Debussy's Works Research Articles

드뷔시(C. A. Debussy) 'Pierrot'를 대상으로 한 음악 교육의 융합적 접근

The purpose of this study is to explore a convergent approach that can be taught in secondary music education targeting Debussy's work ‘Pierrot’. This study attempts a variety of convergent approaches from various perspectives, namely cultural, musical, and educational, based on literature research methods. The content of this study first, examine the meaning of the convergence approach in music education. Second, we explore a convergence approach to Debussy’s ‘Pierrot’, focusing on its cultural relevance. Third, we attempt a convergent approach focusing on the musical phenomenon shown in ‘Pierrot’. Fourth, we seek a convergent teaching method for music education targeting ‘Pierrot’. As a result of the research, Debussy's ‘Pierrot’ music combines literature, French folk songs, and pantomime expressions, and convergent instruction is possible in music education. Accordingly, a convergent instruction direction and a convergent music class design for ‘Pierrot’ were proposed. This convergence approach and teaching method for Debussy's 'Pierrot' will be basic material to achieve the goal of cultivating musical creativity and convergence thinking capabilities required in music education.

빌 에반스(Bill Evans)의 즉흥연주에서 나타난 인상주의 음악적 특징

Jazz, which originated in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, has developed by absorbing musical features of various cultures and genres from its birth. This study seeks to identify impressionistic features in the improvisations of jazz pianist Bill Evans and compare them with the music of the Impressionism composer Debussy. The scope of this research includes the scores in the Bill Evans Omnibus and the works of Debussy in the Preludes Book 1 and 2. The characteristics of Impressionism music include the use of whole-tone scales, chromatic scales, pentatonic scales, harmonic structures using notes other than chord components, and progressions that are taboo in classical music, and we found them in Bill Evans' improvisations. In the end, although jazz music has distinct characteristics from classical music, they are related, and many jazz musicians have been influenced by classical music throughout history.

Repetitive Variety and Other Balancing Acts: Debussy's Transcendental Oscillations

This article introduces the concept of the transcendental oscillation, in which two chords alternate with one another in a way that transcends traditional tonal practice. This harmonic device appears in a wide variety of settings from Wagner to modern pop music. After discussing some theoretical properties of transcendental oscillations, including their interactions with modality and chromaticism, I analyze transcendental oscillations in the works of Debussy, who made the technique a central component of his style. In Debussy's music, transcendental oscillations may be either intensifying or calming. They are symptomatic of what Sylveline Bourion calls Debussy's "duplication" tendency. As progressions foreign to common practice, they present a novel aspect, but as repetitive progressions, they are easy on the ears. These two central features of transcendental oscillations—their harmonic freshness and their repetitive quality—combine to make them well suited to Debussy's compositional project and attractive to composers to this day.

Adapting Debussy

Debussy disapproved of Nijinsky's 1912 choreography for Prélude à “L'Après-midi d'un faune,” perceiving dissonance between his fluid melodies and Nijinsky's angular, two-dimensional poses. Because of the patent differences between the music and choreography, commentary on the work has focused primarily on what makes the ballet and music distinct instead of how the ballet might transform our reading of the music; but the Faune ballet is best identified as an adaptation of Debussy's music in which the music is made to tell Nijinsky's version of Debussy's story. As an adaptation, Nijinsky's ballet creates a context that affords a fresh encounter with Debussy's work in a different medium, resetting our understanding, making new interpretations possible, and thus continuing the music's narrative legacy by varying its appearance. Nijinsky's notation of the dance reflects his novel conception of corporeal movement for the ballet, in which the planes of the body are dislocated from traditional organic formations in order to face constantly outward and to move in grooves along the stage. The dominating imagery of dislocation resonates with the polymetric climax in the B section of Debussy's work, which treats the orchestra like a body in pluralistic motion as it establishes a newly eclectic order of movement. Nijinsky's scenario provides a narrative framework to explain the implications of the polymetric event for the subsequent musical plot. The physicality of Debussy's work, which is also highlighted in Ravel's piano transcription, comes to the foreground of the ballet at a moment of crisis: in Nijinsky's story, the B section contains the only touch between faun and nymph as well as their tragic separation, which leads to the faun's emotional instability. This context renders Debussy's polymetric climax a symbol of both fulfillment and loss that affects the return of A-section material, where the flute theme splits into conflicting expressive characters that mirror the faun's emotional vacillation. Undergirding these dissociated themes is a subtle polymeter, which remains as a symptom of the tragic climax.

Pelléas et Mélisande, cent ans après: Études et documents Edited by Jean-Christophe Branger, Sylvie Douche, and Denis Herlin (review)

Pelleas et Melisande, cent ans apres: Etudes et documents. Edited by Jean- Christophe Branger, Sylvie Douche, and Denis Herlin. (Symetrie Recherche.) Lyon, France: Symetrie, 2012. [609 p. ISBN 9782914373852. i64.] Music examples, illustrations, photographs, facsimiles, appendices, bibliography, indexes.April 30, 1902 saw the premiere of one of the twentieth century's most important op- eratic masterpieces, Claude Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande. In spite of some notable public successes, such as the 1901 premiere of his orchestral Nocturnes, Debussy was still relatively unknown to the French musical public when his opera was first performed at the Opera-Comique; within days, his po- sition as the most important and innovative new voice in French music at the dawn of the twentieth century was secure. Pelleas et Melisande was the cause of much discussion and controversy in the weeks and months after its first performances, and it has re- mained a source of fascination for musi- cians, scholars, and audiences ever since.Over two days in May 2002, a group of scholars met at the Sorbonne to celebrate the centenary of this momentous occasion with a conference devoted to Debussy and his sole completed opera. Most of the fif- teen essays that form the core of this new book were first presented at that confer- ence. The editors have organized the essays by topic into four sections: From Genesis to First Performances, Reception and First Studies, Aesthetics and Analysis, and Posterity (my trans.). These are pre- ceded by an interview with Pierre Boulez that serves as a preface to the entire vol- ume, and a brief introduction by the vol- ume's three editors.Following the essays, one finds several very useful appendices: a transcription of Maurice Emmanuel's notes on the famous conversations between Debussy and Ernest Guiraud, which took place in 1889 and 1890 and which contain many insights into Debussy's ideas about opera; an extensive chronology of events related to the compo- sition of the opera, beginning with Debussy's first encounter with Maurice Maeterlinck's play in 1893 and concluding with the 1902 premiere; a list of the 107 performances of the opera that took place at the Opera-Comique during the com- poser's lifetime, with cast information and the total of the ticket receipts for each per- formance; and finally, a list of perfor- mances of the opera that took place in other French cities and in other countries during the composer's lifetime. With a cou- ple of exceptions, all the performances listed in this appendix also include cast lists.About forty percent of the volume is taken up by an extensive compilation of over one hundred reviews and essays about the opera published in the French press in 1902, along with an annotated list of their authors. (This latter is especially useful when the author has signed the review with a pseudonym.) There are some photo- graphs scattered throughout the text, in- cluding several of the original production, as well as reproductions of early programs, letters, drawings, and manuscript pages. Many of the essays are illustrated with music examples, and indexes of titles and names as well as a bibliography are included.The first group of essays covers a wide range of topics related to the genesis and first production of the opera. Richard Langham Smith discusses Debussy's earlier aborted opera project, Rodrigue et Chimene, with an eye to correspondences between that work and Pelleas. Denis Herlin offers commentary on Debussy's first encounters with Maeterlinck's play, and Vincent Giroud examines Debussy's complete short- score draft of the opera, which is currently located in the Frederick R. Koch Collection at Yale University. David Grayson discusses the problems associated with producing a definitive version of the opera for the new collected edition of Debussy's works, a task made infinitely more difficult by the fact that the composer continued to revise the work for later performances. …

Intermedialists: Debussy and the influences of Whistler and Baudelaire

Purpose – This paper aimed to inform research or collection development on the topic of Claude Debussy, with particular attention paid to English-language resources that highlight the cross-modal nature of his work. Design/methodology/approach – This objective was achieved by examining primary and secondary sources relating to the works and correspondences of Debussy and those of painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and the works of poet Charles Baudelaire, whose work influenced Debussy. Findings – Holistically studying Debussy and his contemporary influences enables the researcher to develop a richer understanding of Debussy's work. Originality/value – This paper may have implications for research on James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Charles Baudelaire, Impressionism, and Symbolism.

Review of Matthew Brown,Debussy Redux: The Impact of his Music on Popular Culture(Indiana University Press, 2012)

[1] The gap between high-brow and popular culture, and how, where, and when that gap narrows and closes, has been a subject of keen scholarly interest. Bernard Gendron's (2002) study is perhaps most ambitious one to date: Gendron explores collisions of art and pop spheres, especially within avant-garde scenes, over a period spanning from 1880s through 1970s. Among other questions, Gendron asks how it was that pop audiences came to accept and embrace features originating in rarefied sphere of art music. Other recent works--Ken McLeod's study of operatic influences in pop and recent texts on prog rock by Kevin Holm-Hudson and others, for example--similarly focus on peculiar convergences and alignments of pop and art.[2] Matthew Brown's Redux serves as a key contribution to this ongoing discourse. Brown investigates reappearances and adaptations of Claude Debussy's music within a wide variety of popular cultural phenomena, ranging from classic Hollywood film scores of Dmitri Tiomkin, to Isao Tomita's cosmic Moog synthesizer stylings, to Rosemary Brown's necromantic transcriptions of piano music from beyond grave. Readers interested in genealogy of high-low interactions and cultural impact of Debussy's music in particular will enjoy this book.[3] The book's subtitle is deceptively modest. There is an equally strong emphasis throughout book on broader meta-critical questions, and book turns out to be as much a meditation on issues of aesthetic value, authenticity, autonomy, authorship, and influence, as on repurposing of Debussy's works. This sometimes results in a rather diffuse text, as author repeatedly moves away from specific examples to wide-ranging discussion of concepts such as the creative act and organic unity. Each chapter highlights a particular aesthetic question by presenting an account of a compelling popular-cultural appropriation as a jumping off point for exploration of a broader aesthetic theme. For example, From Parisian Salon to Billboard Phenom, tackles high-brow/low-brow divide, showing (contra Adorno) how pop tunes and art music are not so very far apart, at least from a nut-and-bolts musical materials perspective. Schenkerian analysis reveals underlying similarities between ostensibly trivial and eminent works, namely (1890) and C'est l'extase from Ariettes oubliees, (1885-1887). These works share surprisingly similar harmonic features and modes of thematic development. Another supposed pop trifle, American bandleader Larry Clinton's swing adaptation of Reverie, My Reverie (1938), is also compared with source and defended against charge that it is purely generic pop.[4] Chapter 4, In Moog, tackles matter of authorship in situations where works have multiple authors, or multiple versions of a work by same author coexist. Here Brown considers substantial contributions of Andre Caplet, whose orchestrations of Children's Corner and Pagodes were enthusiastically endorsed by composer. Caplet's original orchestrations and his direct intervention in scoring of L'enfant prodigue and other works, as well as Debussy's endless tinkering with orchestration of his own music well after its publication illustrate how Debussy took it for granted that structure could be manifest in several different scorings (73). These examples undermine notion of an Urtext for many of Debussy's works. Brown draws an analogy with photography, suggesting that treated his works in much same ways that photographers treat their pictures; just as latter are able to develop a particular negative in black and white, in sepia, or in color, so he was able to realize his scores in terms of different instrumental palettes (ibid.). At same time, case of a misguided orchestration of La plus que lente by Henri Mouton illustrates how decidedly rejected particular timbral realizations (in this case, one needlessly decorated with trombones). …

Other Good Bridges

I take Steve Larson’s article “What Makes a Good Bridge” (2003) as a launching point to explore the idea of musical bridges in works of Debussy. My focus is on musical processes that enhance continuity across formal sections, phrases, subphrases, or harmonic regions. The first two excerpts, from “La cathédrale engloutie” (from Préludes, Book 1) and Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, create melodic bridging structures through pattern completion or phrase linkage. I then turn to Debussy’s solo piano work “Reflets dans l’eau” (from Images, Book 1) and show how Debussy links the formal sections of the ABACA small rondo. Here formal overlaps arise by the continuation of motivic or harmonic events across formal boundaries. Finally, I consider the above ideas in light of the Debussy critical tradition that privileges aesthetic values of circularity, discontinuity, and stasis

Claude Debussy. Œuvres pour piano à quatre mains: Symphonie; Andante cantabile; Diane ouverture; Triomphe de Bacchus; Intermezzo; L'enfant prodigue; Divertissement; Printemps (review)

Reviewed by: Claude Debussy. Œuvres pour piano à quatre mains: Symphonie; Andante cantabile; Diane ouverture; Triomphe de Bacchus; Intermezzo; L’enfant prodigue; Divertissement; Printemps Mark DeVoto Claude Debussy. Œuvres pour piano à quatre mains: Symphonie; Andante cantabile; Diane ouverture; Triomphe de Bacchus; Intermezzo; L’enfant prodigue; Divertissement; Printemps. Édition de Noël Lee. Paris: Durand, c2002. (Œuvres complètes de Claude Debussy, sér. 1: Œuvres pour piano, vol. 7.) (Musica gallica.) [Gen. pref. in Fr., Eng., p. xi; foreword, p. ix–xxi; bibliographie sélective, p. xxiii; score, 227 p.; abbrevs., p. 229; crit. notes in Fr., Eng., p. 231–41; variantes, remarques, p. 243–58; appendix, p. 259–63; facsims., p. 265–79. Cloth. D. & F. 15455; DB 15455; Hal Leonard no. HL 50564480; ISBN 0-634-08213-2. $119.95.] Three volumes (series 1, nos. 7–9) of the ongoing Œuvres complètes are dedicated to Claude Debussy's works for piano four-hands and for two pianos. Volume 9 will contain the most familiar of Debussy's works for piano four-hands: the Petite suite (1888–89), Marche écossaise sur un thème populaire (1890), Six épigraphes antiques (1914– 15), and the composer's own arrangement of La mer (1903–5). Volume 8, published in 1986 and edited by the pianist and composer Noël Lee, includes the works for two pianos: Debussy's transcription of the Prélude à l'après midi d'un faune (1894), Lindaraja (1901), and En blanc et noir (1915). Also edited by Lee, volume 7 contains only one complete work for piano four-hands, Printemps, which was published (in no less than four versions, including orchestral) under Debussy's oversight and during his lifetime. All the other pieces in the volume date from Debussy's student years and provide convincing illustrations of his maturing skills as a composer. Most of this music is published for the first time in this volume. The earliest work in Lee's edition is the Symphonie, a single movement in B minor, composed in 1880 or early 1881 and dedicated to Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky's patron, in whose Russian home Debussy spent the summer of 1880 and 1881 as household pianist. Based on the autograph held by the Glinka Museum in Moscow, the first publication of the Symphonie appeared in 1933 edited by N. Zhilaıev (Simfoniıa h-moll dlıa f-p. v chetyre ruki [Moscow: Ozgiz Muzgiz; reprint, Boca Raton, FL: Masters Music, 1990]); and again as Proizvedeniıa dlıa fortep'ıano v chetyre ruki (in Sobraniıe sochineniĭ dlıafortep'ıano, t.5 [Moscow: Izdatel'stvo muzyka, 1965]), edited by Konstantin Stepanovich Sorokin; and in a more recent edition by Ernst-Günter Heinemann (Symphonie für Klavier zu vier Händen, h-Moll [Munich: Henle, 1995]). In harmony and form, it is an impressive achievement for a boy of eighteen, although it reveals much more of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's influence than any adumbrations of the later Debussy style. Lee regards the newly published Andante cantabile in E major as the first movement of a three-movement work, of which the existing B-minor movement is the third (the title page reads Symphonie en si mineur / Andante / Air de ballet / Final). The second movement has yet to be found, or perhaps it was never composed. On the basis of external evidence, however, François Lesure considers the Andante cantabile to be "de peu postérieure à la Symphonie" (a bit later than the Symphony; Claude Debussy: Biographie critique suivie du catalogue de l'œuvre [Paris: Fayard, 2003], 475). The 1965 Russian volume also includes three dances from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake that Debussy arranged at Mme. von Meck's request and which she sent to P. Jürgenson for publication (Le lac des [End Page 587] cygnes: Suite, tirée du ballet: piano à 4 mains [Moscow, 1880]). Lee notes that Debussy's name did not appear on the publication, probably because such an attribution would have been contrary to the rules of the Paris Conservatoire. The Diane ouverture, composed in 1881, was probably planned as a prelude to Debussy's earliest operatic composition, Diane au bois, on Th...

Ken Russell's The Debussy film (1965)

First telecast on 18 May 1965 as part of the BBC's Monitor series, The Debussy Film was Ken Russell's first fully-realized composer biopic—‘one of Russell's major contributions to the art of film b...

Debussy's 'Iberia' (review)

Debussy's 'Iberia'. By Matthew Brown. (Studies in Musical Genesis and Structure.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. [xv, 177 p. ISBN 0-19-816199-9. $85.] Music examples, bibliography, index. One of Debussy's most significant works, the Images for orchestra have stood somewhat in the shadow of earlier masterpieces like Nocturnes and La mer. Matthew Brown provides us with an in-depth study of Iberia, the center trilogy of Images. His book has a double purpose: it explains the genesis of Debussy's work and provides an analysis, then moves beyond Debussy to place this analysis into a larger context, to be explained below. The first part of the study deals with the compositional history and aesthetic context of Iberia. For this work the composer uncharacteristically left a substantial body of sketches, and Brown carefully extracts the information they have to oiler. Through these sketches Brown observes that Iberia, like most of Debussy's compositions, took shape over a long period (1903-10) and went through numerous revisions, some of them drastic. Iberia is the most substantial of Debussy's soundscapes, and the author asks what gives the piece the authentic flavor so praised by Manuel de Falla among others. Brown identifies its Spanish elements as idiosyncratic motivic formulae (though not actual folk themes); modal harmonies and pedal points; rhythms of regional dances, especially the sevillana and habanera; and the inclusion of native instruments (castanets) as well as suggestions of others (e.g., numerous orchestral guitar effects). Save for one brief jaunt across the border to watch a bullfight, Debussy never visited Spain, so he did not learn its music on-site. Brown shows, however, that Debussy had plenty of opportunities to absorb Iberian sounds in Paris, then home to Isaac Albeniz, Falla, Joaquin Turina, and Ricardo Vines. or Spanish-themed compositions regularly appeared on Parisian concerts. In order to examine the thematic and tonal structure most effectively, Brown adopts a Schenkerian approach, which he finds illuminating despite Debussy's heterodox treatment of harmony and form. The composer's greatest challenge in Iberia was to create a work of three independent yet deeply interconnected movements. Brown shows that Debussy ensures continuity throughout the work by means of constant and often subtle motivic transformations. Further, his graphs indicate that the background harmonic structure follows relatively conventional norms, however unpredictable the foreground may be. In the second part of the book, Brown considers the genesis of each movement in greater detail. The sketches reveal that Debussy arrived at the final forms through painstaking experimentation. Techniques he employed to organize his material include tonal modeling, or the reworking of one section to create another; inserting a section of one movement into part of a subsequent one; and auxiliary cadences, in which the movement ends on the tonic but begins elsewhere. Brown's insights into Iberia prove highly illuminating; his book is lucidly written and extremely generous with examples and documentation. It helps to have a score at hand, but even the most involved parts of the analysis flow easily, and one need not be either a specialist in Schenker or sketch studies to follow it. Regarding the presentation, I note only the erroneous labeling of Jeux de vagues as the third movement of La mer (p. 126), and the overuse of certain phrases, especially top-down bottom-up in reference to Debussy alternating between foreground and broader perspectives when contemplating his compositional choices for each movement. One might also welcome an interpretation of the cover photo of the famous dancer Caroline Otero (1868-1965), who otherwise makes no appearance in the text. Brown regards his study of Iberia as an illustration of a second and (to him) more important project. …

Traversing distances: Pitch organization, gesture and imagery in the late works of T l ru Takemitsu

This study focuses on pitch organization in several of T l ru Takemitsu's last works, showing how projection of octatonic and other referential set complexes in Takemitsu's music contribute to the formation of large-scale gestures, which become agents of metaphorical imagery and affective meaning. In Takemitsu's music, associations of harmonic sonority, timbral color, and metaphorical imagery are embodied in an archetypal musical gesture. An aesthetic aspect of the octatonic and other referential set complexes in Takemitsu's late music can be found in their association with the hopeful humanistic ideal Takemitsu conveys in his music. As block-form spatializations link the temporal and that which is beyond time, referential pitch structures provide a way of grounding Takemitsu's "dream" imagery of infinite human potential in a particular manifestation of mediated reality. Relating imagery of pitch organization in Takemitsu's music to sources Takemitsu found in the works of Debussy and Messiaen, the study aims to contribute to greater understudying of Takemitsu's temporal structures, aesthetic aims, and the influences which shaped his development.

The piano sonority of Claude Debussy

This study discusses only those elements in Claude Debussy's work that are directly associated with the qualities of a particular instrument and what they inspire. The piano music that Debussy composed evolved in part from his own particular performance, attested to by numerous individuals. He experimented at the keyboard as a painter would explore his palette. Though he never realized his first goal of being a concert artist, Debussy knew all the technical possibilities available to a skilled pianist. In the early work he often used the piano in traditional patterns. Until the very end, Debussy remembered the many roles of his instrument and wrote exquisite melodies, scintillating toccatas and sweeping cadenzas. However, in his full development, he uniquely employed the piano's sonorous resources and painted atmospheric scenes evoking the plucking of a guitar, the dissonance of cathedral bells, a goldfish in bright waters or a toccata of raindrops. The piano inspired the pursuit of myriad sonorities. Ultimately, the musician himself was the poet of tone. This volume explores early, mature and late work, including the Preludes and the twelve Etudes, examining forms, harmonies, rhythms, touch, pitches, sustained sounds, and compositions.

Debussy's Trois Chansons de Bilitis: Song, Opera, and the Death of the Subject

Asummary of the action narrated in Debussy's Trois Chansons de Bilitis might run as follows: Two young lovers share a moment of inexpressibly intimate communion; the young man speaks of being bound up in the maiden's flowing tresses; she encounters a strange older man beside aforest spring. Readers familiar with Debussy's Pelldas et Milisande will note a striking resemblance to three specific scenes in the opera, in Acts IV, III, and I, respectively. These thematic resemblances can hardly have arisen coincidentally: Debussy composed the song cycle in 1895-98, immediately following the completion of the draft of his opera. Undoubtedly the most intriguing link between the two works is their similar protagonist, a mysterious young woman caught up in a web of destructive erotic relationships. Indeed, we might regard Bilitis as the lyrical twin of Mdlisande, translated from opera into the sphere of art song. Viewed thus, she may perhaps serve as the pivotal figure in a comparison of Debussy's work in these two disparate genres. A fundamental distinction between art song and opera in the nineteenth century lies in the treatment of what, in Hegelian terms, we might call the individual subject. The genre of solo song, which drew its nourishment from the confessional, introspective tone of Romantic lyric verse, clearly reflects the demand of the age for individual subjective expression. Conversely, the history of nineteenthcentury opera, under the inescapable influence of Wagner, moved in

The stylistic perception of a musical work: an experimental and anthropological approach

In this work the author will demonstrate, by means of a primarily experimental but also anthropological and psychoanalytical approach, that the perception of a musical piece is a hierarchical arrangement of changes, contrasts, and discontinuities perceived during the auditory process. He will also show that this hierarchy depends on cultural models acquired through acculturation or education and that, besides the different stereotypes and cultural models, this hierarchy reveals the structure of style as a symbolic musical representation of an existential experience of time. The comparison of the auditory structures of two piano pieces, one by Brahms, the other by Debussy, demonstrates that the strongly hierarchical structure of the Brahms piece develops a homogeneous and continuous musical time, an evolutionary time. By contrast, the weakly hierarchical structure of the Debussy develops a discontinuous and fractured musical time, a time reduced to a series of moments which makes Debussy's work the first instance of contemporary music.

Ear Training for Twentieth-Century Music

How can the musician's ear penetrate the complexities and theoretical abstractions of the twentieth-century music? This book offers a solution: it enables the student to perceive essential musical connections at the core of modern music by identifying and drilling the distinctive structures and processes of the twentieth century's greatest composers. Michael L. Friedmann has developed and successfully tested a method that combines theory and exercises to give students a deeper understanding of modern music. Using musical examples from the works of Debussy, Bartok, Choenberg, and Stravinsky, Friedmann begins with extensive work in sight-singing and dictation. The chapters that follow develop clear, multifaceted approaches to intervals and dyads, transposition and inversion, melodic contour, and three-and four-element set classes. In these chapters Friedmann offers students opportunities not just to identify the twelve trichord and twenty-nine tetrachord types, but to explore their structural possibilities. He also demonstrates the relation of these set classes to the diatonic, whole-tone, and octatonic scales. Finally, Friedmann introduces set classes of more than four elements, as well as twentieth-century modes. The book provides a wealth of musical excerpts including melodies composed by the author himself-to test analytic listening ability and to make the student with each set class.

A portrait of Claude Debussy

Marcel Dietschy's La Passion de Claude Debussy was published in French in 1962. It was hailed as an invaluable source of reference for many hitherto unpublished facts about Debussy. The author unearthed documents about every personality connected with the composer, making it an accurate account of many episodes in Debussy's life. The book also contains much information about Bebussy's family and early life. Dietschy's treatment of Debussy's works is essentially biographical rather than musicological, and his approach to the subject yields many insights into Debussy's complex personality. This translation of Dietschy's biography makes the information available for the first time in English. The two translators have made a number of corrections, including Dietschy's own list of errata, not incorporated into the French edition. They have also updated the bibliography and list of works, and have been able to include information about some recently discovered manuscripts.

Esotericism as a Determinant of Debussy's Harmonic Language

Did Debussy employ an esoteric musical language, as his 3 September 1893 letter to Chausson (published in Claude Debussy Lettres, edited by Francois Lesure, Paris: Hermann, 1980, p. 51) suggests? A set of intervallic transformations that may be said to reflect such a language can be shown to exist in several works spanning the composer's mature career. An analysis of an early song, Le Balcon (1888), and the second prelude of Book I, Voiles (1910), one of the most discussed of Debussy's works, reveals a system of intervallic transformations that functions as a substitute for traditional voiceleading. Although the same system of transformations is found in works written at the beginning and end of Debussy's career, respectively, I make no claim to have uncovered Debussy's compositional system; there is no basis to suggest he employed one single system in any case. However, the results presented here may shed new light on the compositions discussed and contribute to the line of investigation opened by Roy Howat. 1

Steve Reich and Debussy: Some Connexions

Debussy's Works offer numerous examples of what, with historical hindsight, could be called systemic thinking. Texture is built up from repetitions of various elements—melodic scraps, trills, runs, figures—in such a way that the traditional view of Debussy as a primarily harmonic composer has to be temporarily abandoned. The combinations that these repetitions produce have a connexion with the innovative harmonic practices for which Debussy is famous; but this should not blind us to the fact that the underlying thought is often, in the good sense of the word, repetitious—see Examples 1 and 2, for instance.

NEW LITERATURE ON DEBUSSY

DEBUSSY'S biographers are blessed with a pioneer whose long and patient research work was exemplary. None of the numerous biographies of the last twenty-five years could possibly have been written without Leon Vallas's monumental 'Claude Debussy et son temps' (I932). Before his death in 1956 Vallas had completed an amended and enlarged edition of this basic work which has now been published under its original title (Albin Michel, Paris). The thoroughness of his method was amazing. He tracked down the son of Achille Arosa, the wealthy art-lover and friend of Gauguin who was Debussy's godfather, thus uncovering the extraordinary background of Debussy's childhood. Unfortunately, this valuable information was set out in the earlier edition in terms which Vallas now frankly admits were un peu mysterieux, with the result that reams of fanciful literature have been written suggesting that Debussy was Arosa's illegitimate son. This misinterpretation of the facts was long ago shown to have no more foundation than the wild rumour that Debussy was the illegitimate son of Gounod. These fanciful theorizings have now been finally demolished by Vallas's timely rectification of his account of this relationship. Vallas was also alone in having had access to fascinating revelations from Debussy's first wife, Lily Texier. It was this attractive dressmaker, to whom Debussy was married during the composition of 'Pelleas et Melisande', who retained one of his most sentimental possessions: the palette he cherished from the time of his boyhood ambition to be a painter. Lily Texier revealed to Vallas Debussy's feverish correspondence with her concerning their marriage, contracted under the threat of suicide, a recurrent spectre in his life, and she entrusted him with a remarkable unpublished score (for harps, flutes and celesta, first performed only a few years ago) of incidental music for a recitation of Pierre Louvs's 'Chansons de Bilitis'. He was also fortunate in having first-hand information on the origin of Debussy's works from several of the composer's friends, among them Charpentier, Vincent d'Indy and Paul Poujaud. In the earlier edition of his work he emphasized the importance of'Rodrigue et Chimene', the unpublished, incomplete opera based on 'Le Cid', preceding 'Pelleas'. The new edition gives a detailed description of