Printemps

Printemps did not receive a public performance until 18 April 1913, when it was conducted at the Salle Gaveau in Paris by Rhené-Baton. Debussy had composed the score in 1887 at the Villa Medici in Rome, where a version for piano four hands with a wordless choral part was given. In February of that year, he had written to the bookseller Émile Baron: “I have in mind to compose a work in a very special colour which should cover a great range of feelings. It is to be called Printemps, not a descriptive Printemps, but a human one. I should like to express the slow and laboured birth of beings and things in nature, their gradual blossoming, and finally the joy of being born into some new life. All this is without a programme, for I despise all music that has to follow some literary text […].” On 7 March 1889 Debussy told Ernest Chausson that he wished to “rework the orchestration of Printemps”, which would suggest the existence of a symphonic version. But he took that idea no further. In 1904 Debussy agreed to revise the piece for the publisher Durand, but found that his style had evolved so much since he composed the piece that it was difficult for him to return to it. He therefore asked Henri Busser to complete the orchestration under his supervision, which Busser did between 1909 and 1912. This two-movement work is sometimes said to have been inspired by Botticelli’s Primavera, a supposition that rests solely on their common title, and on the fact that in 1889 Debussy had cited Botticelli as one of his favourite painters.