[+] Lewin, David. "A Transformational Basis for Form and Prolongation in Debussy's 'Feux d'artifice.'" In Musical Form and Transformations: Four Analytic Essays, 97-159. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
A detailed analysis of Debussy's "Feux d'artifice," the last of his twenty-four Préludes for piano, reveals a network of musical ideas and transformational relations that shape the overall form and character of the piece. A melodic fragment of the French national anthem "La Marseillaise" appears during the coda. The most obvious role of this quotation on the surface level is to evoke a spirit of French nationalism, which seems especially appropriate considering the immediate prewar period when Debussy composed this music. Yet on a deeper level of structure, the quotation of "La Marseillaise" achieves greater significance in that its headnote represents the culmination of a large-scale ascending chromatic progression initiated at the second reprise (from m. 82).
Index Classifications: 1900s
Contributed by: Mark S. Spicer
