Debussy's "The Engulfed Cathedral"

FeaturesMusic Appreciation
Written By Edward Wolfe

French composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) often is identified as the premier creator of impressionist music. The piano music you will hear for this article is one of his twelve pieces in Preludes Book I. He also wrote a second book of twelve preludes. Each of the twenty-four preludes has a title, like “Footsteps in the Snow,” “The Interrupted Serenade,” or “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair.”

“The Engulfed Cathedral” alludes to a legend that a cathedral submerged in the water off the coast of the legendary Ys on certain mornings rises up from the sea, only to sink back down again under the waves. If you listen carefully to this piece (5 minutes), played by the great French pianist Alfred Cortot, you can hear church bells, the chanting of monks, the church organ, and even the cascading of water off of the spires.

I also found a recording of Debussy himself playing the piece.

Edward Wolfe

Edward Wolfe has been a fan of Christian apologetics since his teenage years, when he began seriously to question the truth of the Bible and the reality of Jesus. About twenty years ago, he started noticing that Christian evidences roughly fell into five categories, the five featured on this website.
Although much of his professional life has been in Christian circles (12 years on the faculties of Pacific Christian College, now a part of Hope International University, and Manhattan Christian College and also 12 years at First Christian Church of Tempe), much of his professional life has been in public institutions (4 years at the University of Colorado and 19 years at Tempe Preparatory Academy).
His formal academic preparation has been in the field of music. His bachelor degree was in Church Music with a minor in Bible where he studied with Roger Koerner, Sue Magnusson, Russel Squire, and John Rowe; his master’s was in Choral Conducting where he studied with Howard Swan, Gordon Paine, and Roger Ardrey; and his doctorate was in Piano Performance, Pedagogy, and Literature, where he also studied group dynamics, humanistic psychology, and Gestalt theory with Guy Duckworth.
He and his wife Louise have four grown children and six grandchildren.

https://WolfeMusicEd.com
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