Description
In January 1913, Debussy struggled to complete Toomai des éléphants as the 11th prelude in Book 2, finally replacing it by a rather Stravinskian study Les Tierces alternées. However, his daughter Chouchou was fascinated by elephants and in the summer of 1913, Debussy wrote her a ‘Toybox Ballet’ (La Boîte à joujoux) which contains a ‘Pas de l’éléphant’ and an ‘old Hindu chant which is still used to train elephants [in India]. It is constructed on the scale of “5 o’clock in the morning”, which means it must be in 5/4 time.’ My reconstruction of this lost prelude is based around this material and it evokes a day in the life of Toomai, the young mahout, and his faithful elephant Kala Nag from one dawn to the next, incorporating the legendary ‘Elephants’ Dance’ from Rudyard Kipling’s First Jungle Book (1894) which only Toomai was ever privileged to witness. The version presented here is the revised second version of this prelude which contains an effect of piano harmonics as the dawn returns towards the end.