Steve Schwartz on my comments to Dave Lampson:
>>Well, get your ears ready:-). If you simply listen the orchestral music
>>of Debussy's elders (D'Indy, for example), or the orchestral music of
>>his contemporaries (Mahler, for example), you will notice some aspects:
>>a) Debussy's treatment of the harmony was something new by those times,
>
>Actually, Debussy's harmonic innovations are prefigured by such composers
>as Liszt, Wagner, and Massenet.
Sure. However, I wrote "his treatment of harmony" not "his harmony".
Debussy was one of the first composers who payed a strong attention to
the textural, timbric characteristics of a chord or an interval (i.e.
the diverse sound qualities of its diverse internal positions), in many
cases despite its functional value within tonality. That was quite new
(or perhaps not: in fact Berlioz prefigured that somehow).
>>No. To prove that the work X has been useful, inspiring, etc. to the
>>composers Z, Y and W. That's all.
>
>I find it very odd that we're judging music on the basis of history,
>rather than on how much we like it.
If we are going to make a *value* judgement, that's odd indeed. But
I wasn't talking here about "value". "Historical importance" is not a
matter of quality or intrinsec value, it's just a positional indicator
(how A relates to B and to C). I'm interested in musical genealogies
just as my aunt is interested in the genealogy of all the families in
my entire neighborhood. That's gossip, I know, but all we secretly
enjoy gossip.
>The problem is that many of the composers we like most tended to be
>influenced by composers no longer heard much or inferior to whom they
>influenced.
That's true, but not always. A composer usually receives a lot of diverse
influences along his creative life.
>As George Bernard Shaw once wrote, in art it doesn't matter who came
>before you. It matters who comes after.
I find this better fitted to marriage than to art. And in art, better
fitted to Whitman than to Eliot.
>>>All that's proved is that some writers have agreed. You could easily
>>>assemble a group of writers that dissent.
>>
>>Not in the case of Debussy, I would bet. In the case of other composers,
>>it's probable...
>
>Read Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective. Some of my favorite
>excerpts:
>
>[Of Pelleas] ... interminable flow of commonplace sound. The effect
>is quite bewildering, almost amusing, in its absurdity.
I was thinking on writers contemporary to us. I think that it's difficult
to find a group of modern writers that deny the influence of Debussy on
Western Music. However, I would like much to read the Lexikon: as I wrote
before, I love gossip.
Pablo Massa
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