Michaela Allen - Nature, According to Claude Debussy(MM Piano Performance, Graduate Teaching Assistant, Colorado State University) During my undergraduate degree at Leeds Conservatoire, I was learning Debussy’s piano prelude“Ondine”. My piano teachers criticised me for attempting to use rubato. I was confused;
“…but, this sounds like it is meant to be played freely!” It was then that I adopted the most fundamental skill in playing Debussy: play what is written and only what is written. Why was Debussy was so particular about his scores, you may wonder? We hold Debussy’s Clair de Lune closely to our hearts. We have adapted his La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin for all kinds of instrumental ensemble. Our hands glide above the invisible waves created in his symphony La mer. Yet, we seldom question why did Debussy write music that would permeate our ears across time and assert itself in human temporality? Debussy was composing during late 19th-early 20th century France. The formation of the Société National in 1873 created a massive cultural shift that produced a new nationalistic culture, one that operated upon intellectual elitism. In short, French intellectuals held poetry and art above all else. Debussy was inspired by nature. Not just nature in the environmental sense of fields, birds and water. He was also inspired by the nature of things. He was inspired by the thoughts of earlier thinkers, including Jankélévitch, Jean-Phillipe Rameau and Jean-Jacques Rosseau. In particular, Rosseau’s ideology of nature is of importance in Debussy’s ideology. Debussy was not interested in literally depicting the sounds of nature in his music; he actually loathed this, and would slam his contemporaries for this gimmicky approach to composing. For instance, Debussy would have considered the cuckoo bird call in the second movement of Maurice Ravel’s Ma Mere L’Oye to be rather contrived. What was Rosseau’s concept of ‘nature’? Let’s imagine that you are looking at a wall. Your eyes are seeing the wall in front of you. Your brain is marrying visual cues and prior understanding of what a wall is together. Thus, you know you are literally looking at a wall. There is another lens that lives behind your eyes. It is not your ‘seeing’ eyes, or your cognitive comprehension of what a wall is. This lens is different. It is experiencing something that questions the purpose of the wall and asks questions beyond what you simply see. This was, perhaps, a way of analysing the soul’s looking glass. It sees the ‘essence’ of things. Debussy frequently attempted to physically replicate this transcendental essence in his compositional style. This can be heard in his orchestral symphony La Mer. Just like how movie soundtracks are musical accompaniments to the events of the movie, La Mer is a good representation of what Debussy thought the essence of the sea should sound like. The literal function and movement of the sea was not depicted in this symphony. Debussy didn’t throw a bucket of water at the first violinist to recreate a splashing wave. Nor did he lace the stage with seaweed and crabs. Let’s consider the third movement of La Mer, in which the very omnipotence of the ever-changing sea is exemplified: in this, the essence of Debussy’s sea is passionate, panicked and eventually exudes heroism; it growls and cries as it crashes against the cliffs. A phenomenal interpretation of this was conducted by Claudio Abbado in 2003: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2yaBxn3wwDQ) Debussy spent his life attempting to actualise the essence of nature that humankind cannot grasp. He came close; however, trying to physicalise an apparitional matter mirrors Zeus’ torture of Sisyphus. Sisyphus could never quite get the boulder to the top of the hill. Debussy was not fond of subtext: to honour his philosophies is to play exactly what he indicated in the score, not assume that any further implication lies in the score. Bibliography: Claude, Debussy. La Mer: 03 - Dialogue du vent et de la mer With Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Conducted by Claudio Abbado (2003) Available online: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2yaBxn3wwDQ) Deneys-Tunney, Anne, and Zarka, Yves Charles, eds.. Rousseau Between Nature and Culture : Philosophy, Literature, and Politics. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, Inc, 2016. Accessed November 3, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central. Ellis, Katharine. “The Rise of the Specialist Press from 1827.” Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: La Revue Et Gazette Musicale De Paris 1834–80, 33–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511470264.003. Jankélévitch, V. La musique et l’ineffable Paris: Editions du Seuil. 1983. Martin, Nathan. "Rameau and Rousseau: Harmony and History in the Age of Reason." Order No. NR66663, McGill University (Canada), 2009.https://search.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/rameau-rousseau-harmony-history-age-reason/docview/762835722/se-2?accountid=10223. Rolf, Marie. DEBUSSY'S "LA MER": A CRITICAL ANALYSIS IN THE LIGHT OF EARLY SKETCHES AND EDITIONS. Order No. 7708315, University of Rochester. 1976. https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy2.library.colostate.edu/dissertations-theses/debussys-la-mer-critical-analysis-light-early/docview/302814614/se-2?accountid=10223. Strasser, Michael. "The Société Nationale and Its Adversaries: The Musical Politics of L'Invasion Germanique in the 1870s." 19th-Century Music 24, no. 3 (2001): 225-51. Accessed December 11, 2020. doi:10.1525/ncm.2001.24.3.225. Suschitzky, Anya. "Debussy's Rameau: French Music and Its Others." The Musical Quarterly 86, no. 3 (2002): 398-448. 2002. Accessed December 3, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3600896.
1 Comment
Dr. Shupe
1/21/2021 08:53:44 am
Michaela, this is so interesting. You've done a great job writing in a way that can engage the public, not just music specialists. I wonder if this is the topic you'd like to pursue for your final project in 518?
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
|