone poem and symphony, a three-movement impression of the ocean. As the idea took shape in his mind, Debussy wrote to a friend in September 1903 that “I was destined for the fine career of a sailor,” and that “only the accidents of life put me on another path.” He acknowledged that a musical work about the ocean “could turn out to be like a studio landscape,” but concluded that “I have countless reminiscences. This matters more, in my opinion, than a reality.”
“The Firebird belongs to the styles of its times,” said Stravinsky (in Expositions and Developments) about his first ballet score, adding, “It is more vigorous than most of the composed folk music of the period, but it is also not very original.” Was the composer being painfully honest by disparaging the work that laid the foundation of his fabled career or was he being disingenuous? Further he repeats the oft-quoted statement that the “orchestral body of The Firebird was wastefully large,” but he admits to being “more proud of the orchestration than of the music itself.”
He does go on to concede that it paved the way for his work of the next four years (which included Petrushka and The Rite of Spring), and acknowledges that the finale “might be cited as the first appearance in my music of metrical irregularity. But” he avers, “that is all.”
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