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Debussy: La Mer
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The application of the term "impressionist" to Debussy and the music he influenced is a matter of intense debate within academic circles. One side argues that the term is a misnomer, an inappropriate label which Debussy himself opposed. In a letter of 1908, he wrote "I am trying to do 'something different'--an effect of reality...what the imbeciles call 'impressionism', a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by the critics, since they do not hesitate to apply it to Turner, the finest creator of mysterious effects in all the world of art."[9] The opposing side argues that Debussy may have been reacting to unfavorable criticism at the time, and the negativity that critics associated with impressionism. It can be argued that he would have been pleased with application of the current definition of impressionism to his music.
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Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, based on the play of the same name by the Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck, was produced in 1902. It earned Debussy widespread fame as a musician of outstanding significance. The extent to which his score retained and enhanced the abstract, dream-like quality of Maeterlinck's play was extraordinary, as was his treatment of melody; in his hands, the latter became virtually an extension, or duplication, of the rhythm of natural speech. Regarded by some critics as a perfectly wedded fusion of music and drama, it has had frequent revivals.
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Debussy's music virtually defines the transition from late-Romantic music to twentieth century modernist music. In French literary circles, the style of this period was known as Symbolism, a movement that directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant.
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Fragmentary Like the balungan in gamelan music, Debussy often uses melodic material that is made up of brief motivic units which are repeated without any particular sort of development. For instance, in "Bells Through the Leaves," Debussy writes in four distinct layers:
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The two books of Preludes are quintessential examples of Debussy's ability to evoke moods, memories and images. The heathlands named in the title of Bruyeres may be the moors of the Scottish highlands or the severe coast of Brittany or some other stark landscape. The meandering melody line suggests both the openness of the countryside and the loneliness of a wanderer upon the land. La fille aux cheveux de lin ("The Girl with the Flaxen Hair"), based on the poetry of French writer Charles Marie Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894), tells of a young Scottish girl singing in the morning sunshine of her simple, unaffected love. La cathedrale engloutie ("The Sunken Cathedral") was inspired by an ancient Breton legend of a submerged cathedral that rises briefly above the waves on clear mornings, bells tolling and priests chanting. Debussy evoked this miraculous phenomenon by suggesting the parallel harmonies of Medieval organum and the smooth melodic leadings of Gregorian chant.
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Debussy's title 'Jimbo' is his misspelling of Jumbo, and the elephant lullaby opens with a soft lumbering sort of phrase. This pace gradually picks up and the melody, with its hint of the Orient, briefly shines through, before the merest whisper of an ending - all wrapped up in some of Debussy's own magical harmonies.
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