Voiles ~ Sails

Good evening young musicians!

Okay, as I wrote in my first blog post, I am going to show you all a bit of Claude Debussy's work.
I also wrote about Voiles, Debussy's piece about sails. Since I have done work in class on this particular piece, I figured I'd start somewhere where I knew what I was talking about.

So:
I'm going to do some short analysis of a couple bars in the score of Voiles, and show you guys what I'm going on about.

Okay, so in the first nine bars it is pretty darn evident that this composition isn't exactly like any other composition that I have come across. Many scores that I have studied, have been in class so they are usually quite defined and stabilized.

Debussy uses one crescendo and three decrescendos in the first four bars, making the starting impression that lasts throughout the song. It makes the music become louder and then very, very quiet again. Debussy uses the dynamic markings of p and pp, which mean piano and pianissimo. Piano means soft and pianissimo means very soft. He used these markings to make the piece super quiet.

In the sixth bar we can see a random bass clef in the treble. At first I was really thrown off by this as I hadn't seen in any scores I have looked at. I was really confused as to if this was a mistake or if it was on purpose. After talking to my music teacher about it, I understood reasoning why the bass clef is placed here. Having the bass clef in the treble helps make it much easier to read. The lines above the notes in bars are signifying that they are supposed to 'swing' into each other. The way I say it is to 'swing' but the quick explanation is that the lines instruct the musician to play them some what together and not ridged and  to not play the notes one-by- one.

From the tenth bar we can see these round half-circle lines. These are indicating to us that these certain notes are to be resinated, in other words, to echo. Also in the tenth bar we see the treble re-appear! Every thing is okay again! In the bass we get these heavy, low notes being played quite loudly. The long line under the notes tells us that Debussy wants them to be played and echoed into each other. In bar eleven the treble is resting and the bass is carrying the melody. we see a large de crescendo which makes the piece barely audible. The dots under the notes are accents, telling us to play them loudly and rigidly.  



The treble comes in to the bass in the fifteenth bar. This is so the low notes are easier to read and play. The bass returns for a brief bar, playing just four notes and then the treble takes back over.

Okay, well that's it for now, I hope some of you learned something. I will post another post shortly, analysing another one of Debussy's pieces, Valse Romantique.

Thanks for reading!
Tanisha Ivy Pearl


Score from:
http://imslp.org/wiki/Pr%C3%A9ludes_%28Book_1%29_%28Debussy,_Claude%29

Introduction to Claude Debussy ~ Impressionist Composer

Rightio! Welcome all young musicians, who are also taking music, and who have been assigned the 'Music Blog' assignment. I don't really enjoy the Wordpress site, so I've decided to use this domain as a place to start my music blog.

The composer I have chosen to study is Claude Debussy. Debussy was a French composer, he enjoyed impressionism.

You may have heard impressionism in art class once or twice, and this is sort of the same type of thing, at least that's what I identify it as.

Impressionism in music is when you imagine something like sails, for example, and imagine what it would sound like. then you go off and write your little composition that sounds like sails.

The way I've interpreted it is something like Van Gough's work. The way things are in his paintings aren't how they actually how they are in real life.

So the impressionistic music that Debussy composes isn't the literal sounds that the sails make, but what they would sound like if they had a melody. The music is the way Debussy imagines it.

This was new and different in his time, because the music available in this time period was all stable and very to the point. Think of Beethoven and Mozart, they are the grrovy dudes who came up with those melodies that get stuck in your head all the time for no reason, (or is that just me?). Their music is very defined and stays at the same tempo and dynamic markings for most of the composition. Here's a quick example, bet you guys all know this song ! This is 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik' in G major, K.525.

Debussy does the opposite, he brings in many dynamic markings, crescendo and decrescendo.
With impressionism in Debussy's work, in many of his compositions the dynamic marks bring the music loud and soft again, giving the music 'blurred' edges and not really defining the notes. He was a key composer who changed the way future musicians composed, I suppose you can say he helped pioneer the Impressionist evolution of music.
Here's another quick video, this is Voiles, (meaning Sails in English), by Claude Debussy. Notice the looseness of the melody.

Well, that's all for now muso's. I shall blog more in the next coming days, so stay tuned if you want to see some score analysis!
Goodnight all. :)

Tanisha Ivy Pearl x