THE CONNECTION BETWEEN PERFORMING INTERPRETATION AND ORTHOEPY IN CLAUDE DEBUSSY’S VOCAL MUSIC (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE ROMANCE “MOONLIGHT”)

Abstract

The article examines K. Debussy’s vocal miniature “Moonlight” (“Clair de lune”) from the point of view of the connection between performing interpretation and orthoepy. This romance based on a poem by Paul Verlaine is one of Debussy’s iconic works, inspired by images of the moon and moonlight, which have always been associated with symbolic meaning and served as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the composer. Debussy gave them a unique sound, reflecting their multifacetedness and mystery in music. Interpretation of vocal works with poetic text in French requires achieving a balance between understanding the poetic text, reproduction of the author’s idea and individual creative manner of the performer. This process requires a deep understanding of both poetic and musical text. It is necessary to carefully analyze the structure of the text, to understand all its semantic nuances, emotional content. It is important to find appropriate musical means to convey the poetic beauty and emotional essence of the text: tempo, dynamics, phrasing, articulation and semantic accents, which will help reproduce the essence of the poetic text by means of musical expressiveness. A comparative analysis of performing interpretations of K. Debussy’s romance revealed different results of the realization of the composer’s idea. French singer Natalie Dessay and Korean Anna Zon impress with their high professionalism, ability to convey the meaning and emotional depth of the romance. Undoubtedly, the nationality of the female singers – students of different vocal schools – is reflected in the manner of performance. A deep and comprehensive understanding of K. Debussy’s style is demonstrated by Natalie Dessays, and one of the decisive positions in this is occupied by the natural sound of her French, which flawlessly conveys the “music of the word” of P. Verlaine and the lightness and transparency of the sound characteristic of Debussy. Anna Zon, for whom French is a foreign language, subconsciously controls the process of pronouncing the text, the details of vocal orthography. Striving to “sing” everything, she diligently vocalizes each note, and the sound turns out to be more “thorough”, sometimes weighty.