Georges Migot: Pour un Hommage à Claude Debussy, for Guitar

Description

Edited and fingered by Valerio Celentano. The edition includes an introduction and detailed editorial commentary in Italian and English.

The Composer

Born in Paris on February 27, 1891, Georges Elbert Migot is undoubtedly one of the most intriguing, complex, and original figures in twentieth-century cultural life. His extensive output as a composer, painter, engraver, poet, and author of musical, philosophical, and aesthetic treatises spans nearly seventy years of the last century, during which he also held numerous prominent positions within French cultural institutions.

In 1909, he was admitted to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where then-director Gabriel Fauré granted him permission to audit all instrumental lessons. In 1913, he joined the classes of Charles-Marie Widor (composition), André Gédalge (counterpoint and fugue), Maurice Emmanuel (music history), Vincent d’Indy (conducting), and Eugène Gigout (organ).

However, his promising and intense studies were interrupted by his conscription on the eve of the Great War. In 1914, he sustained such severe injuries that he spent a full year in total paralysis, followed by a slow and painful recovery of mobility. Despite these hardships, he continued to work prolifically in all his areas of interest.

He entrusted his preparation to the renowned pianist and pedagogue Nadia Boulanger in a twofold attempt to win the Prix de Rome. Prestigious accolades soon followed: in 1918, he won the Prix Lili Boulanger; in 1919, the Prix Lépaulle for his trio for violin, viola, and piano; in 1920, the Prix Halpen for his quintet Les Agrestides; and in 1921, the Prix de la Fondation Blumenthal pour la pensée et l’art française. In 1922, he also joined the committee of the Société de Musique and became a member of the patronage committee of the Académie Internationale des Beaux-Arts.

According to the musicologist Odile Charles, two main aesthetic principles pervade Migot’s work in various forms: aesthetic nationalism and a profound connection to the past. These traits emerge and intensify through his continual references to early French lute composers, as well as to the troubadours and trouvères, Gregorian chant, folk music, and ancient monodic forms —particularly plainsong. Far from being confined to external or purely structural considerations, Migot strove to extract from these distant forms a spirit, sensitivity, grace, and sense of freedom that, in his view, reflect the boundless scope of human sensibility.

Through his artistic vision and eclecticism, his deep appreciation of nature and humanity, and his extraordinary erudition, Migot occupies a wholly unique position in his time —akin to a true Renaissance humanist, yet infused with a characteristically medieval mystical spirituality. Despite a strong and openly acknowledged affinity with Fauré and Debussy, he cannot be readily identified with any single school or any specific current of twentieth-century music; thus, as early as 1925, the American musicologist Irwing Schwerke referred to him as “The French Group of One.”

Historical Notes on the Work

In what is typically regarded as the first period of his career (1906 –1928)— encompassing his musical training and initial recognitions— Migot’s individuality and stylistic originality are already evident. Religious subjects, particularly in his early organ compositions, alternate with a taste for the precious and the rare. Many of his titles evoke nature and distant worlds, especially the Far East, in a clear continuation of the paths opened by Fauré and Debussy. It was at the end of this extended phase that Migot turned his attention to the guitar. His Pour un Hommage à Claude Debussy (May 1924) coincided with the Paris debut of the guitarist Andrés Segovia, to whom the work is dedicated; as noted on the manuscript, Segovia performed it only once (Qui en fut une seule fois l’interprète).

Migot was undoubtedly the first French composer to write a piece for Segovia, anticipating the subsequent contributions of Roussel, Petit, Samazeuilh, and Ibert. By honoring Debussy’s memory, he was also the first to replicate an homage earlier undertaken by Falla in 1920; nevertheless, Migot’s approach stands in marked contrast to that of the Spanish composer. He neither quotes Debussy directly nor echoes the “Iberianism” admired abroad, nor does he offer a mournful farewell. Instead, he favors modal-sounding lines supported by resonant, richly arpeggiated chords, writing that alternates between dense and sparse textures, and explores a remarkably wide range of the guitar’s tonal palette. Rather than develop motivic material, he employs repetition —either verbatim or transposed to different registers. The sense of temporal suspension created by frequent rests, fermatas, and legato passages lends the Hommage a rarefied air, which fades gradually into an ethereal Postlude. Although the lute was Migot’s ideal sonic model, in this work one distinctly perceives— no coincidence, given its dedication to Debussy—the resonance and broader palette of the harp, manifested through open fifths, rapid arpeggiated glissandos, and descending whole-tone tetrachords harmonized with triads. Indeed, the three movements that comprise the piece reappear in 1949 in his extensive Sonate Luthée for harp (published in 1953), augmented by two additional movements. Yet the speed with which Migot prepared the guitar version in 1924 has led some musicologists to suspect that these ideas had already been germinating, awaiting a suitable occasion to be realized. This is plausible, particularly in light of his known admiration for the Corsican guitarist Jacques Tessarech.

In the aforementioned article by Schwerke, we find both confirmation of a première given by the then-ascendant “Señor Segovia” and mention that “a version for harp has also been published”—a version presumably lost. The guitar piece, however, was not published until 1980, in an Editions Transatlantique volume edited by the guitarist Rafael Andia. That edition only partially resolved—or in some cases omitted —certain non-idiomatic or difficult passages (such as Migot’s highly original ascending glissandos) found in a manuscript fraught with deletions, annotations, and solutions evidently not reviewed, at the time, by a guitarist. Consequently, the present version seeks to illuminate anew and render more fluid a composition that —nearly a century after its creation —was too quickly neglected and frequently set aside, owing to the interpretive challenges it presents.