Pierre-Laurent Aimard

With his twenty-four preludes (1910-1913), Claude Debussy (1862-1918) contributed to a long tradition that had started with Chopin's homage to Bach's 'Well-Tempered Clavier'. Unlike those by Chopin, Debussy's preludes do not constitute a single, coherent set but instead are a disconnected succession of independent miniatures, each with its own character. It was also novel for Debussy to have given each prelude a title, intended to arouse the imaginations of both performers and listeners. The approximately ninety preludes by Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915) together form a sort of compositional diary which makes it possible to trace his harmonic development. While his early preludes still clearly showed the influence of Chopin, in his later preludes he gradually moved toward the twilight realm between tonality and atonality, culminating in a completely original harmonic idiom based on fourths. The last series of preludes, opus 74 from 1914, is bathed in the mystical atmosphere that so typified Scriabin as an alchemist of sound. Veritable colour studies are hidden within the titles of Olivier Messiaen's (1908-1992) eight preludes. Though early works, they contain the seeds of Messiaen's particular tonal language, which is primarily a language of colours or 'son-couleurs' based on modes of limited transposition.