Myths from around the world, expecially from the roman and greek literature, were one of the inspiration for many artists in the french culture from the late nineteenth century. The program shows two ideas of how the myth is conceived by it. The dreamlike image of the Prélude is soaked in the desires and the dreams of the faun in the heat of the afternoon, to which he succumbs to an intoxicating sleep, realizing his dream of possession. Debussy had intended to compose a second and third movement, an Interlude and Paraphrase finale, respectively, but he decided to concentrate all of his musical ideas into one movement, an evocation of the feelings of the poem as a whole.
In Chant de Linos, also in one big movement, the myth get back to its ancient, magic and incantational character in all its terrible brutality made of laments, ancestral cries and dances reminiscent of Stravinsky’s Fireberd, abandoning the immaterial vision of the dream.