
Debussy: the musical genius who erupted out of nowhere - tintinnabula
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/02/debussy-the-musical-genius-who-erupted-out-of-nowhere/
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stochastic_monk
The impressionist movement didn’t appear out of nowhere. Romantic composers
had been exploring sonority and dissonance for decades by the time Debussy
came onto the scene. Liszt’s Années de Pélerinage and Nuages Gris had been
pushing in this direction for a long time.

Yes, Debussy was a genius, but he didn’t invent it whole cloth.

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jancsika
If you listen to "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune" and _do not_ hear Wagner,
you are either not listening or don't know Wagner's music.

Also, there's a lots of experimentation in Chopin that surely influenced
Debussy. In the Polonaise-Fantasy in A-flat there's a prominent octatonic
passage in the melody, plus loads of sequences through his output that make
use of octatonic patterns (like the twice-repeated octatonic ascending
arpeggios right before the code of the F-minor Ballade). There's the black key
etude that made a game out of playing a pentatonic melody using only the black
keys (at least at the beginning of the piece).

There is also Chopin's prominent use of the arpeggiation technique where you
move up the keyboard by bouncing your pinky then thumb on the same note (or
bouncing your thumb then pinky when going down).

Plus all kinds of little games like taking a slow moving bassline from one
section and speeding it up 4x in the melody over a seemingly improvised chord
progression to transition back to the theme.

Just with those examples you've got all the ingredients necessary for
something like "...Brouillards" from Book II of Debussy's Preludes.

I don't think the significant achievement of Debussy is some mythical genius
who came out of nowhere. Rather, I think it's someone who was heavily
influenced by other composers like Chopin-- so much so that you can _feel_ the
influences as you play his music. Yet the sound of the music is mysterious
because he's combining those influences in novel ways that don't follow the
harmonic or even formal paths of those influences at all.

So "black keys only" becomes "black keys in the right hand and white keys in
the left." Harmonies built from octatonic scales don't function to lead to a
new key but instead just sit where they there. And Chopin's bouncy arpeggios
just drop off and lead to yet another mysterious section of music.

Those are all big chances to take because you can immediately hear the
influences, but if you don't continue to investigate the music everything just
sounds weird and "wrong." I imagine that explains the kind criticism Debussy
was getting from his teachers-- not necessarily, "I don't understand at all
what you're doing," but, "I hear what you're doing but I don't think it leads
to anything other than novelty."

I think that's an understandable criticism for the time. Imagine hearing for
the first time a piece where one type of music interrupts the previous music,
then it just goes away. Is that just a parlor trick to laugh at, or is it a
burgeoning new way of thinking about musical form? We know the answer because
we can read music history books, but that's cheating. :)

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curlcntr
Yes, Wagner was a big influence on Debussy (covered well in "Afternoon of a
Faun" by Snyder). Some say was an obsession. For example, to find what to do
after Tristan. Prelude.

Debussy wrote in 1910 - I am neither revolutionizing nor demolishing anything.
I am quietly forging my own way ahead without any trace of propaganda for my
ideas - as is proper for a revolutionary. I am no longer an adversary of
Wagner. Wagner is a genius but geniuses can make mistakes. Wagner pronounced
himself in favor of the laws of harmony. I am for freedom. But freedom must
essentially be free".

I play a lot of Debussy. His art is wonderful.

Note that March 25 will be 100 years since he died.

~~~
stochastic_monk
It's fitting to me that Debussy would take as a starting point the
sonorous/pianistic elements of Liszt and his harmonic/orchestration style from
Wagner, who in turn built on/derived from Liszt. A beautiful feed-forward
loop.

And I'd have to say that Tristan und Isolde went pretty far toward abandoning
traditional laws of harmony, waiting three hours to come to any actual
resolution.

(Comics at the time portrayed Wagner as a vampire on Liszt, stealing his ideas
and money and running with them. I honestly can't blame them.)

Thank you for pointing out the date.

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JasonFruit
I take some issue with calling _La plus que lente_ a vulgar parody. A parody,
yes, but an affectionate, if self-indulgent parody; he said it was written for
the taste of "ladies who take tea," and he lavished too much attention on it
for it to be vulgar.

~~~
stochastic_monk
People today have largely lost the understanding that parody and pastiche are
different but related formats.

Both are referential, but pastiches are affectionate and often deferential,
while parodies poke fun in a biting, sarcastic way.

~~~
JasonFruit
That's not really true, especially in music. For example, think of the term
_parody mass_ ; it's not poking fun at all. It just employs previously-
existing material as a part of a new composition.

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stochastic_monk
Really? I've seen the terms "pastiche" and "parody" carefully delineated in
scholarly works, though these have been commenting primarily in the classical
eras and later, long after the parody masses. Charles Rosen (whose The
Romantic Generation is now a classic, if controversial text) in particular has
pointed out quite a few works he sees as pastiches as opposed to parodies.

~~~
JasonFruit
Maybe I'm especially affected by earlier uses of the term, since I was most
focused on parody in the sense of parody masses and musical borrowing in the
Baroque. At any rate, I don't think the distinction is as simple as Rosen's
usage might suggest (though I really enjoy Charles Rosen).

~~~
stochastic_monk
I once saw him perform a recital, including some Liszt. After the recital, I
told him I thoroughly enjoyed The Romantic Generation.

His response? "That one has the best jokes."

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iainmerrick
If you want to know more about Debussy the person (unlike the author of this
article!), Roger Nichols' "Debussy Remembered" is very good.

~~~
davidkuhta
The summary of his personal life in Wikipedia was also interesting.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy#Personal_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy#Personal_life)

Thanks OP, Bioshock's use of La Mer introduced me to Debussy and that was a
great read.

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setgree
1) "But as I’ve grumbled before, what is regrettable is that it’s still
apparently impossible to include music examples in books of this sort. Why is
the following sentence (about a piano ‘Image’) any more accessible than a
simple music example? ... Serious, careful and readable writers like Walsh are
not helped by this publishing restriction."

The images are public domain and available freely on the internet:
[http://imslp.org/wiki/Images,_1ere_s%C3%A9rie_(Debussy,_Clau...](http://imslp.org/wiki/Images,_1ere_s%C3%A9rie_\(Debussy,_Claude\))

So...not sure this is a publishing restriction so much as an author choice --
though I'd imagine that a lot of people who read a Debussy biography can read
a piano score, and I agree, it would be nice to include excerpts.

2) His string quartet is magical
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNxVfv_1LIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNxVfv_1LIA)

3) wow is the Spectator a pretty bad mobile reading experience

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Mediterraneo10
> So...not sure this is a publishing restriction so much as an author choice

It’s not an author choice, it’s a publisher choice. More than one author of a
book on classical music has complained in recent years of being unable to
include examples from the score in a general-audience work because the
publisher thought it would scare potential readers away. You and me might
think that a reader incapable of reading music might simply ignore such score
examples and continue reading, but publishers fear that the mere presence of a
score example would make the book seem to highfalutin’ for most audiences.

~~~
setgree
Interesting -- source for this claim? Not finding anything to this effect in a
quick google...

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jacquesm
This is a nice piece:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N5fvYejvXk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N5fvYejvXk)

(hard to find a good rendering, this is the best I could find quickly)

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familyguy99
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKO-
ebWS4Ko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKO-ebWS4Ko)

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noir-york
Absolutely fascinating! Thank you for posting.

