“Syrinx” – Claude Debussy
“Syrinx“ (1892)
__________
though Debussy would’ve called his
“Syrinx“ “Flûte de Pan”, “Pan Flute”,
alas, the name had already been
taken, he therefore came up with the
much more inspired “Syrinx“
Syrinx, with the help of other nymphs,
who’d come at her cry for help as she
fled the god Pan, a pursuer, had been
turned into a bush of reeds, its canes
producing a song so sweet as to
confound and disarm him, impelling
him to create of them that sublime
instrument
Hermes had been telling Argus, Argus
Panoptes, the giant with the hundred
eyes, the story about the pipes he
was playing, an implement received
from Jove, apparently, god of all the
gods, who wanted him to kill Argus,
for confining Io, who’d been turned
into a heifer by Juno, Jove’s wife,
who’d caught him chasing her, Io’s
plaintive lows had been getting to
Juno as Io fretted unfettered through
the fields too close to Olympus
when Hermes’ music finally closed the
giant’s last two eyes, he beheaded him,
but Juno, in merciful recognition of his
service, however ultimately ineffectual,
set them into the variegated tail of the
peacock
are you kidding me, I always think when
I read Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, and am
ever nevertheless entirely enchanted
a flute solo had not been composed in
over 150 years when Debussy composed
at all unimpressive “Sonata in A Minor“
of 1747, it duly set off a new life for the
long overlooked flute, a reed which
Mozart famously didn’t like
note the tonal, rhythmic, and repetition
shifts from the rigid Classical model,
where these are much more strict,
Impressionism was not only breaking
down pictures, the pictorial arts, but its
sound world as well, it was an utterly
new era, new sensibility, new zeitgeist,
and you can feel it, though you might
not be quite able to immediately
verbalize it, the arts were again, as
they ever ‘ve been, the canary in the
gold mine
Richard
psst:
The Transformation of Syrinx into Reeds
Then Hermes thus: A nymph of late there was
Whose heav’nly form her fellows did surpass.
The pride and joy of fair Arcadia’s plains,
Belov’d by deities, ador’d by swains:
Syrinx her name, by Sylvans oft pursu’d,
As oft she did the lustful Gods delude:
The rural, and the woodland Pow’rs disdain’d;
With Cynthia hunted, and her rites maintain’d:
Like Phoebe clad, even Phoebe’s self she seems,
So tall, so streight, such well-proportion’d limbs:
The nicest eye did no distinction know,
But that the goddess bore a golden bow:
Distinguish’d thus, the sight she cheated too.
Descending from Lycaeus, Pan admires
The matchless nymph, and burns with new desires.
A crown of pine upon his head he wore;
And thus began her pity to implore.
Whose heav’nly form her fellows did surpass.
The pride and joy of fair Arcadia’s plains,
Belov’d by deities, ador’d by swains:
Syrinx her name, by Sylvans oft pursu’d,
As oft she did the lustful Gods delude:
The rural, and the woodland Pow’rs disdain’d;
With Cynthia hunted, and her rites maintain’d:
Like Phoebe clad, even Phoebe’s self she seems,
So tall, so streight, such well-proportion’d limbs:
The nicest eye did no distinction know,
But that the goddess bore a golden bow:
Distinguish’d thus, the sight she cheated too.
Descending from Lycaeus, Pan admires
The matchless nymph, and burns with new desires.
A crown of pine upon his head he wore;
And thus began her pity to implore.
Now while the lustful God, with speedy pace,
Just thought to strain her in a strict embrace,
He fill’d his arms with reeds, new rising on the place.
And while he sighs, his ill success to find,
The tender canes were shaken by the wind;
And breath’d a mournful air, unheard before;
That much surprizing Pan, yet pleas’d him more.
Admiring this new musick, Thou, he said,
Who canst not be the partner of my bed,
At least shall be the confort of my mind:
And often, often to my lips be joyn’d.
He form’d the reeds, proportion’d as they are,
Unequal in their length, and wax’d with care,
They still retain the name of his ungrateful fair.
Just thought to strain her in a strict embrace,
He fill’d his arms with reeds, new rising on the place.
And while he sighs, his ill success to find,
The tender canes were shaken by the wind;
And breath’d a mournful air, unheard before;
That much surprizing Pan, yet pleas’d him more.
Admiring this new musick, Thou, he said,
Who canst not be the partner of my bed,
At least shall be the confort of my mind:
And often, often to my lips be joyn’d.
He form’d the reeds, proportion’d as they are,
Unequal in their length, and wax’d with care,
They still retain the name of his ungrateful fair.
Ovid
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