Debussy's Corner

[Homo Aestheticus]

A couple of nights ago I revisited both Jeux and the Images pour orchestre (Martinon/ORTF National Orchestra) . . . absolutely wonderful, and Debussy at the top of his form.

I execrate  Jeux.

[Kullervo]

Anyone seen that Johnny Depp movie Trepidation and Execration in Las Vegas?

[karlhenning]

I execrate  Jeux.

No matter, Eric;  it only reflects your musical shortcomings.

[Homo Aestheticus]

No matter, Eric;  it only reflects your musical shortcomings.

"One cannot but note the manner in which it abhors and shuns the easily achieved, the facile, the expected. Its colors and designs are rare and far-sought and most heedfully contrived; its eloquence is never unrestrained; and this hatred of the obvious is as plainly sincere as it is passionate and uncompromising; it is not the fastidiousness of a précieux, but of an extravagantly scrupulous and austerely exacting artist..."

That was Lawrence Gilman writing on  P&M.

It's too bad that it can't be applied to  Jeux. 

[karlhenning]

"One cannot but note the manner in which it abhors and shuns the easily achieved, the facile, the expected. Its colors and designs are rare and far-sought and most heedfully contrived; its eloquence is never unrestrained; and this hatred of the obvious is as plainly sincere as it is passionate and uncompromising; it is not the fastidiousness of a précieux, but of an extravagantly scrupulous and austerely exacting artist..."

That was Lawrence Gilman writing on  P&M.

It's too bad that it can't be applied to  Jeux.

But you really are dense, Eric.  For every syllable of that paragraph applies to Jeux, as well.

Your personal preferences do not map onto universal aesthetics, Eric.  Get. Over. It.

[karlhenning]

If anything, Debussy applies yet more the principle of "hatred of the obvious" in Jeux than he had done in Pelléas.

[karlhenning]

In The Guardian, 23 February 2001:

The poème dansé that is arguably Debussy's supreme achievement, and certainly his greatest orchestral work, was written in the astonishingly short period of three weeks in August 1912, though the premiere, danced by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, did not take place until the following May. Perhaps it was the very speed of composition that allowed Debussy's musical thoughts freer than usual rein, and gave an intuitive shape to the piece that came to closer than ever before to the ideal of free musical association to which so much of his mature music aspires.

Even an "impressionist" masterpiece such as La Mer has a strong symphonic framework to bolster its evocative imagery, but Jeux is sustained on a web of tenuously connected ideas in which one motif seems to spawn the next, so that nothing ever returns in identical fashion. The scenario to which it was originally danced seems almost irrelevant nowadays. "There is a park, a tennis court; there is a chance meeting of two girls and a young man seeking a lost ball; a nocturnal landscape, and a suggestion of something sinister in the darkening shadows" - that was how Debussy described it in a letter to the Paris newspaper Le Matin. But it was the fact that the score seem to score defy rigorous analysis that raised into a modernist icon for the post-Webern generation of serialists, who pored over the subtle interrelations of its themes and the ambiguity of its overall form, clothed in ever-changing orchestral colours.

Jeux has never been as popular in the concert hall and on disc as La Mer and Debussy's orchestral Images . . . .

"Arguably Debussy's supreme achievement," is Jeux.  And he calls Jeux "certainly his greatest orchestral work," greater even than La mer.

[karlhenning]

This supple music is extraordinarily nimble, always ready for sudden movements. It is constantly on the alert like the tennis players it describes. Every few bars its movement and color change. It quickly abandons a design, a timbre, an impulse, and rushes off in another direction. Presently, the melody is returned with a skilful back-hand stroke; the theme, dexterously taken, is sent to and fro in volleys or half-volleys, now stopped short in its course, now taken on the rebound like a cut ball.

[Homo Aestheticus]

But you really are dense, Eric.  For every syllable of that paragraph applies to Jeux, as well.

Your personal preferences do not map onto universal aesthetics, Eric.  Get. Over. It.

Jeux  sounds very contrived; it is hard-edged and unsensuous. There is no magic there.

But it doesn't really matter because the gods of music gave us plentiful enchantment in works like Faun, Pelleas and La Mer.

[karlhenning]

Another unusual idea of Debussy's concerning Jeux had even wider ramifications for the future of music: "I would like to make something inorganic in appearance and yet well-ordered at its core." In fact, it has been shown that there are subtle patterns of recurring orchestral timbres, motifs, and tempos throughout the score, following the action of the ballet, and providing threads of continuity in a musical texture often characterized by discontinuity.

Interestingly, Jeux - Debussy's last completed orchestral score - remained relatively unknown for decades after it was written. It didn't start to attract widespread attention until the 1950s, when its innovative musical ideas - those on continuity and discontinuity, among others - came to be better understood. It seems that the portrait of "the man of 1913" may indeed be found in Jeux, but he lives in Debussy's music rather than in Nijinsky's banal story. Jeux survives today almost exclusively as a concert piece, and as such, it is both one of Debussy's most exciting works and one of the great scores written for Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.

"[ S]omething inorganic in appearance and yet well-ordered at its core."  A large part of the magic of Jeux, IMO.

[karlhenning]

Sorry, Eric;  there's ample magic in Jeux.  Nor do I find even a single "contrived" note in it.  No "hard edges";  no lack of sensuous timbre.  These are just your catch-phrases to try to dismiss music that you don't like, and probably do not understand.

Sorry you can't taste the magic;  it is for taste-buds more refined than yours, perhaps 

[karlhenning]

Jeux is Debussy's final and most neglected orchestral masterpiece. One reason for the neglect is that this Mt. Everest of musical abstraction was actually presented as a Diaghilev ballet (1913) with a trivial wisp of a story involving two female tennis players vying for the same male, where the fall of the tennis balls signal the key points in the structure. The second reason is that this music is profoundly new, a far advance beyond La Mer and Images. It is a subtle, interconnected web of musical tissue with motives appearing, developing and transforming without borders or boundaries, always coruscatingly beautiful.

"Always coruscatingly beautiful," Eric.  Mr Rosen is alive to the piece's constantly fresh beauties.  And he understands Jeux better who speaks of its "subtle, interconnected web of musical tissue" than whoever it was thought there were "hard edges" in the piece.

[Homo Aestheticus]

In The Guardian, 23 February 2001:

"Arguably Debussy's supreme achievement," is Jeux.  And he calls Jeux "certainly his greatest orchestral work," greater even than La mer.

How can that be ?     

Putting aside its more complex structure, etc..

Can you honestly say that  Jeux  is intensely beautiful ?

[karlhenning]

Can you honestly say that  Jeux  is intensely beautiful ?

You don't listen, do you, Eric?  I have said that, honestly and repeatedly.

[karlhenning]

Put it this way, Eric.  I can listen to Jeux every day for two weeks straight.  Its delights are never-failing.

[Homo Aestheticus]

You don't listen, do you, Eric?  I have said that, honestly and repeatedly.

One of the great mysteries to me is how anyone could prefer the unromantic  Jeux  over the delicately-structured, enchanting and otherworldly opera.

[karlhenning]

One of the great mysteries to me is how anyone could prefer the unromantic  Jeux  over the delicately-structured and magical, otherworldly opera.

Your talk always chases its own tail, Eric.  Jeux is no more "unromantic" than the pieces you prefer.  Jeux is, if anything, more delicately-structured than the pieces you prefer;  and a great many of the people who appreciate Jeux apply the terms magical & otherworldly to it.

The mystery boils down, not to these traits, Eric, but to your liking some pieces, and somehow not liking (say) Jeux.  Doesn't mean that Jeux is at all "deficient";  just means that you don't like/understand it.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Jeux is no more "unromantic" than the pieces you prefer.

Really ?

But it sounds much more austere and rigorously formed.

[Joe_Campbell]

Really ?

But it sounds much more austere and rigorously formed.

But according to you, it shouldn't matter how it's formed. The sole basis for critique is how it makes the listener feel. Clearly, it makes Karl feel quite nicely!

BTW, what's with this thread? I see a mishmash of quotes of text I haven't seen posted, and responses to things not even written.

[Homo Aestheticus]

But according to you, it shouldn't matter how it's formed. The sole basis for critique is how it makes the listener feel. Clearly, it makes Karl feel quite nicely!

BTW, what's with this thread? I see a mishmash of quotes of text I haven't seen posted, and responses to things not even written.

JCampbell,

I just think it's a shame when Karl wrote the following about  P&M:

"I continually marvel at the slow pace, tedium, monochrome wash, somnolence, indistinct rhythm, and sustained boredom in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande..."

****

Sad to read this about such an immensely sophisticated and great masterwork.