Debussy Versus Handel Claude Debussy and G.F. Handel are well known for long musical presence. Although they have similarities within their pieces being studied, the various differences are present more often. Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” is a softer, springtime sound with the flute as its main instrument. Handel’s “The Trumpet Shall Sound” has a gospel feel with the soloist’s melismatic notes and the presence of the trumpet soloist. Through the comparison between rhythm, harmony, timbre, dynamics, form, and word-music relationship, we will be able to see the similarities and differences. Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” starts off soft, almost eyrie sounding. The flutes presence is well known as it glides to its next note. The flute aspect sounds as if the sun if rising across a meadow. At around 0:25 seconds, the flute sounds dissonant with the other instruments making a somewhat clash. The flute rises and falls like a roller-coaster. The instruments become louder at 1 minutes 30 seconds and grow faster and faster in pace at 1 minutes 40 seconds. The instruments even out to hear the flute playing in a more dominate role again at 1 minutes 48 seconds. The music crescendos until is as soft that you hear nearly nothing. The melodies come back in to play with the flute. At 3 minutes 10 seconds, the eyrie sounds creeps back in with faster changes and buzzing, almost bee like. At 3 minutes 45 seconds, the violins play a almost fairy like noise,
The evolution of the Sonata form in the Classical period and the Romantic era gave composers a platform to encourage and indulge their curiosity. Theses composers took a form an exploited it as limitless. They introduced new elements that combined the classical and romantic era bridging them like star crossed lover’s. In this essay, my aim with this paper is to present how one of the greatest forms in music inspired genius throughout the classical era and beyond.
As noted by Robert Hughes, "Beethoven was not only the embodiment of all that was before him, but also of that which was yet to come" (Hughes 486). The truth of this may be seen by comparing Beethoven's 5th Symphony in C Minor to Haydn, the father of Symphony, and his 95th in C Minor. While Haydn's symphony is both playful and dramatic, Beethoven's symphony is grander both in terms of scale and vision. He expands the size of the orchestra to incorporate the sounds swirling around, underlying, and depicting the arrival of Fate in a rhythm-driven, thematic symphony that takes Haydn's form and runs with it as though to the top of a mountain peak. This paper will analyze the symphonies by movement, according to form, size, structure, tonalities, melodies, orchestral sound and overall mood and effect.
This paper will begin with a brief discussion of sonata form, which will define many of the terms used in the remainder of the paper. Next, a detailed explanation of first-movement concerto form as it was understood in Mozart’s time. Following this, Mozart’s habits of altering tradition will be established, and there will be an analysis of the alterations he makes to first-movement concerto form in his Clarinet Concerto K 622, and how they foster unity.
When Bach was in Arnstadt when he was younger, the organ ordinarily lacked a 16-foot register on the keyboard; consequently, it sounds an octave lower than the normal 8-foot register. Accordingly, in order to create the effect, Bach used octave doubling; consequently, he continued the resounding effect of the opening bars; conversely, there is no octave doubling in any of Bach’s later organ works; moreover, the fugue sounds furious with its uninterrupted series of fast notes. Also, Bach felt embarrassed about his crude style, and he put the work aside; consequently, Bach lost a lot of his other early organ work completely. Conversely, the Tocca and the Fugue has an unstructured form, and that means that keyboard players can let their imagination run wild; as a result, Johann Gottfried Walther described the Toccata as a long piece in which both hands alternate, sometimes accompanied by long pedal notes. For this reason, Bach connected the Toccata’s freedom to the stylus phantasticus; moreover, stylus phantasticus was popular in North Germany from the seventeenth century; in addition, people described this style of composition as “freed from all constraint”. Moreover, it’s remarkable that Bach paired the toccata with the prelude and the fugue because it’s subject to strict compositional rules; nevertheless, the fugue derives its thematic material from the preceding part.
The fugue is often regarded as a genre defined by strict procedural guidelines. It is notable that three historically important composers, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759), and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), all employed a closely related fugue subject in three different works. An analysis of each of these works individually, and a comparison of these works collectively reveal numerous latent and salient features, and a reflection of the composers’ style within these works. Analyses also provide an outlook into the fluidity in certain aspects and rigidity in others of the form itself, reflected historically. The three composers analyzed fall closely together in history. J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel were contemporaries, whereas Mozart was born six years after Bach’s death and three years before Handel’s death. Analytically, the angularity of these similar fugue subjects presupposes a treatment regardless of the composer. Because of the shared intervallic content among the subjects of these fugues, despite being written by several different composers, a surprising number of similarities arise. Therefore, it is reasonable to assert that compositional choices made in the construction of the fugue subjects limit the number of results possible.
Bach’s complex compositional style incorporates religious and numerological symbols that fit perfectly together in a puzzle of musical code. Demanding unfaltering facility in dexterity, precise pitch, particularly in the multiple stoppings, as well as sensitivity to implied polyphonic and harmonic textures. These exceptional works may be the closest thing we have to a “perfect” composition, so why is it that musicians have drastically different alterations and interpretations of his works? It is as if quality, intensity, duration, and even pitch are subject to the performer’s adaptation. By mapping out these alterations performers make to Bach’s music, it becomes possible to map out their respective musical personalities.
The eight-part collection for various combinations of trumpets and trombones, Canzona septimi toni no. 2 by Giovanni Gabrieli, employs antiphony as a means of taking advantage of church acoustics. His strategic separation of two instrumental groups illuminates the dialogic structure of Gabrieli’s composition. It’s meter alternates between duple and triple, finally returning to duple meter pending the completion of the piece . In terms of harmony, the work contains mainly homophony, again, alternating between both instrumental groups placed antiphonally within the church. The through-composed canzona exhibits Gabrieli’s cultivation of musical material in dialogue between instrumental groups. The timbre, meter, and antiphony utilized in Gabrieli’s
inspiration for the composition of the piece, as it was written in French to make use of the language’s sound and enhance its decadence.
Through the various textual is features, the composers of both The Shoe Horn Sonata and The boy In striped pyjamas have created didactic texts that explore the extremes of human suffering during the brutality of war, effectively engaging the audience by appealing to their emotions.
He began to write preludes for organs but did not cover large- scale organization, when two melodies interact at the same time. A few years after playing for the church, Bach made a visit to Dieterich Buxtehude in Lubeck. This visit reinforced Bach’s style in music with the works he has made.
Bergeron, paradoxically yet successfully, chooses to get to the core of the French mélodie by looking at it from a distance. Her focuses on the mélodie’s complex relationship with the German Lied, the pedagogical movements of the French language in the late-nineteenth century, and Claude Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Melisande in order to “examine the range of French expression [Debussy] puts on stage and how he represents that range in music” are all indirect yet inventive ways in which Bergeron embraces the challenges of defining this elusive vocal genre (xiii). Perhaps Bergeron sets out to define the French mélodie through indirect methods for exactly that reason; a genre as complex as the mélodie could not be fully understood if one attempted to get to its center through traditional means. Stating that French art song is “a musical repertory based on […] delicacy and restraint […]”, Bergeron clearly has a grasp on
The piece written at a slow tempo and has a meter of 4/4 throughout. It has a soft and small dynamic range, moving between pianissimo and piano, and a light texture. The piece is written with three staves in order to clarify and neaten Debussy’s notation. The piece has a B-flat in the key signature, suggesting D minor. The piece mainly centers around the pitch D.
Claude Debussy was born in France on August 22, 1862 during a decade in which Roger Nichols’s claims was one of “the low points of French musical life” (4). Debussy clashed with the musical norms of his time due to his fascination with writing music for how it sounds and feels. Lesure writes, “Ever since his years at the Conservatoire, Debussy had felt that he had more to learn from artists than from career-obsessed musicians” (5). Debussy composed from the ideas around him and this is heard in his composition of “Clair de lune”. Claude Debussy’s “Claire de lune” is one of his most beloved and known piano works. “Clair de lune” is the third movement of Debussy’s piano concerto, Suite Bergamasque, published in 1905 and offers a view into the complexity and originality of Claude Debussy. “Clair de lune” beautifully displays Debussy’s fascination with nature and symbolist poetry. Debussy uses form and atmospheric phrasing to depict the melancholic and subdued beauty of nature.
They say what’s old is new again. There is nothing new under the sun. What goes around comes around. History repeats itself. These may be just a few banal sayings, but they might hold true for classical music as well. Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin is one such example. Written during the neo-classical and neo-baroque movements of the early 1900s, this clever piece ties together French musical traditions, baroque styles, and World War I in just six short pieces. This essay will detail the origins of the suite form and the neo-classical neo-baroque movement, and compare Le Tombeau de Couperin with Bach’s French Suite no. 5 in G Major, BWV 816.
In the course of the development of music, many great composers have contributed their brilliance towards the revolution of music. To be a great composer does not necessarily mean that they have reached a vast amount of fame. However, it means that their compositions have ingenuity and value. The melodies they have cleverly created have reached a point of worthiness in the world of music. For it is the sweet harmonies a composer creates that defines who he is. One of these gifted composers was Frederic Chopin, born on February 22, 1810 in Zelazowa Wola, Poland. Young Chopin was already composing by the age of eight and as his musical career developed he became known as a master of piano composition. Although he was often misunderstood