Week 2 Goal – Enter the World of Your Piece !

• What mood or atmosphere is Debussy asking you to create?

In the piece Danse, the atmosphere is light, dancing and joyful. The hemiola feelings are very interesting and the mix between colorful harmonies, nice melody and strong rhythm are esquisite.

• What colors and textures do you hear in the music?

The harmony mixes this sensation of elevation and suspension, due to the augmented fifth chords, but also givrs you a feeling of earthness, since the rhythm is dancing and steady and the energy is vibrant.

• How does the tempo, harmony, or rhythm hint at the piece’s character?

Tempo gives to the piece a vivid sensation of constant movement. It is an unusual tarantella. 

Harmony makes it truly debussynian, due to the augmented chords and melody that uses the whole-tone scale. 

Rhythm is strong and quick, although the piece is mostly light in character. The off-beats of the accompaniment and the hemiolas make it sound very unique. 

Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut, Images book II

I used Messiaen’s harmonic analysis of this piece as the basis.

The opening is static, spacious, and bell-like, setting the stage for a meditative piece, and the motive become the work’s structural pillars, returning as refrains between freer chant-like episodes. The harmonic focus is on color rather than function; the chords exist solely for their sound, not to “go somewhere.” Time feels suspended, indicated by irregular note lengths and silences. This is a ritual of sound rather than a journey of modulation.

Debussy’s mood or atmosphere is one of stillness and sacred distance, as if moonlight has frozen everything in place. There is also a sense of mystery and reverence because the ruined temple image suggests a world that has passed, leaving only echoes. The pp dynamics and gentle voicing invite intimacy, like hearing sound carried across a night landscape.

Messiaen’s synesthetic terms describe the colors used as muted silver, pale gold, and stone-grey. The textures with parallel open fifths and fourths give a hollow, ancient resonance, moving with the unhurried inevitability of temple gongs, they let the listener feel the moon’s slow descent in sound. Whereas, the seconds embedded in the chords dissonate as a soft shimmer. These static sonorities will return throughout the work, acting as ritual refrains that frame the more chant-like passages later.

The tempo, Très calme et doucement triste, indicates a meditative pacing, that nothing should feel rushed. The harmony consists of modal and pentatonic stacks that avoid the tension-release cycles. The music breathes more like chant (with clear plain chant elements later). Rhythmically irregular values create a speech-like flexibility, hinting that each phrase is an intonation, not a bar-counted sentence.

The title was suggested by Debussy’s friend and sinologist Louis Laloy, “And the Moon Descends on the Temple That Was,”  and hints at imagined East Asian imagery. Debussy matches it with gamelan-inspired sonorities he first encountered at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889.

Olivier Messiaen, who often cited this work as a model of pure harmonic color, carried its bell-like chords into his own early works such as Le Banquet céleste for organ, preserving the same spacious pacing and modal resonance.

"The Girl With the Flaxen Hair"  

This first motif sets the stage for many permutations throughout the piece. The mood is  serene and upbeat, though also soft and subtle.

note:

I will be at Tonebase  camp at Adamant VT  July 12-17. Not sure if I will have internet connection there. 

Here’s my interesting fact: Debussy’s Clair de Lune was inspired by a poem by the Symbolist Paul Verlaine, and Debussy would regularly attend meetings of Symbolist poets and artists in Paris at the home of Stephane Mallarme. He appreciated their focus on their own psychological state and impressions in their poetry and art, and this inspired him to express his own feelings about impressions through his music.

I wonder what I would have thought if I had listened to or played this little piece (only two pages of music) without knowing its title: Des pas sur la neige (Footsteps on the snow). But, there isn’t really an answer.

The power of the image suggested by these words is overwhelming, and it seems that Debussy himself had some contemporary paintings in mind. Perhaps the most appropriate could be La neige à Louveciennes by Camille Pisarro or Neige à Louveciennes by Alfred Sisley: both are winter landscapes with a small lonely human figure who is walking and leaving footprints in the snow.

I’d like to add another inevitable association, one that’s very close to me because I love listening to and playing Schubert’s music, the Romantic “Wanderer” image in “Winterreise” (Winter Journey). One of the covers of Ian Bostridge’s book about the Schubert song cycle illustrates this connection beautifully (by the way, it’s one of the most interesting books about music written in recent years).

In any case, we have the ostinato “footsteps” motif of four notes that immediately creates a singular temporal framework: meditative, hypnotic, full of mystery. It’s a perfect example of how a simple music pattern, as if by magic, can shape the spirit of the piece. Just before its last appearance in a high octave, Debussy wrote: Comme un tendre et triste regret… (like a tender and sad regret) and at the beginning of the piece he had written: Ce rythme doit avoir la valeur sonore d’un fond de paysage triste et glacé… (the rhythm should evoke the sound of a bleak and frozen landscape in the background).

So, the composer’s message couldn’t be clearer: the rhythm as gravity center of an inner landscape (evoked by a parallel visual landscape) of sorrow, loneliness and loss. Yet all this atmosphere must be played within the limits of p and pp, without grand musical gestures, in a quiet but deeply expressive mood.

Alongside the ostinato, different emotional states, scenes, thoughts, memories pass by, drawn with great delicacy and creativity in the harmony.

So, a gorgeous piece; thanks to this challenge I’ve fallen under the spell of Debussy’s music.

I’ll start with the historical background and inspiration for The Little Shepherd, the fifth of six pieces in Debussy’s The Children’s Corner suite.   The following paragraph is based on an excerpt I found on the web from E. Roberts Schmitz “The Piano Works of Claude Debussy” – Dover.  Schmitz was a pianist who knew Debussy well.

Debussy was devoted to his daughter Claude-Emma, named after himself and his third wife, and nicknamed Chouchou.  He composed The Children’s Corner for her in 1908 when she was three years old, inspired by the toys he had given her and his desire to enhance her playtime by infusing the experience with toy specific music.  Hence, one can easily imagine a child playing with a shepherd doll, playing its flute to the opening motif and then dancing to the second motif.

When I started this assignment I thought:  there is the shepherd and he is leading his flock, doing a dance along the way.  The more I listened to the piece, the more I felt constrained by this image imposed by the title and historical context.  So I let it fall away and concentrated on the music.

The opening motif creates a very serene, pastoral atmosphere with a single line melody and sustained notes suggesting the breathiness of a flute or pipe.  I hear a soft, pale gold that is almost palpable, like the rays of the sun breaking through the morning mist.  There is a hint of the oriental here, suggesting a spiritual meditation or awakening.

The rhythm, tempo and harmonies of the following motif suggest a dance of life with the cadence suggesting an offering.

The two motifs repeat with variations two more times.  I can easily imagine the entire piece choreographed for modern dance.

Unfortunately, I do not yet have the theoretical background to analyze the piece.

I do not think the two interpretations, that as heard by the child and that by the adult are in conflict.  They are simply different.

In the opening of the Arabesque No. 1, Debussy immediately creates the sensation of movement in the piece. The initial left hand arpeggio is followed by the downward flowing line of the right hand. My first impression was of waves of the ocean, but after researching the "Bonus Challenge" question, I realize that's not quite right. Ocean waves don't often flow together from opposite directions, unless there's a storm, and this is NOT a stormy piece. I took ballet as a young girl and so thought of the word 'arabesque' as when you balance on one leg and extend the other behind you. But according to the dictionary the word 'arabesque' is "an ornamental design consisting of intertwined flowing lines, originally found in Arabic or Moorish decoration." So now I think of these lines as reflecting beautiful Arabic architecture and designs.