5 ms·

Debussy: the musical genius who erupted out of nowhere

78 points by tintinnabula 9y ago

noir-york 9y ago
Absolutely fascinating! Thank you for posting.
stochastic_monk 9y ago
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.
- Hoasi 9y ago
  The article stresses how little his work seems to carry on other composers influences, which is true. There were many composers going in this direction at the time—Erik Satie perhaps closer to Debussy than anyone else. But let's agree that his work brings a whole new level of inventiveness and originality.
  - stochastic_monk 9y ago
    If you look at his piano works, they are heavily influenced by Liszt. See Ce Qu’a Vu Le Vent d’Ouest, which clearly states his influence and admiration. Other works pay close attention to Chopin’s pianism. (Most obviously, his études.) This person clearly has not done his music history homework. It’s not that I’m questioning Debussy’s seminal importance. I just don’t want someone falsely claiming he came out of nowhere.
- jancsika 9y ago
  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. :)
  - curlcntr 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      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.
  - brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
    Agree with you completely. He was also grabbing from Paris fashion with respect to the imported "cakewalk"- so there were serious echoes in his music of ragtime from that point on. (I wonder if he heard Tom Wiggins at any point too) And of course he wrote for saxophone (French invention, but later jazz instrument). If the author was looking for influences only in classical music, I can see how he seemed to come out of nowhere, but he incorporates a lot of French song tradition too. Where does Scriabin sit in here- I forgot. There is Debussy-Scriabin shared aroma, if you know what I mean. It's interesting to think about this. I always think about who he influenced, especially Django, but also Stravinsky. It's interesting to think about who he was digging. I'm glad to be reminded of his violin and cello sonatas today. I'm off to put them on. Thanks for posting.
jacquesm 9y ago
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)
JasonFruit 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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.
    - stochastic_monk 9y ago
      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 9y ago
        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).
        9y ago
setgree 9y ago
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,_Claude) http://imslp.org/wiki/Images,_1ere_s%C3%A9rie_(Debussy,_Clau... 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
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  > 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 9y ago
    Interesting -- source for this claim? Not finding anything to this effect in a quick google...
iainmerrick 9y ago
If you want to know more about Debussy the person (unlike the author of this article!), Roger Nichols' "Debussy Remembered" is very good.
- davidkuhta 9y ago
  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.
familyguy99 9y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKO-ebWS4Ko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKO-ebWS4Ko

78 points by tintinnabula 9y ago

Absolutely fascinating! Thank you for posting.

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.

Hoasi 9y ago
The article stresses how little his work seems to carry on other composers influences, which is true. There were many composers going in this direction at the time—Erik Satie perhaps closer to Debussy than anyone else. But let's agree that his work brings a whole new level of inventiveness and originality.
- stochastic_monk 9y ago
  If you look at his piano works, they are heavily influenced by Liszt. See Ce Qu’a Vu Le Vent d’Ouest, which clearly states his influence and admiration. Other works pay close attention to Chopin’s pianism. (Most obviously, his études.) This person clearly has not done his music history homework. It’s not that I’m questioning Debussy’s seminal importance. I just don’t want someone falsely claiming he came out of nowhere.
jancsika 9y ago
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. :)
- curlcntr 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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.
- brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
  Agree with you completely. He was also grabbing from Paris fashion with respect to the imported "cakewalk"- so there were serious echoes in his music of ragtime from that point on. (I wonder if he heard Tom Wiggins at any point too) And of course he wrote for saxophone (French invention, but later jazz instrument). If the author was looking for influences only in classical music, I can see how he seemed to come out of nowhere, but he incorporates a lot of French song tradition too. Where does Scriabin sit in here- I forgot. There is Debussy-Scriabin shared aroma, if you know what I mean. It's interesting to think about this. I always think about who he influenced, especially Django, but also Stravinsky. It's interesting to think about who he was digging. I'm glad to be reminded of his violin and cello sonatas today. I'm off to put them on. Thanks for posting.

jacquesm 9y ago

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)

JasonFruit 9y ago

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 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
  - stochastic_monk 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      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).
      - 9y ago

setgree 9y ago

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,_Claude) http://imslp.org/wiki/Images,_1ere_s%C3%A9rie_(Debussy,_Clau... 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

Mediterraneo10 9y ago
> 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 9y ago
  Interesting -- source for this claim? Not finding anything to this effect in a quick google...

iainmerrick 9y ago

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

davidkuhta 9y ago
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.

familyguy99 9y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKO-ebWS4Ko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKO-ebWS4Ko