Music History - Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy - Essay Example

Maurice Ravel’s tone is even and consistent, but overall there is a level of seriousness in this piece, which is evidenced by the quality of the music.  Ravel is not seen here as a minimalist.  Rather, he scores points for being able to work within a theme. 

Ravel’s beginning brings one to a cheery internal place.  The middle of the piece becomes somewhat frustrated and slightly complicated with a few swirls of menacing notes, but they largely subside within a few bars of music.  Ravel’s minuet then comes to a peaceful close.  Ideally, this piece is suited for lounge music at a wedding hall, because it has the elegance and grace that one might expect in fine dining music.  Ravel’s “Minuet” begins in the tone of “piano,” a light tone.  The notes in Ravel’s arrangement are generally stand-alone, for the most part.  It seems like it would be a relatively moderately difficult piece to play on the piano, though not impossible.  Ravel’s piece changes its loudness briefly to “mezzo forte” (medium loudness) but retreats to “pianissimo,” which is very soft.  As “Minuet” ends, he is on the softer side of the scale.

In Claude Debussy’s “Hommage à Haydn,” he winds all over the place, but it is with a definite purpose—ultimately having a beginning, a middle, and an end.  He starts slow, being very intentional as to the path on which he is going to bring his listener.  There is a light, airy feel to the music, as though one were sitting at the kitchen table at breakfast on a bright, sunny morning.  All at once Debussy takes the listener by storm on a crescendo of sounds with several changes in scale in the background, until there is a groundswell of competing audio, which includes a darker tone to the music.  This is the climax.  Ultimately, however, this darker tone is resolved within the last half-minute or so of the piece, and the listener is once again allowed back into the realm of the sunny kitchen dreamscape.

“Hommage à Haydn” is a piece that begins in doux et express if, “sweet and expressive,” and in the tone of “piano,” which is a light tone.  In the piano piece, there are quite a few notes which must be held down to carry over to the next note, which indicates, at least at the beginning, a slowness to the piece.  Very soon, however, quicker notes appear, and one can tell that the piece eventually moves faster.  Ultimately it slows down again by the end. 

There are differences and similarities between these two pieces that tell volumes about Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy, their musical styles, and perhaps their philosophies as composers.  Ravel’s “Minuet” is a charming piece that could be used as chamber music or in some other entertainment venue, because, to be frank, of its blandness.  Although it is an exceptional piece of music, it does not stray much from being background music that one might hear played by a pianist at the dinner party of a well-to-do socialite.  

“Minuet” begins cheerfully, as does “Hommage.”  That is about where the songs’ similarities end.  Debussy’s “Hommage” goes on to have a frightful crescendo come from out of nowhere in the middle of the piece, which strays from the sensible, plodding, and timed nature of “Minuet.”  These piano pieces speak a great deal to both Ravel’s and Debussy’s sense of style as impressionists in the musical world.  Ravel seemed to work better within the frame of a general framework or overall musical theme, to which he stuck.  Additionally, he appears to have been the type of composer who philosophically chose to be consistent about how the message of his music played out.  He didn’t have a completely stunning event that threw off the entire musical piece—just a few rabble-rousing notes that would get the crowd to sit up and listen. 

Then he would bring the work to a close.  Debussy, however, obviously had a much different musical style and philosophy.  The spontaneous creative juices that inspired his work are audible in the climax of “Hommage.”  Crescendoes peak and roar, thrilling and exciting the listener—awkwardly introduced into the music perhaps—but no one could have done it better.  It seems that this would speak to a tendency of Debussy to want to include in his music the unexpectedness that comes with living life, and the necessity to infuse some of the vigors felt in the realness of living into his music.  For both composers, for their respectively strict constructive, and decidedly more spontaneous contributions to the world of music, we are forever grateful. 

Maurice Ravel’s “Menuet Sur le Nom d’Haydn” and Claude Debussy’s “Hommage à Haydn” are two extraordinary pieces of music.  Both begin lightly, with cheery tones.  But there are obvious stylistic and philosophical differences evident in these two pieces.  Here, a lay analysis of the two pieces has been given; a more technical analysis of the two works has been mentioned; and a comparison of the two pieces has been rendered.