
The Velvet Revolution of Claude Debussy - tintinnabula
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-velvet-revolution-of-claude-debussy
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Rooster61
I know it's usually frowned upon in such froo-froo articles to examine an
artist's most popular works in the current day, but I really do wish the
author had examined what Debussy is most known for nowadays, Clair de Lune.

It's painfully beautiful, and the piece that made me fall in love with his
work as a whole.

Still, I enjoyed the article. I feel they portrayed him in the correct light.
The only thing I think they may have left out, and the main reason I think
Debussy's music is so good, is just the amount of room for expression of the
individual pianist there is in his music. The space between his notes and
chords can be wielded with cold rigidity, or suggested with a warm, soft
touch, something I think is lost in more classically structured piano music.

~~~
jinfiesto
Speaking as someone who studied music academically for a while, I imagine they
left it out because it's pretty unremarkable despite it's popularity. Debussy
was actually reticent to publish Suite Bergamasque (which contains Clair de
Lune) as it was from is "immature period" (his words not mine.) The suite was
published 15 years after its initial composition.

In terms of its importance to the literature as a whole, despite being
beautiful music (I'm really not trying to discount that the music is
beautiful) Suite Bergamasque still represents an extension of the Romantic
style. It's not nearly as groundbreaking as the Preludes/Images/Estampes which
are a serious departure from all of the music that came before. Art was never
the same after Picasso tore down the establishment. Ditto music and Debussy.

~~~
pohl
This piece is to Debussy what Liebestraume No. 3 is to Franz Liszt: it's
simultaneously the cloying, overplayed hit that distracts from the rest of the
oeuvre, while also being the masterpiece that serious music people love to
pooh-pooh.

I agree with the "painfully beautiful" characterization. I must avert my ears.
I'd rather listen to any other Debussy piece – I never tire of Doctor Gradus
ad Parnassum for some reason – but only because I can't bear its perfection.

~~~
jinfiesto
I'd never claim it's not a masterpiece. Both it and the 3rd Liebestraume are
in my repertoire. But since it's more in line with the Romantic idiom, Clair
De Lune and Suite Bergamasque in general gets compared against the
masterpieces of Chopin/Liszt/Brahms/Schumann, and against that bar I'm not
sure it necessarily measures up. Debussy was obviously a/the pioneer of
impressionism, and in that idiom, his work is unmatched. I haven't seen a
serious argument that he could out-compose any of the composers that are the
pillars of romanticism in that idiom though, and since Clair de Lune is in
that style, that's what it gets measured against.

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Severian
Isao Tomita's debut analog synthesizer renditions of Debussy, Snowflakes are
Dancing, is one of my all time favorite recordings. Debussy translates very
well into electronic forms.

~~~
uglycoyote
As a child in the 1980's my uncle would bring me out to his garage, put a
welding mask on my head and have me sit on his tractor in the dark, while he
played a tape with Tomita's rendition of Snowflakes are Dancing, and pretended
that we were travelling to a far off planet, which was called Oxena. This has
sparked a life long fascination with Debussy's music.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWlSenLsXCI&list=PLGltXnm_5I...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWlSenLsXCI&list=PLGltXnm_5ITYjEwdJ_lWgQBr0kwWcpYbW)

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andybak
I've read in several places that Debussy owed Satie more than he acknowledged
in assisting him on his path to radicalization. Satie himself always felt
inferior to Ravel and Debussy as he lacked a formal musical education (which
may itself have been a major contributing fact to his uniqueness)

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nwatson
Art of Noise put out an okay album "The Seduction of Claude Debussy" exploring
this revolution a bit ...
[https://youtu.be/8hLLL6gyUvg](https://youtu.be/8hLLL6gyUvg) .

Kind of like Daft Punk's disco homage album, doesn't capture the essence of
the original.

~~~
puzzle
I think it's great. The soprano I could do without, but getting John Hurt to
narrate was just brilliant. It's no coincidence that the best tracks are Il
Pleure and The Holy Egoism of Genius. They're are not as great when Paul
Morley performed on the live "Reconstructed". He's annoying, even if probably
he wrote most of those words.

As for sound, I think the modern inspiration was The Prodigy, whose
Firestarter had made AoN quite a bit of money. :-)

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jancsika
> “There is no theory. You merely have to listen. Pleasure is the law.”

Except Debussy had a musical education that included theory from the best
teachers in France and _clearly_ understood the material. Plus first hand
experience sight reading Wagner's operas and probably anything else he could
get his hands on.

Someone with that level of education and pianism can claim to forget about
theory. Then they will go on write Reflets dans l'eau.

Meanwhile, someone who has never studied music theory _at all_ and learns to
play the electric guitar will go on to write something like Purple Haze.

They both start with a prominent tritone. But Hendrix didn't have enough
schooling to take it in the harmonic direction that Debussy did. And Debussy
had too much education to forgo sophisticated harmonic juxtapositions and
constrain himself to timbre/melody.

Edit: Actually I'm thinking of Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune where the
flute line moves up and down within a tritone. Either way, sophisticated
harmony and form that has obvious connections with much of the music Debussy
analyzed in theory classes.

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becga
Debussy won the Prix de Rome but became restless with the musical theory and
composition training he received.

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coldtea
> _Claude Debussy died a century ago, but his music has not grown old_

Well, for some measures of "not grown old". It's not like the Top-10 has much
Debussy, or that the number of well-off patrons of concert halls that play the
likes of Debussy are the same in number as in Debussy's times...

~~~
Rooster61
Sure, but his music seems to invoke fewer images of stuffy orchestral halls
stuffed with powdered wigs and Victorian sensibilities. At least for me. It's
pretty timeless.

~~~
coldtea
Well, consider Bach then...

~~~
Rooster61
Well, Bach to me DOES represent that setting in time, but does it impeccably
well. Much more rigid in keeping to form and harmony, more indicative of his
era. Not a bad thing. His music is equally brilliant, but much of it screams
"I'm Baroque!"

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goto11
Off topic, but this is hilarious:

> Physical recordings are no longer a fashionable way of listening to music,
> but you will probably get closer to Debussy if you shut down the Internet
> and give yourself wholly to his world.

So now listening to a CD is the real and authentic way to listen to classical
music.

~~~
saturdaysaint
This is how people talk about reading physical media vs e-books these days -
there's a measurable difference in comprehension between reading text with
hyperlinks and reading a physical book - so this doesn't strike me as crazy,
if a bit precious.

~~~
klank
> there's a measurable difference in comprehension between reading text with
> hyperlinks and reading a physical book

Have any links to studies?

