Pentatonic Organization in Two Piano Pieces of Debussy

Abstract

The innovative aspects of Debussy's harmonic practice have been commonly attributed to his use of nontraditional scales and of familiar tonal material in unfamiliar successions. In this view, the characteristic result is an exotic and order-independent harmonic vocabulary best describable as color. This definition hinges on an implicit distinction between directed, colorless tonality on one hand, and static, colorful successions of in-the-moment harmonies drawing what coherence they display largely from immediate context on the other. Harmonic function and harmonic color are pictured as mutually exclusive, fundamentally opposed qualities. Thus Arnold Schoenberg wrote of Debussy's non-functional harmonies, operating reference to a single tonic; these, without constructive meaning, often served the colouristic purpose of expressing moods and pictures (Schoenberg 1984, 216). Debussy himself wrote of the need to transcend the strictures of form and the limits of conventional harmonic progression in order to create music based more directly on color and beauty of sound.I But of course there are colors to the familiar tonal progressions as well. It is just that we are so inured to them that we tend to perceive and