Homage a Rameau: An Analytic Study of Debussys Work - Essay Example

Homage a Rameau: An Analytic Analysis of Debussy’s Work In creating a work that gives honor to Jean-Philippe Rameau, Achille-Claude Debussy has developed a piano piece that does not imitate, but creates a sense of the theory and the musical development of the work of Rameau. Through understanding the work that Rameau did toward theoretical foundations of harmonic balance, in creating a portrait of the composer through his technical constructive style and baroque foundation, Debussy infuses his “Homage a Rameau” with the essence of the target of his work. The composition created by Claude Debussy to honor Jean-Philippe Rameau does not copy Rameau, but creates a textural analysis of his work, paying homage to his history, his life, his theories, and his compositional style. Jean-Philippe Rameau was a composer during the Baroque period whose music was marked by a technicality that expressed his desire to reflect music theory in his work. His work, “Hippolyte et Aricie“, was considered one of the best operas in the form of the tragedie en musique since the death of Jean-Baptiste Lully. Rameau desired to create new styles within new forms. “His harmonies were said to be more novel, his rhythms more skillful, his orchestrations more brilliant than Lully’s” (Arvey 101). Rameau 1 Client’s Last Name 2 created theoretical writing on music theory that established a core methodology for musical composition. He utilized theories from mathematics, and philosophy to enrich his harmonic theories which he believed to be derived from natural sources (Zbikowski 120-126). He believed that harmony was the most important aspect of music. In creating his work, Rameau also sought to develop the artistic side of the compositions. He said that “I try to conceal art by that same art”(Arvey 101). In creating his theory that harmony was derived from a natural sense of sound, he was reaching into the philosophical realm and extracting a way of thinking about music that was elevated above the pragmatism of the mathematical equations of harmony. He wrote with an “impressionistic palate” (Girdlestone 571) that was dramatic and emotional, however because of his time period, he was unable to break through the binding forms that Client’s diminished the brilliance of his construction. The way in which Rameau devised is theory allowed for the concept of the chord to be defined by the nature of the harmonic development. “Rameau brought theory into line with practice: realizing that the days of melody were over and much of the expressive power even of counterpoint was due to significant clashes of sound, he began his investigations with the chord given by the vibrating string“ and in searching for the place to find that sound, he searched “in the sound of which can be detected the upper octave, the twelfth, the second octave, the major seventeenth, and higher harmonics” (Girdlestone 519-520). The way in which he defines his theory of sound is by defining the ’root’ of the sound as the whole of the tone emitted from the string. Using the second 2 Client’s Last Name 3 and third harmonics, the major triad is then formed. “He thus finds the unity of harmony in one principle of sound instead of seeking it, as hitherto, in the divisions of the octave”(Girdlestone 520). Achille-Claude Debussy wrote a piece for the piano entitled, “Homage a Rameau“. In this work, he sought to honor the work of Rameau, but without copying any of the his compositions. He looked to recreate the aspects of Rameau that reflected “a refined and transmuted eighteenth century style, rendered piquant by a freedom of progressions in which the harmonic-conscious of Rameau would have been delighted” (Schmitz 105). This example of a ’sarabande’ creates a mixture of voice styles, a textural variety of styles from a “single voice (declamation, recitative), to a single voice accompanied by chords (aria), to contrapuntal sections of several independent voices” (Schmitz 106). Debussy even creates sections that are reminiscent of the organ as an homage to the organ history of Rameau. The history behind the piece is based on Debussy’s desire to reestablish the connection of French composers to their past. Debussy had become attached to the political and national aspirations of musical achievement that would influence his work after he was given the Legion de Honneur in 1903 (Trezise 39). He believed that the influential work of Gluck, Franck and Wagner was changing the course of French composition into a direction that was not truly reflective of the heritage of French music. In “Homage a Rameau”, it “has an expansive, monumental quality; the work can be read as a claim for equal status; the tribute of one French master to another” (Trezise 40). As 3 Client’s Last Name 4 Debussy made a conscious choice to connect with a certain ‘Frenchness’ in his work, his return to the influence of French composers in order to find influential inspiration created a context in which he could establish himself as a decidedly French composer who would pass this theory on to those who would follow his example. Having established the work of Rameau and the theoretical philosophy in which Debussy has written this work, the piece can be analyzed within the context it was written. When listening to the piece, one understands the development of a melancholy and reverence that is positioned in the beginning of the work to entrance the listener into the subtle nuances of a developing single voice. As the piece moves forward, the chord development becomes more sophisticated and with more layers of sound, developing on the themes of much older music, but still fresh and new as it embraces the tenets of impressionistic creative style. The reharmonization of the recurring motifs creates a haunted quality that in the controlled repetition allows for the sense of memory to be reinforced within the emotional context of the work. The first bar is answered in theme by the tenth bar in theme and measure. As the fifth bar is echoed in the sixth and seventh bar, the piece becomes a balance of texture an harmony. As the piece is played, the pianist must show attention to the development of the right an left hands as they must be played with technical attention in order to properly capture the emotional content and the expressive. The short motifs that are used in order to properly set the tone and context of the scene that will be expressed serve to create a foundation for the way in which the texture will expand. “The masterly use of opposed 4 Client’s Last Name 5 forms growing out of various developments of monophony and polyphony give this piece the quality of a great ‘fresco,’ and the absence of pedantically exact schematization preserves the charm of a carefree flight of music into wider spaces, carrying an emotional message which transcends gesture of a man to man”(Schmitz 106). Music that can be described with such poetry impresses the listener with the intent for emotional discovery in creating a moving tribute. The beginning of the piece has a melancholy that does not denote sadness, but rather infuses a sense of memory into the piece. However, as the piece moves into the 14th, 15th and 16th bars, a sense of sentimentality begins to be revealed as the piece reflects the baroque without indulging specifically in its form. By bar twenty four, the piece has built to an emotional pause, creating a climactic moment that is then brought back to the original motif in bars 26 and 26. The piece builds in intensity as it reaches bar 40, continuing through until bars 46 through 51 assigning a sense of the organ to the music, creating a great cacophony of sound which leads to the running chords which run from bars 52 through 56. In bar 61, the piece returns to the second motif, bringing the piece to the end with a return to the sentimentality that Debussy has attributed to Rameau. In creating a relationship to the slowed ’sarabande’ dance style of music to which Debussy alludes to in style and theme, he creates an implied nuance through the use of staccato dots and tenuto dashes (Smith 87). This can be seen in both bars 8 and 64 as an example of this allusion to the style. According to Smith, this may be an assumption on the part of Debussy that performers would understand the relational quality that this 5 Client’s Last Name 6 represented. Rameau had an affinity for the dance form and this pays tribute to this part of his compositional style. In passages that are modal and in some passages that are diatonic, the piece is created with dissonance, utilizing sub-dominant and sub-mediant chords (Smith 26). However, the classic style of the dance has a subtle presence that can be recognized when it has been The beginning of the piece has a movement that is slow, but constant as the piece is created through the introduction of motifs and tone. The flow of the piece begins to build as the depth of the chord progressions is intensified until the music becomes more static in bar 24 which creates a long series of long notes that allow for a release from the tension that was created previous to this section. Emotional build is created in bars 31 through 35 that has a softened movement and mobility, but is then intensified through a section that has movement, but a sense of the static as the intensity is created through long held notes with undercurrents of foundational sound. The piece ends with a reverent tone that brings the music back to its context as an homage to a master of theory and composition. Debussy is able to create a piece that utilizes the essence of the baroque style, while completely departing from its tight structures as the motifs are continually reinvented and wind there way up and down the emotional currents that suggest a memory of work to be admired. The emotional content of the work creates a sense of joy that is part of the melancholy. In the same way that funerary music must capture both the grief and the joy of the memories of someone who is passed from this earth, so to does “Homage a Rameau” create a sense of memoriam 6 Client’s Last Name 7 through both the pleasure and pain of remembrance of the departed. Debussy has created a beautiful work meant to encompass a great many aspects of Rameau within its content. He utilizes the theories of harmony and construction in order to reinvent the sense of Rameau, while never crossing the barrier in order to take directly from his work. The chord progressions can be seen from a baroque perspective, but they never fully adopt the formulations that might suggest a stronger alliance with the style. The work takes from Rameau’s life and develops themes, such as the use of the ’sarabande’ style and the suggestion of organ music, in order to directly connect with Rameau’s person. However, Debussy retains his sense of himself as a composer within the work, creating sound and movement that defines the music of his period. In working with the influential memories of a theoretical and complex composer of the baroque period, Debussy is still able to create a fresh and moving piece of music that is both soulful and inspiring. 7 Client’s Last Name 8 Works Cited Arvey, Verna. Choreographic Music for the Dance. New York, N. Y. : E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1941. Girdlestone, Cuthbert Morton. Jean-Philippe Rameau, his life and work. New York: Dover Publications, 1989. Schmitz, E. Robert. The Piano Works of Claude Debussy. New York, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1950. Smith, Richard Langham. Debussy Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Trezise, Simon. The Cambridge Companion to Debussy. Cambridge companions to music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Zbikowski, Lawrence Michael. Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analysis. AMS studies in music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 8 Read More