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Debussy (La soiree dans grenade (Harmony/Tonality (Parallel chords, a…
Debussy
La soiree dans grenade
Context
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Title of piece means ‘Evening in Grenada’. - Town in southern spain where 'moorish' invaders from Morocco in north africa had settled.
Habanera
The rhythm of the piece is based on the habanera, originally a Cuban dance.
Habanera spread to southern Spain in the nineteenth century. It is still a popular dance there today
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The dance is in simple duple time and has a distinctive rhythm of dotted quaver, semiquaver and two quavers
Staccato is an essential characteristic of the style, and can be found continuously from bar 5 to 16
Often the first note of the rhythm will be low pitched, as in bar 1.
The habanera rhythm is present in all of the first 16 bars and makes frequent reappearances in other
sections, often with repeated notes as in the bass from bar 23.
Guitar Sounds
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Dry sound of the rapid staccato spread chord of the flamenco guitar is found at the ends of phrases in the section beginning at bar 17.
Moorish Song
Melody beginning at bar 7 is like a Moorish lament. Starts with extreme dissonance with the opening D clashing with C#.
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Melody is distinctly conjunct. The rhythm is fluid like the improvisation important in flamenco style/
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Harmony/Tonality
Parallel chords, a favourite Debussy device, can be heard in various sections of the piece, e.g.
from bar 17, where there are parallel seventh chords.
Added note chords and chords based on fourths and fifths. The spread chords in the très
rhythmé section are an example.
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Despite the use of dissonance and chords built on fourths and fifths, some of the music is
distinctly tonal in character.
The central melody in octaves beginning at the end of bar 41, as
well as being entirely conjunct, is clearly in A major.
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Bars 24-25: Left hand is
in the treble clef, so there is a distinct change in pitch range here
The parallel seventh chord idea returns at bar 29, now in a transposed
version over an F♯ pedal.
The spread chords at the end of each of the first six bars are
built on fourths and fifths with added notes.
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Bar 61 rubato melody from bar 23 returns over C# pedal but this time without whole tone scale. Use of augmented second instead
Bar 67 - key signature changes to F♯ major. There is a G double sharp. which acts as a chromatic appoggiatura to the third of the tonic chord
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There are continuous parallel triadic
chords (built on thirds, without added notes)
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Rhythm/Metre/Tempo
Frequent changes of tempo - 4 seperate tempo markings on second page of score including rubato, retenu, tempo giusto then tres rhythme
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The Moorish lament begins at bar 7 in what is made to sound like free
time, including triplets (which often create cross‐rhythms).
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Bar 61 rubato melody from bar 23 returns over C# pedal but this time without whole tone scale. Use of augmented second instead
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A new, very rhythmic idea starts at bar 109. It is marked as lointain
(‘distant’), like a distant murmur of sound in the night air.
Bar 113 - wide leaping syncopated idea from bar 67 reaears but only for two bars, before the new 'distant' idea interrupts briefly, allowing the syncopated idea to continue for 3 more bars at bar 119
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Melody
The central melody in octaves beginning at the end of bar 41, as
well as being entirely conjunct, is clearly in A major.
Large range - Debussy requires cross‐hand technique towards the end of the movement where the Moorish
melody returns (bar 122).
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Bar 61 rubato melody from bar 23 returns over C# pedal but this time without whole tone scale. Use of augmented second instead
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At bar 78 a much smoother version of the theme from bar 23 and 61 now
returns, without the whole‐tone scale or augmented second
The music from bar 17 then returns again, leading into the theme from bar
43
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Structure
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Sense of very loose ternary structure with the lament melody from bar 7 returning near end at bar 122
Texture
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Bar 98: The music moves into three staves,
spread over a wide pitch range, with bottom E pedal notes in the bass.
Dynamics
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(from upbeat to 98), now pianissimo
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Context
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French impressionist painters such as Monet and Pissarro created ‘impressions’ of nature such as river scenes and pictures of flood, snow or flowers.
Debussy also wrote music that described natural features, such as the wind in the plain (La vent dans la plaine), clouds (Nuages) or the sea (La Mer). Both of the last two pieces are for orchestra.
The painters and musicians of the time were also fascinated by the art coming in from the Far East. Van Gogh included Japanese prints in a number of pictures.
Debussy, in his ‘Pagodes’, showed an interest in the far east. European musicians constantly in search of the exotic and new – anything to establish a style less closely related to German nineteenth‐century Romanticism. Spain became an inspiration for a number of composers.
Many of his compositions are miniatures – e.g., short piano pieces such as his Préludes. He put the titles at the end of the music – he didn’t want the musician (or listener) to be influenced too much by them.
Estampes
Set of three pieces for piano, composed in 1903. Debussy first begins to explore some of the main elements of the new impressionist style.
Brevity – Romantic composers tended towards extreme length. Debussy and other early twentieth‐century composers such as Webern often concentrated on smaller pieces. Melodies were often short – e.g., the two‐bar melody at the beginning of ‘Pagodes’.
Descriptive music – all three pieces have descriptive titles: ‘Pagodes’ (‘Pagodas’), ‘La soirée dans Grenade’ (‘An Evening in Grenada’) and J’ardins sous la pluie’ (‘Gardens in the rain’). Titles starting point for the musical style.
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Tonal schemes that avoid tonic and dominant chords. Idea of traditional key is avoided. Nevertheless, the music tends to be more diatonic than other early twentieth‐century music. Less chromatic than music of Schoenberg.
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Pagodes
Section A
Melody
Melodies influenced by pentatonic scale - Javanese slendro scale. Ostinato bars 3–4 only uses four different notes. Melody resembles what might be played on the metallophones of a gamelan ensemble.
Two‐bar pentatonic‐style melody begins in bar 3. Then used as an ostinato. This melody contains only four pitches – C♯, D♯, F♯ and G♯. A three‐note figure is played three times in the second of these bars, up an octave each time. The first two notes are then repeated as part of a triplet.
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Bar 7 - scalic countermelody in the middle of the texture, repeated at bar 9.
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Bar 11 - there are two new ideas. A pentatonic idea using all five notes now is played in octaves in the left hand, while a separate idea closely related to the ostinato motif is played in octaves in the right hand.
New music bar 15 - Rumbling triplet ostinato figure starts in the left hand using just two pitches, like a slow trill. An oriental‐style melody in simple rhythmic style produces cross‐rhythms with the left‐hand triplets – two against three (bar 16).
At bar 23 the bass reaches low B again, while the two hands explore versions of the four‐note idea from bar 11 in contrary motion.
Harmony/Tonality
The chords also feature added notes, e.g. the G♯ added sixth, right hand bar 1, avoiding straightforward triads and recreating gamelan harmonies.
The ‘gong’ sounds continue as a type of pedal for the first ten bars, when they are replaced by a single low G♯.
The key signature of five sharps suggests B major or G♯ minor but neither key is properly established. Debussy is using the black notes of the piano for their pentatonic possibilities. B is a tonal centre at the beginning rather than a key.
When the melody is repeated at bar 5, the harmonies change subtly, with the addition of a flat seventh A [natural] above the bass B.
24 - 28: Sustaining pedal is held on while the right hand plays triplets in two‐part harmony, producing chords of fourths and fifths, always avoiding tonal thirds. The last two bars of the section reproduce the harmonies from the beginning.
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Texture
Bar 7 there is an undulating scalic countermelody in the middle of the texture, repeated at bar 9.
A pentatonic idea using all five notes now is played in octaves in the left hand, while a separate idea closely related to the ostinato motif is played in octaves in the right hand.
At bar 19 the idea from the left hand of bar 11 returns in octaves at the top of the texture, with the triplet ostinato now in octaves as well.
24 - 28: Sustaining pedal is held on while the right hand plays triplets in two‐part harmony, producing chords of fourths and fifths, always avoiding tonal thirds. The last two bars of the section reproduce the harmonies from the beginning.
Rhythm/Metre/Tempo
An oriental‐style melody in simple rhythmic style produces cross‐rhythms with the left‐hand triplets – two against three (bar 16).
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Section B
Melody
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The whole‐tone melody returns in bar 46, this time in the left hand. The melody is repeated while the accompaniment dissolves into trills (bar 50) and the tempo slows.
Harmony
Bar 41 with the theme from bar 11 in parallel harmonies,
Rhythm/Metre/Tempo
The two‐note syncopated chords in seconds from the end of the A section continue as a linking feature while a new melody explores a whole‐tone scale.
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Rehearsal notes
Modérément animé - Still wanted to be influenced by his french background. Moderately animated at the beginning of pagodes.
Section A'
Melody
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The opening music then returns, without the two‐bar introduction.
The music rises to another climax in bar 73, as in the central section, using the same melodic material.
At bar 78 a new rippling ostinato figure starts in demisemiquavers at a high tessitura in the right hand.
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Dynamics
The dynamics become ever quieter (encore plus pp, bar 91) – ‘still more pianissimo’.
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The instruction at the end is to allow the notes to continue vibrating, until the sound evaporates, by keeping the sustain pedal depressed.