00:04
We return to the 23 greatest solo piano works. This is lecture 16, it is entitled debut. See, the sunken cathedral

00:19
Let us begin with three factual statements about the French composer, Claude Debussy Fact number one. Claude WC is one of a handful of the most original composers who ever lived. I would include among that handful Claudio. Monteverde Ludwig van Beethoven record Wagner and Igor Stravinsky. Impressive company, fact, number two, along with Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg debut.

00:53
See is the most influential composer of the last 100 years, fact, number three, along with Frederick Chopin and Franz List. Debut C is the most original composer of piano music who has yet to live to paraphrase. The late great Rodney dangerfield. When it comes to countries with a dramatic language heritage and that includes the US and the UK, the French don't get no respect.

01:25
If DBC had been German or Austrian and his name had begun with a letter B. You can bet your booty that he'd be acknowledged today as one of the four bees as it is debut. You see and his music stand on the periphery of the German dominated concert repertoire except in France?

01:46
Of course we are. He is treated like the compositional. God, he is. And where his god appeared on pre-year-old currency by comparison? How many composers have appeared on? American coins and currency? Correct. Zero. Oh and please. No gratuitous freedom fry, French bashing here. Really if Americans are put off by the O'Toole the sophistication and perceived arrogance of the French just think how the French see us with our shameless, a historic simplifications, the craven manner in which we insist on evaluating virtually every aspect of human activity based on its monetary value and the creativity stifling degree to which we indulge.

02:36
And what, the writer enormous mania calls the tyranny of pragmatism? The fact, is that along with Italy? Friends has given us civilization. And for that, we should be mighty grateful. So while a claude a shield gave you see might have had the double whammy of being both French and a rather challenging human being.

03:02
We are going to love and respect this bad boy. Not least because his music is stunningly original and beautiful a formative event. The terrible injuries inflicted on France by Germany and world wars one and two have obscured the impact of the conflict that helped lead to both world wars.

03:25
And that was the Franco Prussian war of 1870 and 1871. Here's what happened In 1868. Queen is a Bella. The second of Spain was deposed in what was called, the glorious revolution, which led to a dispute between France and Prussia as to who should assume the Spanish throne. This dispute was but a pretext for confrontation as bad feelings have been growing for years between France and Russia pressure, being the largest and most powerful of all the various German states, The French emperor Napoleon the third nephew of the big Kahuna himself.

04:09
Napoleon Bonaparte, had designs on the Rhineland, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg, and he saw the ever expanding power of Prussia as a direct threat to his imperial ambitions Thinking he was the little big man. Reincarnate. Napoleon the third decided to use the Spanish succession thing as an opportunity. To squash the presence.

04:33
Good At the same, the Prussian Prime Minister Autobahn Bismarck understood that a confrontation with France, was a heaven sent opportunity to unite the German states. Under precious leadership Bismarck played. Napoleon the third for the fool. He was and France, declared war on Prussia on July 19th. 1870. As Bismarck had calculated.

04:59
The other German states quickly fell in line behind pressure. My friends, it has been observed that where most countries have armies Prussia. Was an army with a country. The French were entirely out matched and were what at? Every step culminating in the battle of sedan, which occurred on September 1 and 2 of 1870, which ended when Napoleon the third surrendered and was taken prisoner along with 104,000 of his men, The German Army marched on Paris, which was put under siege on September, 19th of 1870 having consumed as much dog, ovarian ratatouille and cat burging young as they could stomach the Parisians surrendered on January, 28th, 1871 10 days.

05:52
Before on January 18th, a United German Empire had been proclaimed at the palace of Versailles purposely, rubbing through to cell in France's wound on February 17th. The Prussian army marched triumphantly through Paris France seated much of its regions of also and Lorraine to Germany and agreed to pay a 5 billion franc war indemnity.

06:18
This was followed by a brief but brutal uprising in Paris between March and May of 1871 known as the Paris Commune, When the Smoke finally cleared tens of thousands, more French were dead and the French third Republic was declared The third Republic. We made in power until July 10th 1940.

06:40
When it was swept aside by Nazi Germany following its invasion and defeat of France. The loathing the French felt towards things German in the years after 1871 was off the charts among the many upshots of this Germanophobia was the founding of the national society of music by a group of prominent composers that included Camille Cecil's and Gabrielle foray.

07:08
The mission of the society was to stop the influence of German music on French music by cultivating a distinctly, French musical art inspired by the French language itself. All of the just described events were witnessed and experienced by a preteen named Claude Debussy, who would grow up to identify himself.

07:32
Simply as musicio from say French musician. He was born in the Parisian suburb of San Jeram on lead on August 22nd 1862 and moved to Paris proper in 1867, his mother managed to spirit him out of Paris for the more hospital and virus of 10 in 1870, although he was powerfully affected by the events of the time.

08:00
As his father spent a year in prison for alleged revolutionary activities associated, with the Paris commune ABC began his piano lessons in 10. His parents was obvious from the start and on his return to Paris, in 1872. He was admitted to the conservatoire of the age of 10. He remained there for 12 years until 1884 as a student of piano debuts, showed moments of brilliance, but lacked the discipline required of a concert performer as a student of composition.

08:37
He was another thing altogether of brilliant rebel. The sort of wise guy student that drives teachers to drink debut, sees rebellious, streak and his fondness for the sheer, sensuality of strange, harmonies and harmonic progressions. Put him on a constant collision course with his teachers. One such pendant was a harmony instructor named Emile Durand.

09:03
Debbie sees fellow student Antoine Bannis described a typical lesson quote at the end of the lesson, when Duran had examined, all our exercises with scrupulous care. He would linger over a young clause work with almost epicurean enjoyment. So the ear criticisms and angry pencil marks rain down upon the pupils head and music paper.

09:31
However, as soon as the teachers natural prejudice was overcome, he would reread in silent concentration, the pages he had. So cruelly mutilated murmuring with an enigmatic smile, of course it is all utterly unorthodox but still it is very ingenious. Unquote in 1884 at the age of 22. The ABC won the pre-darome and was shipped off to Rome for two years living in what he complained was foreign exile or boy, so that the authorities in Paris, might keep a breast of his progress.

10:10
He was required to periodically, send back some of the music. He'd been composing. The first piece he submitted so listened this response from the professors back at the conservatory. And I quote was your debut seems to be afflicted with a desire to write music that is bizarre incomprehensible and impossible to execute unquote.

10:36
Look, we can't blame the old boys for not understanding but debussy was doing academic. Pendants are usually the last two admit that rules were made to be broken and that the textbooks that they themselves wrote must periodically. Be revised and rewritten, the fact is as an early 20 something composer.

10:59
Clawed WC was in the process of rewriting. The textbook by creating a musical language based on the sound nuance and color of the French language. Just as so-called French impressionist art, celebrated subtlety of color, blurred edges open, composition shifting life and visual fluidity. So debut sees entirely French music was the French language in musical action For debut scene.

11:30
The quality of sound itself was as important as the melodies harmonies and rhythms articulated by those sounds ABC was most aware of how new was his music. It was around 1910 that he famously said that quote, the century of arrow planes deserves, its own music as they are, no precedence.

11:56
I must create a new unquote, Claude debuts 4 piano debut. Wrote two books of preludes for piano each book contains 12 previews. The first book was completed in 1910 and the second in 1913 Davises preludes owe a clear debt to both the Ojon. Sebastian Bach and Frederick Chopin box.

12:24
Well-tempered clever consists of two books, each containing 24, pairs of preludes and feuds each pair set in a different one of the 24, major and minor keys, Chopans 24. Preludes published in 1839 as Opus, 28 are likewise set in each of the 24 major and minor keys, one, prelude per key like box.

12:49
Preludes showtimes are cast in no particular. Musical form unlike box. Preludes showtimes. Preludes do not introduce fugs but rather are self-standing works. Just as shown's preludes took a step beyond box. So debut sees preludes take a step or two beyond show pens like Chopin, the ABC composed a total of 24 preludes like Chopin debuts are self-standing works.

13:21
That constitute a virtual catalog of this pianistic and compositional. Innovations, unlike Chopin and Bach, the ABCs. Preludes do not feature all 24 major and minor keys. One prelude per key, as we will observe this issue of key area was for debussy increasingly immaterial. As his music, ventured ever beyond, the tonal harmonic system as an example of devices, pianistic and compositional innovations.

13:56
We turn to a period entitled. The sunken cathedral of 1910 ABC's, prelude is based on the legend of the mythical city of East built in the dwarven and a bay in Brittany. According to legend, the city was swallowed by the waters of the bay due to the naughty behavior of, its princess, a lady named Dahu who's hobby was staging orgies, and then killing her lovers at daybreak.

14:28
According to the legend on certain mornings, the cathedral of east rises from the sea. It's bells tolling and it's priests praying. Only to sink back below the surface. This is the story debussy suggests in his prelude. The musical means with which he creates atmosphere evokes events and moves from one event to the next are stunningly.

14:54
Original the prelude begins with a passage that features prizes octaves, fifth and forth.

15:19
These rising intervals are meant to evoke a type of 10th century church. Music called parallel organism, played piano similar very quietly. This music suggests an ancient religious pre-dawn environment. Well, it's slowly rising motion to picks the cathedral as it begins to rise from the depths.

16:24
The mysterious sense of weightlessness. We hear in, this opening can be attributed to the fact that not a single one of its harmonic units contains an interval of a third. There are no complete total harmonies here just rising octaves if and forth, please check it out. This is what the opening would have sounded like had deviously used complete harmonies called triads.

17:10
But there you see doesn't do that rather. He employs these open intervals instead.

17:28
The effect is one of harmonic suspension just so debut seasons. Tell us to play the opening in a song or as haze. What key are we in? Well, we don't know, is the mode, major or minor? We can't tell does the baseline move in such a way as, to create any sense of tendency attention or rest.

17:51
No, it does not. It's simply descends by step from G to F to E. Here's what happens in the base.

18:12
Buried within the rising organum. Like melody is a motive. A brief melodic idea that in some form or another will underpin the entire prelude. It consists of a rising major second, followed by a rising perfect. Fifth. We will call it the bell motive.

18:37
Following the rising organism a series of octaves quietly, bring out.

18:52
And now a somatic melody slowly emerges. The Melanie has the character of a plain chant and it is meant to evoke the quiet muscled praying of the priests

19:24
This plain chant like melody is heard against repeated. Bell-like ease high on the piano keyboard. Let's hear this plane chant melody.

20:04
To the quietly repeated ease. Meaning that the music is now in the key of E, major or E minor. No, it doesn't. In fact, the playing chant like melody is not set in major or minor, but rather in something called, C sharp dorian mode, an ancient scalar construct, that lacks entirely, the sort of harmonic tendency meaning tension and release inherent to the more modern and familiar major and minor modes at the conclusion of the plain chant.

20:37
Like melody the baseline slips downwards from the E to a D to a C. And finally, to a beat at, which point, a rolling wavelike left hand and harmonized bell motives in the right hand to pick the glistening cathedral rising from the depths and into the light of day.

20:58
Nope, while we listen to this passage the occasional bell-like harmonies that punctuate. The passage built as they are from clusters of notes which are, in fact, the notes of the bell motive heard simultaneously.

22:34
This first one-third of the prelude tells us much of what we need to know about devices. Revolutionary compositional style, the ABCs compositional style part one motivates and motivific development by friends. Debussy was a superb, compositional technician. Nowhere, is this more apparent than in his use of motivate development, which provides the steel mesh framework for his glowing atmospheric musical?

23:04
Surfaces, for example, the bell motive, the bell motive appears in some form or another as a melody, as a baseline or as a simultaneity.

23:35
The bell motive has heard melodically or as a baseline or as a simultaneity in almost every one of the preludes 89 measures generally an accurately. Speaking debut sees music, displays a degree of motivate unity and integration that would have made any German composer proud. A fact that would have earth debut.

23:56
See, no end had. He thought about it the ABC's compositional style part two thematic, melodies and pitch collections. More often than not debussy builds his thematic melodies from pitch collections other than traditional major and minor. For example, the plain chant melody is modal set as it is endorian mode.

24:37
Much. By the way has been made of debuses exposure to a javanese gambling. That is a javanese percussion orchestra that he heard at Paris's. Exposition universe out in 1889. And while they see, never explicitly employed, gamelan melodies in his music, the five pitch, pentatonic, scale employed by the gamelan was a regular feature in his music and other times, he used an eight pitch collection called an octatonic scale and a six pitch collection called a whole tone scale.

25:13
Anything, my friends to avoid the familiar sounds of major and minor, and the traditional harmonic expectations that go along with them devices compositional style. Part three rhythm while ABC could write powerfully pulls to music. His primary rhythmic impulse was towards the atmosphere. More often than not his rhythmic profiles.

25:39
Have the character of a slowly unfolding continuum in which metric regularity, the so-called tyranny of the bar line is rarely an evidence. This French language like rhythmics fluidity is a key to the expressive impact of debut's music, The man himself described his rhythmic intent. This way, quote, the music, I desire must be supple enough to adapt itself, to the lyrical, effusions of the soul and the fantasy of dreams.

26:12
Unquote. Debut sees rhythmic suppleness creates a floating. Magical other worldly sensibility. It also creates a distinctly non-western effect as well as time. In debussy's music is often perceived not as linear, but as existential, meaning the goal of a phrase or section is less important than the sensual. Beauty of the moment.

26:43
JBC's, compositional style, part four, harmonic structures. There you see employees familiar. Harmonic structures chords. Build primarily out of octaves, fifths forth and thirds. This is the primary reason. His music sounds so constant, especially when compared to the music of other early 20th century modernists like Arnold Schwenberg and Igor Stravinsky but but we should not be fooled by the relative.

27:15
Consonants of debuts harmonic usage because while he might employ familiar sounding harmonic structures, he does not deploy them in familiar ways. For example, the prelude reaches its climax with a clangerous passage that depicts the cathedral, it's bells ringing fully emerged from the sea in the bright light of day.

27:40
This celebratory event is a voke with a melody based on the bell motive, heard over a repeated sea deep in the pianos base, unlike the mysterious opening of the prelude, each of the harmonies in this passage is a complete triad. Let's hear this. Climactic passage.

28:45
Despite its complete triads and the pervasively, consonant sound of this passage, it is not functionally tonal the harmony never changes. There are no cadences or resolutions.

29:02
There is no differentiation made between consonants and dissonance. There are no harmonic progressions. In fact, the chords, which simply move and lock step with the melody? Play, no functional harmonic role whatsoever. They are their simply to fill out the texture and create color and senority. The bellringing melody itself is set in neither major nor minor.

29:39
But instead in what's called mixolydian mode, another ancient scalar construct, the fact that the base is totally immobile in this section of music assures that this passage will remain harmonically static, thus, the triads heard throughout the passage are familiar harmonic structures deployed in an unfamiliar manner along with the emerged.

30:07
Cathedral this passage is about the resonance of the piano and the fantastic bell-like, accumulation of overtones that results from holding down the sustained. Pedal while playing these huge sonaris chords and below pedal. See these them.

30:41
Following the bell ringing climax. A brief transition leads to a last version of the plain chant theme.

31:52
And now the cathedral sinks back beneath the surface of the water and disappears from sight with a deep gurgling trail.

32:44
ABC, depicts the cathedrals submergence with a descending string of dissonant harmonies. Each of these chords is a dissonance a big fat dominant, seventh chord that wants to resolve? For example, the first harmony in the descending string is a D sharp dominant, seventh chord. According to tonal practice, this dissonance should resolve to a G sharp chord and thus to a state of rest.

33:25
Listen, And here's the resolution. But debut sees D-sharp dominant, seventh chord does not resolve, It just slips down to a C-sharp dominance seventh chord which does not resolve either instead it slides down to a B dominant seventh chord which does not resolve which slips down to an A dominant seventh chord which does not resolve which bounces back up to a C.

33:55
Sharp dominant seventh chord, which does not resolve and which falls into a G sharp dominance. Seventh chord, which will not resolve, either These chords play no traditional harmonic role. What? So ever debacy uses them in descending parallel motion because they evoke the sinking cathedral. And because he likes the way they sound Debussy's compositional style part five baseline in traditional functional tonality the baseline has two mutually reinforcing jobs, one to support the harmonic progressions above it.

34:35
While two creating a melodic profile of its own. A baseline, is after all. Align a melodic structure in its own, right? Well, Debussy was no more interested in traditional baselines and their chord progressions than he was in brought version schnapps rather. He was interested in creating stretches of static music during which thematic development could occur and tamber tone color could be enjoyed as a sensual.

35:09
Pleasure in lieu of harmonically functional base lines, ABC, employs three different sorts of base structures. The simplest are pedals or drones sustained or repeated pitches used to underpin fairly long stretches of music. The low sea, heard repeated under the bell. Ringing climax is just such a pedal tone, the second sort of base structure.

35:38
Debuts the employees are astronauts brief melodic ideas, repeated over and over. Again, for example, at the conclusion of the prelude, a muffled version of the bell, ringing climax rumbles out from the very bottom of the piano a quiet memory of what once was this muffled bell. Ringing music is a company by a murmuring astronaut set at the very bottom of the piano.

36:07
Here's the astronaut.

36:19
Layered above the astronaut is the bell. Ringing music.

36:35
For all of its rhythmic activity. This passage is harmonically, static harmonic underpinning never changes, there is no progression from rest detention. And therefore, there is nothing to resolve. The passage is neither coming nor going, it's simply exists reveling in the moment. The third of Debussy's baseline strategies are those passages in which the baseline transits between passages under laying by pedals or astronauts such baselines will typically move by ascending or descending steps or by what are called symmetrical intervals, meaning a string of major or minor thirds, the primacy of the perfect fifth that had ruled the harmonic syntax of Western music since the 15th century is nowhere in evidence in such stepwise and symmetrical baselines deputies compositional style.

37:38
Part. Six timber more than it's programmatic story, more than it's themes more than it's harmonic structures and stasis. The sunken cathedral is about the piano, the seniority and the tamber, the tone color of the piano, it's resonance and overtones, it's bell like upper register and rumbling lower register. It's ability to create a halo of sustained sound around an unfolding idea as demonstrated at both the beginning and end of the prelude during which the music appears from and disappears into what debussy calls, a gently songless haze, my friends from the top, let's hear debut sees the sunken cathedral in its entirety

45:02
Again, despite its consonants and sheer beauty. This is music of astonishing modernity compositionally and pianistically. It is entirely original. May I see miss your debut. See.