Claude Debussy's orchestral works rank among the most beautiful and daring pieces of music ever written. Not an everyday combination that, but I suppose that's why his work has only increased in importance and prominence. One CD that never seems to get far from my player is my trusty old Naxos disc of performances of Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune, Nocturnes and La Mer by the BRT Philharmonic conducted by Alexander Rahbari. It just doesn't get old, probably because there is so much in the music - it seems to be entirely free both rhythmically and harmonically and yet every gesture is at the service of an underlying logic, which is frequently inspired by another art form. In the case of the Prelude, the poetry of Stephane Mallarme, and in the case of the Nocturnes, three Whistler paintings. There is some disagreement over whether Debussy liked the term impressionism to be applied to his music, but either way, there's no doubt that it has an overwhelming pictorial quality. Here's an interesting version of "Nuages", the first of the Nocturnes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fljlEf9iCCM.

"Ballet is a lovely grove - its branches forever tossing on the winds of music."
I heard this on a television program years ago, and I'm sorry, but I can't remember the name of the show or the source of the quote - but I'll share it with you anyway. (If you can help with the missing information, please put it in a comment.) Some listeners feel that many composers write their greatest music for ballet (and/or other dance forms). It would be hard to argue that Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Stravinsky did otherwise, for example. Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'une faune, however, was written as a tone poem (a very free compositional form) and then later choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky for Les Ballets Russes. The piece came almost twenty years before the ballet, and it is my contention that it did a lot to shape the direction of modern dance and Les Ballets Russes.
Because it was written in a new harmonic language (see yesterday's post), and inspired by a Stephane Mallarme poem, it is a piece that suggests both freedom and cross-pollination between art forms. (It is like sonic Art Nouveau.) This became the essence of Les Ballets Russes, where the greatest choreographers, dancers, painters and composers of the early twentieth century were inspired and informed by each other. (Some have argued that the most influential figure in modernism was not an artist in any traditional sense, but rather an entrepreneur: Sergei Diaghilev, the director of the company.) The list of names involved is unparalleled in terms of achievement and influence, and it's startling to think that all of that work may have been (at least partially) inspired by a piece of music, ten minutes in duration.

The turning point in modern classical music was Claude Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'une faune. After this piece, music was never the same. The main factor involved was the entirely new concept of thinking of harmony as non-structural, which meant that any set of sounds could lead to any other, depending on the intention (and skill) of the composer. Before, a chord was first and foremost considered as part of a key, and either prolonged a passage or led to some sort of cadence. Chords were labeled with roman numerals and elaborate names, which by the very act of doing so, implied how they were to be used. Listen to this piece and compare it to anything by Mozart, for example, and you'll hear the difference immediately. Tomorrow: more on Debussy and a discussion of Les Ballets Russes.