Before the sounds of Debussy's etude fade entirely out of earshot, play Chopin's D-flat major (sixths) Etude, opus 25, no. 8;' then (re)play pour les Sixtes (repeat ad libitum). Each etude is about sixths, yet neither is about sixths in the same way. Nor is it as if Chopin's sixths go in one ear and Debussy's come out the other; for even though Chopin's spirit occasionally surfaces redolently in Debussy's etude, the lingering essence of Chopin has been dispersed, diffused, and finally engulfed. Chopin's sixths emanate from a circumscribed subworld of tones (the diatonic seven) interstitially connected with the rest of that world (plus five); his chromatically-interspersed, texturally-doubled sixths are outsiders, sonant winks embedded within above a diatonic scale-degreed backdrop. Debussy's sixths, however, do the reorientingby shifts, slides, glides, and slithers-moment by moment, patch by patch, as they collectively redefine and redesignate the non-degreed region within which we hear them as being. Out of each successive and componentally-differentiated sixth, fluctuating subworlds of tones and other intervals emerge: as the opening pair of sixths pass by we hear the between-interval of a second; in the next skipped pairs, thirds; then a skip of a fourth, etc. Neither pitch of Debussy's sixths can comfortably be construed as the doubler, the embellisher or elaborator: their
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