The Albéniz-Debussy connection

Albéniz and Debussy were exact contemporaries, and they intensely influenced each other. Debussy, who had few good things to say about other composers (and many nasty things to say about most of them), greatly admired Albéniz and was influenced by him, and some of Albéniz’s music sounds like Spanish-ized Debussy.

Debussy composed his first volume of Preludes shortly after the premiere of the third volume of Iberia. Although he was ruthlessly critical of other composers, he was full of admiration for Albéniz. Except for the natural fascination of French composers with Spanish culture and music, his admiration for Albéniz may seem somewhat surprising at first, but when one examines the two in relation to each other, many threads of mutual influence emerge. For example, parts of Almeria from the second volume of Iberia sounds almost like “Spanish-ized” Debussy, and the Debussy’s influence on El Puerto, from the first volume is hard to ignore when hearing the abundance of the whole-tone scale. But in the case of El Albaicin, it is Albéniz who provided the impetus for Debussy’s prelude, written a year later. The difference between this parallel and the aforementioned movements from Iberia is that whereas Albéniz was influenced by the characteristics and spirit of Debussy’s music, Debussy, in a way, “took apart” the material out of which El Albaicin is built and reconstructed it. Although the shape of the work is different, the building blocks (even the most basic ones, such as time signature and key) are the same.

The interaction between the two composers is the topic of my blog. (The picture, BTW, is of the neighborhood of Albaicin, in Granada.) I discuss the connection between Albéniz and the music written in Paris at the turn of the century.

Here is a performance of El Albaicin, from Book 3 of Iberia: