Claude Debussy - Jardins sous la pluie - Radio Paradise -Internet Radio

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Artist:

Claude Debussy [ more ]

Song:

Jardins sous la pluie

Album:

Debussy: Piano Works (Pascal Rogé) [ info ]

Released:

1903

Last Played:

May 17, 2013 - 05:41

Avg. Rating:

8.2 (Total Ratings: 468)

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125 comments for this song:

ch83575

Posted: May 17, 2013 - 06:10

fredriley wrote:

Because the more modern the classical music, the less constrained by musical conventions it is, though that's a very broad brush generalisation. So Mozart had to compose within very strict conventions, as did Beethoven but less so. Move on to Shostakovich, say, and conventions went out of the window. Arguably, the less need to conform to conventions, the greater the room for expressionism, though many take the view that composing within conventions (12-bar blues, say) allows you to be more expressive. For sure, Beethoven was pretty damn expressive. I hold no view on that being pretty much an ignoramus in such matters.

19th and 20th century classical music is highly expressive, though how much that's down to lack of convention, and how much down to artistic fashions (IIRC Debussy was contemporary with Impressionists in painting, though please correct me if I'm wrong), is difficult to say.

Could it perhaps be more akin to technological advancement than a lifting of conventions? In the beginning there were forms and styles that developed through the generations that composers knew made good sounding music, so they wrote within those forms. Then, as that grew dull an imaginative person -- say a Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, etc. -- would come along and introduce something new that pushed the boundaries of the form but also sounded good. The next generation could operate within a wider range of conventions and push the boundaries again. The trick here is that I like to imagine that Bach would enjoy Shostakovich -- at least Beethoven, Shostakovich might be too unfamiliar to sound good at all -- but he simply couldn't imagine it from his position in time.

This is just like technological advancement. Would Watt have preferred to invent a V8 Hemi instead of a steam engine? Sure, but from his spot in time he simply couldn't imagine it. The physical principals are exactly the same between the two, but that doesn't mean that Watt could a V8. The people who's names we remember are those who opened the conventions and took steps forward. In science this would be Newton, Maxwell, Plank, Einstein and many others. In music it might be Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz. But these are just the big steps, everybody involved is trying to make what progress they can. In this way, I contend, music and science take the same evolutionary trajectory, and that is why we prefer more modern composers for the most part. And when we reach back in time, we make sure that we select the people who made major advancements, not just practitioners.

The only problem with my hypothesis is that I have no idea where Justin Bieber fits in... oh well.

trek_29er
(western carolina)

Posted: May 17, 2013 - 05:52

don't know why,but, this kinda makes me reach for 7 Horse..low fuel drug run

Grammarcop
(A mitten surrounded by water)

Posted: May 17, 2013 - 05:49

I hear strains of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto.

unclehud
(now 50 feet above the planet in Boston)

Posted: Mar 15, 2013 - 11:46

You know, I just don't get Debussy. No reapeting motifs, blatant disregard for accepted forms ... kind of like just a bunch of plinking piano notes with crescendos and et cetera.

Give me some serious Russian/Austrian power with a full orchestra, though, and I be dancin'.

Proclivities
(Paris of the Piedmont)

Posted: Mar 15, 2013 - 11:46