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Claude Debussy - Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maisons (1915)

Elly Ameling, chant
Dalton Baldwin, piano
recorded in 1977

Texte de Claude Debussy

Nous n’avons plus de maisons !
Les ennemis ont tout pris, tout pris, tout pris,
Jusqu’à notre petit lit!
Ils ont brûlé l’école et notre maître aussi,
Ils ont brûlé l’église et monsieur Jésus-Christ,
Et le vieux pauvre qui n’a pas pu s’en aller!
Nous n’avons plus de maisons!
Les ennemis ont tout pris, tout pris, tout pris,
Jusqu’à notre petit lit!

Bien sûr! Papa est à la guerre,
Pauvre maman est morte!
Avant d’avoir vu tout ça.
Qu’est-ce que l’on va faire ?
Noël, petit Noël, n’allez pas chez eux, n’allez plus jamais chez eux, punissez-les !
Vengez les enfants de France !
Les petits Belges, les petits Serbes, et les petits Polonais aussi !
Si nous en oublions, pardonnez-nous.
Noël ! Noël ! surtout, pas de joujoux,
Tâchez de nous redonner le pain quotidien.

Nous n’avons plus de maisons!
Les ennemis ont tout pris, tout pris, tout pris.

Jusqu’à notre petit lit!
Ils ont brûlé l’école et notre maître aussi,
Ils ont brûlé l’église et monsieur Jésus-Christ,
Et le vieux pauvre qui n’a pas pu s’en aller !

Noël ! Écoutez-nous, nous n’avons plus de petits sabots !
Mais donnez la victoire aux enfants de France.

Claude Debussy wrote Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maisons, for voice and piano, L 139 in 1915, on the eve of an operation in December. The composer also wrote the text, which asks that the German people not have an enjoyable holiday season. It is an angry poem, reflecting the French resentment of the attack upon their country. Debussy had repeatedly been obliged to relocate his family in order to avoid the fighting while succumbing to cancer. The costs of medical treatment and moving his wife and daughter out of harm's way were augmenting his already impossible debts. During this harsh period he found it almost impossible to compose. L 139 is an outburst of understandable frustration. It was also his last song.

Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maisons is an odd blend of art music and popular song; the accompaniment is lush and beyond the technical demands normally made on a dance hall musician.

Melodically, it has many of the simpler aspects of popular song vocal writing. The setting is frequently anthem-like, rousing in the manner of a protest song, rhythmically enforcing key points in the vocal line that could easily be sung by an enraged mob. Protest songs from the popular/folk tradition are repetitive in order to stir a group's blood further with each heated repetition. This song is more of an assemblage of different ways to do this. Melodic fragments sound assembled under a consistent accompaniment, avoiding literal repeats and thus distancing the song from any crowd-chanting utility. As a collection of segments, Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maison resembles some of Stravinsky's works from about the same period. His pre-war ballets frequently featured deceptively simple sections working together with a faux-disjunctive, archaic quality. Stravinsky was working with an ironically historical relationship to tonality. Debussy was not being ironic; he was full of French chauvinism and falling prey to the nationalistic rage that sometimes grips the instincts of people caught up in war. The genuine venom of the song's text is almost bizarre in its fervor, willing the children of Germany to become homeless in the dead of winter. As unpleasant as this may be, the text's setting is unique enough to merit repeated listening.