La Cathédrale engloutie

(Sarcasm is OFF for this post.)

In the comments for my post about Chopin’s Barcarolle, I mentioned Debussy’s Prelude Bk. 1 No. X, “La Cathédrale engloutie”, or “The Sunken Cathedral” in English. This Prelude is not as difficult as others in the two books of Debussy’s Preludes, and will impress your friends when you learn to play it.

But there is a problem with most (all?) printed editions of this Prelude: the music seems to be asking for measures 7 to 12 and 22 to 83 to be played a half speed. This is a serious problem, because it makes those measures sound ponderously slow and out of character with the rest of the piece.

Roy Howat discusses this in the Introduction to the Dover edition of the autograph score, and suggests that there should be a “half note = quarter note” marking at the starts of measures 7 and 22, and a “quarter note = half note” marking at the ends of measures 12 and 83. This is confirmed by Debussy’s own piano roll recording of the piece, which can be found on YouTube.

Here is a very fine modern recording by Elaine Greenfield that has the correct tempo for the measures in question:

Side note: I have actually played this Prelude (and some other Debussy pieces) on the piano used in this recording. The piano is a Blüthner concert grand from 1907, and is located at the Frederick Historical Piano Collection in Ashburnham, Massachusetts. This piano has an almost magical quality about it, due to its use of the so-called “aliquot” strings (fourth strings for the treble notes that are not struck by the hammers); and the Blüthner “patent” action, which, unlike modern piano actions, allows notes to played extremely softly, especially in the bass.