Claude Debussy - Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien - Fragments Symphoniques (with score)

Fragments symphoniques - selections from 'Le martyre de saint Sébastien' for orchestra
Written by Claude Debussy in 1911.

Thanks to Thomas Van Dun for preparing this score video:    / @thomasvandun  

Performed by Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen

The piece contains four movements:

00:00​ - I. La Cour de Lys (The Court of Lilies)
03:52​ - II. Danse extatique et Final du 1er Acte (Ecstatic Dance and Finale of the 1st Act)
10:15​ - III. La Passion (The Passion)
16:06​ - IV. Le Bon Pasteur (The Good Shepherd)

"Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien is a masterpiece that has not yet been understood. Debussy wrote his Parsifal that day." Thus opined Emile Vuillermoz in 1920 of Debussy's score for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra, composed in 1911 as incidental music for the miracle play of the same title by Gabrielle d'Annunzio. Edward Lockspeiser describes it as "incidental music of a special kind, rather like the music in the medieval mystery and nativity plays that were enacted in churches ... it brings into relief the lament of the twin brothers, Marc and Marcellien, before the miracle, the weeping of the women of Byblos at the death of their Adonis, and Sébastien's ecstatic dance on the burning coals. There is a prelude to each of the five acts and numerous orchestral and choral interludes."

The work was commissioned by the dancer and choreographer Ida Rubinstein, who took the title role at the first performance on May 22, 1911, at the Paris Théâtre du Châtelet. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Le Martyre was heavily censured. Even the Bishop of Paris publicly denounced the portrayal of religious subject matter on stage, though many secular critics found Debussy's attempts at writing quasi-sacred music, possibly in the mold of Wagner's "sacred" music drama Parsifal, as distasteful as it had been ill-advised. Debussy himself quickly rallied to his own defense, and wrote: "Is it not obvious that a man who sees mystery in everything will inevitably be attracted to a religious subject? Even if I am not a practicing Catholic and not a believer, it did not cost me much effort to rise to the mystical heights which the poet's drama attains."