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Who Is Debussy Want To Immitate Gamelan Music?

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As shown as the below score, the bottom line acting as a similar role to gong in Gamelan music, a sustaining bass note. The middle is the counter melody while the top plays the nuclear- melody. What’s special here is the pentatonic melody. If Debussy wanted to imitate Gamelan music, he wouldn’t use pentatonic scale; instead, he might use those two traditional Gamelan scales, slendro and pelog. This was not the first time he used pentatonic scale, he had used it in an orchestral piece, Printemps in 1887. The tonality throughout the composition is undefined because he had a principle of composing music, which is pleasing to the ear rather than some “rule” of traditional harmonic theories. In 1890 Debussy's professor at the Paris Conservatory commented on Debussy's use of parallel chords in the following way: "I am not saying that what you do isn't beautiful, but it's theoretically absurd." Debussy simply replied: "There is no theory. You have merely to listen. Pleasure is the law."18 As a result, Debussy’s harmonies were colourful and various, as well as his uses of unique and exotic scales, he was simply guided towards his ears and aesthetics in music. …show more content…

After understanding and listening to Gamelan, especially Javanese music, it somehow influences me to play the melody line with a gentle and light staccato. Gentle doesn’t mean that we soften the staccato effect and make it more legato, with the help of pedal, we should be able to create a fast, light and percussive staccato in octaves which sounds like

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Mozart, however, changed the mold. He incorporated an emotional side into his works and emphasized music based off of sound, notes, tone, and pitch as a form of art outside of religion (Brown 55). Music became more broad and open to all. In addition, Mozart had extraordinary performance skills thus, leading to his honor as an embodiment of classical movement (53). “Despite Mozart’s uncouthness and immaturity, he produced one work after another that seemed divinely sponsored as they transcended his own personality.

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To demonstrate how Debussy can use imagery to paint a picture in music, the YouTube link will be used, and the subsequent times will refer to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfSBddhFvyA. In the beginning, starting at 0:01, Debussy starts with notes G and D, with a low register in the left hand and a high register in the right hand. Playing these notes simultaneously create a “holy” kind of sound, like how the Greeks in the church used Gregorian chant. This sets the image of a cathedral and the “holiness” of the surroundings. This lets Debussy “paint” the setting and exposition from the beginning. Debussy continues to build with the fourth and fifth relationship with a G pentatonic scale.

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He dew from the French tradition, “a preference for sensibility, taste, and restraint, admiring particular his older contemporary Charbrier.” (791) Debussy stayed away from the Romantic style of expressing emotions, and instead focused on evoking a certain mood, feeling, atmosphere, or scene. This style of composition is often called impressionist and closely resembles that of the impressionist painters and poets. He was able to create these musical images through “motives, harmony, exotic scales, instrumental timbre, and other elements, and then composes by juxtaposing them.” (791) Instead of using traditional devices and tonality, he used changes in timbre and texture.

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Debussy forced mental image through music and could use his emotions to guide his audience feel the situation and enjoy the

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His music is very romantic but was no tonic or sense of one tonality. It reflects a different philosophy. He was a genius at orchestration. In Debussy’s music, all notes were equally important. His music was not accepted at first, but eventually it revolutionized the musical world.

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Stravinsky’s melodic expression was not typical of most composers. To under mine the meter he would often use unpredictable accents and rapid change in meter, consistently use ostinatos, and would used discontinuity and interruption in his music. In european art music he was the leader in revitalizing it. He rethought how he used traditional instrumentation too. He would use dry, anti-lyrical, but colorful use of instruments.

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His style varied in fashion, his work providing an element of surprise to ears that listened. One of his symphonies, nicknamed Surprise, highlights the clever and humorous character of Haydn. Here, we are met with smooth staccato chords, until we are unexpectedly hit with a much more dissonant sound in syncopation, providing the element of surprise, as the title of the piece’s nickname suggests. Haydn’s music heavily centered around a thematic approach, highlighting dynamics, changes in texture, sans consistent rhythm, but rather a variety of changes in tone

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His harmonies are very complex with Impressionism characteristic and anticipated Jazz harmony. Ravel said harmonically is harder than ‘Scarbo’. Ravel used 7th, 9th, 11th chords with added seconds and sixths. In Waltz no.2, we can see the alternating major sevenths over minor triads. No. 5 has collision chromaticisms and cluster chords that influenced the later jazz harmony (reflection 95).

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Analysis of Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune Achille-Claude Debussy, was a French musician and composer, whose works are monument to the power music has in evoking images. He is often described as the musician who rescued France from the dominance of German music (Simms, 1996 p. 168). Debussy was active during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and is commonly referred to as an “Impressionists”. However, Debussy created his own independent style, rather than working within a single movement (Impressionism). He persistently objected to being termed an Impressionist, and here is what he wrote to his publisher regarding his orchestral pieces, “What I am trying to do is something ‘different’ – an effect of reality, but what some fools

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Debussy broke the mold so to speak in the 20th century of music by breaking away from the typical German style laid out by composers such as Beethoven as he often explored dreamy and distant sound worlds in an effort to stand out amongst his earlier peers of the classical period. He began to be drawn to the sounds of the pentatonic scales, whole tone scale, and sounds otherwise known in Asia as his music in comparison often contained a rather circular motion which broke away from the formers heroic cadential style of resolution. This breaks his music away as his was more of an ambient and distant much like the impressionist art movement happening at the same time being led by the likes of Monet and Van Gough. The Sunken Cathedral by Debussy exhibits many traits of the new impressionistic forum of 20th century composers as he exhibits many methods to place the listener into a dream-like state using melodic variation and connectivity amongst voice leading in order to achieve a watery type effect. This effect makes the listener feel as if they are floating along with the piece itself as he adds complexities to the music with the slow harmonic variation throughout the piece.

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INTRODUCTION Debussy and his love for the mysterious realm of the antique are epitomized in his piano duets Six Épigraphes Antiques. The work evolved over an extended period to become a prime example of his style of composition. The poems Chansons de Bilitis written by his close friend Pierre Louÿs (1894) inspired Debussy to compose firstly Trois Chansons de Bilitis (1898) three songs for soprano and piano, then Chansons de Bilitis (1901) instrumental music to accompany the reading of a selection of Pierre Louÿs poems, and finally Six Épigraphes Antiques (1914) for piano four hands and eventually reduction for solo piano. These works contribute to a musical language that continues to influence and shape music today. Debussy was originally

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