The impressionist who hated being called an impressionist
[Debussy] is the beginning of the twentieth-century breakup of music. No longer was there a great structure assembled like a cathedral. No longer were there to be set rules by which this modulation or progression was allowed. Debussy did to tonal relationships what Monet and Cézanne did to traditional color relationships. Poof! and out they went. Art and music became insinuation rather than rhetoric or illustration, the haiku rather than the sonnet. One magical, spiced chord was enough to set the mood.
Schonberg p. 465 The Lives of the Great Composers
Claude Debussy was an admirer of William Turner’s painting, and noted once in a letter that he believed Turner was “the greatest creator of mysterious effects in the whole world of art.” And yet, what Turner did for oils, Debussy most certainly did for the musical clefs.
The man himself despised being called an “impressionist,” identifying instead with the “symbolist” aesthetic of writers like Edgar Allan Poe and artists like Edvard Munch; but it is unavoidable that the character of much of Debussy’s music takes on an air of the impressionistic. It is interesting, for instance, to compare Debussy’d Prélude “Voiles” [“Veils”] with Monet’s famous “Madame Monet and her Son.” Listen to the way that Debussy characterizes the wafting fabric, describing the object not directly or visually, but in terms of how one might feel as their hand grazed its surface, or the quality that it might take on as the wind blew through its sheets. Not dissimilar from the fabric of Madame Monet’s dress, which gives the impression of movement and life in this painting. Not a static object, but a breathing part of the environment. If Schubert was trying to create a musical picture of the trout swimming up stream in his D. 667 Quintet, Debussy would instead have given us the emotional essence of the moment.
Nor was the distinct character of Debussy’s work easy to achieve. As with many of the great composers whose works history has preserved, Claude Debussy composed music with radically different techniques than his predecessors had. Asked once what rules he used to create music, Debussy replied “mon plaisir,” [“whatever I please”] and despite the flippancy of the response, there is an important lesson in the anecdote: Debussy’s musical mind worked independently of the history if was born into, and as he altered (or altogether discarded) classical forms and tonal structures, he created a new path for music in the Twentieth Century.
While Debussy’s underpinning musical structure was revolutionary when he was creating it, what the modern listener can take away is the profound depth of his sound. Debussy’s orchestrations are full of subtle aromas, tantalizing harmonies and beautifully blended timbres, so that one is hard pressed to escape a performance of his music without a feeling of having been transported to another place. Luckily, there’s a 99% guarantee of having enjoyed the journey.
share 
© 2010 seattle philharmonic orchestra