Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune) is an orchestral work composed by Claude Debussy in 1894. It was inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem L’Après-midi d’un faune, which evokes the dreamy, sensual thoughts of a faun on a languid afternoon. It’s called a prélude because Debussy meant it as a musical introduction to the poem’s atmosphere, not a literal retelling.
A Faun’s Afternoon (Snippet)
Stéphane Mallarmé and Richard Howard
Gay with the conquest of such faithless fears my crime is to have sorted into sense or into senses the disheveled clump of kisses that the gods had kept so close: no sooner had I stifled my delight in the rapturous recesses of one nymph (and only held the other by her wrist) to keep her warm while her sister burned away – the little, naive one who never even blushed) than from my arms, released as if by death, this prey, ungrateful to the last, breaks free with not a moment’s pity far the spasm that had besotted me still.
Source: The Yale Review
(This is a famously long sentence, and part of what makes the poem feel so fluid and dreamlike.)
Needless to say, the piece is hugely popular now. But when it premiered, audiences weren’t quite sure what to make of it. One common critique was that the music seemed to have “no melody” —
The faun must have had a terrible afternoon, for the poor beast brayed on muted horns and whinnied on flutes, and avoided all trace of soothing melody, until the audience began to share his sorrows.
(Louis Elson, Boston Dailly Advertiser Feb. 25 1904)
A vacuum has been described as nothing shut up in a box, and this prelude may aptly be described as nothing expressed in musical terms. The subject certainly affords opportunity for the exercise of the composer’s imagination, but he appears to have come to the conclusion that the fortunate faun was not thing of anything at all… The piece begin with a fragment of the chromatic scale played by the flute, manifestly selected with care to express nothing… [describing how each instruments plays a part…] I was glad when the end came.
(Referee, London, Aug 21 1904)
Back then, it must have puzzled — even bored — listeners who were used to music with strong melodies and clear structure. The 13 year old me felt the same. When I hear it now, I’m still struck by how meandering it is, as if the faun is content to let the afternoon drift without purpose.
Though these days, I can sometimes appreciate that kind of aimless beauty — the art of lingering in a good moment simply because it asks nothing of you.