Introduction
Claude Debussy was widely associated with the composing of music that was known to be impressionistic. Born in France in 22nd August 1862, Debussy rose to be among the prominent figures in as far as music composition is concerned. He worked along with Maurice Ravel in the composition of songs. However, Debussy never liked his music being referred to as being impressionistic. He is one of the most influential and famous music composers of all times. The sensory aspect of Debussy’s music is the nature of it not being formed around just one pitch or key. Throughout his work, he exhibited a lot of passion and creativity thus his style was later to be known in France as symbolism.
Debussy’s earl music
Debussy was an inspirational figure in both cultural practices and in the composition of music. In his early productions, Debussy did very little in as far as good music was concerned but continued in a lot of musical experimental. This eventually culminated to the composition of original and distinct music. Debussy’s early life was characterized by a lot of challenges and he could earn he could earn some income from teaching the piano. Debussy was not known in the world of music until when he was thirty but he was still not confident in music as he believed he was still short in some musical masterpiece. it was until the year 1893 that Debussy completed a master. A year later, he created successfully another masterpiece which became popular. This work was called the cloches a travers les feuilles has since been an orchestral work that has become very popular. In this masterpiece, Debussy went against the rules of harmonies and melody, a fact that led to the castigation of his work by some of his critics. However, there were a lot of people who loved the masterpiece as a result of its poetic tone. In his name are a lot of [1]compositions that he published which include the Nocturnes, La Mer, a lot of piano works and many images. The strange thing about Debussy is that he never liked appearing in public places and he was not gifted with the art of conducting music despite the fact that he was one of the best composers. At fifty years old, Debussy was diagnosed with cancer of the colon and had to undergo a series of operations which saw him complete only three of his six instrumental sonatas. This was during the First World War crisis.1
Composition Techniques
In his compositions, Debussy greatly valued various shifts in harmony that was unexpected, fluid, color, nuance and mood. As evident in his cloches a travers les feuilles, he was neither bothered by attaining of the traditional clarity of the harmonies and melodies nor the procedures and structures of the composition of music. In his music, Debussy exhibited a lot of sequencing in parallel chords and there was very clear shimmering and forms of the chords that he played. Debussy mastered his art so much that his works were known to have the ability to evoke the moods and mystify the atmosphere in his creations of harmonies that were extraordinarily new. His music presented a sense of evocative and unusual color in his instrumentals. From the titles that he gave his compositions, Debussy was majorly interested in impermanence, intangibility and fluidity effects in the music.1
His choice of titles such as Clouds, Reflections in the Water is witness to the fact that he loved a lot of fluidity in his compositions. Most of Debussy’s compositions do bear titles that are descriptive. This was basically influenced by the fact that he was most often than not always inspired by pictorial and different literary titles. Debussy presented the cloches a travers les feuilles in a more improvised and spontaneous way and always believed that music could not be fixed into a particular form or be viewed in the same traditional way. Debussy’s view and driving force was that rhythms and colors are what made up music and there was eventually need to maintain and bring out that beautiful nature of music. The impressionistic view in his music was portrayed by his love for fluidity, atmosphere and tone color. In his compositions, Debussy blended muted strings, the English horn, the muted brass and the timpani which produced an unusual touch in his music. Debussy also complemented the cloches a travers les feuilles with some harp which he used independently alongside other instruments that prominently flowed the glissandos scales up and down. In his musical presentations, Debussy used the voices of women which sung in a ‘mellismatic’ manner. Added to his composition were other instruments that completed the unique color of Debussy’s composition.
In presenting the cloches a travers les feuilles and most of his pieces, Debussy made color an important aspect more that melody thus eliciting a lot of criticisms. He employed a very large range of harmony which included four chords. In some cases he incorporated five note chords which presented a rich and lush sound. In his presentations, Debussy brought out natural and mild chords with a sense of tonality despite them looking very unorthodox at the point of writing. He did this by avoiding most of the church progressions deliberately. These church progressions do strongly affirm the keys and he emphasized less on the main tones as opposed to the minor and major scales in his compositions. Debussy blended his music with the effects of Javanese music pentatonic scales and the techniques of percussion thus adding an atmosphere on Asian nature. The music of Debussy was in such a manner that he created the same distance between all the tone, bringing out an effect that was indistinct and blurred. The music was at times vague as the tonality and Debussy emphasized that rhythms could not simply be tied to bars alone thus avoiding the accents which were strong and bringing out the quality and fluidity in his music in the French language. This wiping out and weakening of the accent vitally made his music to achieve the fluidity and dreamlike trait attributed to music that is considered impressionistic. The bombast that was heavy and styles that were heroic in Debussy’s music never bothered him but he opted to value the delicacy and the understatement that came with his music.
Harmony, context and style
Harmony was the main aspect in Debussy’s cloches a travers les feuilles and his other music and compositions. In his composition of the cloches a travers les feuilles, Debussy built a quartal harmony by blending the structures that were harmonic while maintaining the distinctiveness in his preference as far as the intervals associated to the perfect fourth is concerned. Further, Debussy used the diminished fourth, fifth that was augmented and ultimately the perfect fifth. In most of his pieces, Debussy explored a lot of techniques that brought out harmony. He achieved this through planning his chords in most of his music.
He was further careful in creating a series of seventh chords that were unreservedly dominant in the music. He managed to create harmony through a lot of scale experimental. Debussy was successful in creating harmony by using the five notes of the pentatonic scale alongside devising a whole tone scale, moving whole steps by six notes. Debussy’s music brought out the harmony and blurry in its textures. In achieving harmony, Debussy used the pagodes structure which presented a roofline. The materials he used were melodic and expressed the harmony in an expressionistic way. He used three various sections in order to achieve [2]harmony. The first section was the A section, which was in the stretch of bar one to the thirty second bar. From thirty third to the fortieth bar was the B section while the C section stretched from the forty first to the forty fifth bars. In these three sections, section C was the one that seemed loudest. There was a repetition in the remaining pieces which followed the order of ABCBA. Debussy further employed transition and coda thus creating the resemblance in the form of a modification of the coda AB.1 Debussy ensured that the C section was a bit louder despite the fact that it was not the material’s introduction. Debussy further brought out the harmony in his compositions by introducing a piece in a pianissimo manner and maintaining it between the piano and the pianissimo for the initial forty bars. This he did before jumping to the fortissimo from the piano. He then dropped back in his composition to the pianissimo all over until he completed the final presentation of the section A. this use of contrasts that are sudden and conservative dynamics by Debussy ensured that he was able to grab the attention of the listeners. His way of creating harmony was exceptional in its own way. Debussy applied impressionistic techniques, blending them with the succession of chords that are dissonant and which he shifted them up and down freely in order to achieve the harmony.
Form
Debussy applied restricted and structured form in his music including the cloches a travers les feuilles. This was evident in his cloches a travers les feuilles. His music never took the form of interpreting paintings and poetry but he initiated the atmosphere and mood thus successfully creating freedom and spontaneity in his music. He used subdued dynamics which depicted exhaustion but bringing out openness and limitless in terms of its flexibility. For instance, Debussy introduces his “The Prelude to the Afternoon of a Fan” with a melody of a flute which is unaccompanied. This creates a pulse that is vague and releases a dreamlike tonality and an atmosphere that is improvisatory. The melody of the flute is heard over and over in a lush of chords and in a fast and slower tempo. This form creates a natural flow feeling that changes from one emotion or feeling to the other.
Conclusion
Claude Debussy’s cloches a travers les feuilles exhibits the impressionism in music that existed in the early 20th century. The tone in created in the song creates a moment of provoking and revolution but portrays the lifestyles and beliefs of the impressionistic nature of music. In composing the cloches a travers les feuilles by Debussy, Debussy succeeds in using the harmony, tone and impressionism as techniques in the structure of his music. The cloches a travers les feuilles by Debussy and all the other compositions portray nature and life and will always be the self expression for Debussy, a fact that may never be taken away.
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