Claude Debussy: Violin Sonata

In this study, many facets of Claude Debussy’s creative process are examined, as well as the difficulties through which he toiled for several months before handing over the final manuscript of the work to his publisher.

Composed only a few months before his death, Claude Debussy’s Violin Sonata was the composer’s final work and the result of a complex process that embraced an unusually large number of musical sources. In this study, many facets of Debussy’s creative process are examined, as well as the difficulties through which he toiled for several months before handing over the final manuscript of the work to his publisher. In addition to musical sources, many other documents bear witness to the Sonata’s progress from the initial draft to Durand’s published edition. The Violin Sonata was written during a period on which the Great War cast a long shadow. It was also influenced by the composer’s challenging compositional crisis and the terrible illness that was to claim his life shortly after the work’s premiere. The Sonata’s finale proved most problematic for Debussy, and thus an examination both of this movement’s sketches and relevant correspondence uncovers several alternate versions, reconstructed here.

• By (author) François Delécluse