Deux arabesques

Last updated

The Two Arabesques (Deux arabesques), L. 66, is a pair of arabesques composed for piano by Claude Debussy when he was still in his twenties, between the years 1888 and 1891.

The arabesque is a type of music which uses melodies to create the atmosphere of Arabic architecture.

Piano musical instrument

The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings.

Claude Debussy 19th and 20th-century French classical composer

(Achille) Claude Debussy was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Contents

Although quite an early work, the arabesques contain hints of Debussy's developing musical style. The suite is one of the very early impressionistic pieces of music, following the French visual art form. Debussy seems to wander through modes and keys, and achieves evocative scenes through music. His view of a musical arabesque was a line curved in accordance with nature, and with his music he mirrored the celebrations of shapes in nature made by the Art Nouveau artists of the time. [1] Of the arabesque in baroque music, he wrote: [2]

In the theory of Western music, a mode is a type of musical scale coupled with a set of characteristic melodic behaviors. Musical modes have been a part of western musical thought since the Middle Ages, and were inspired by the theory of ancient Greek music. The name mode derives from the Latin word modus, "measure, standard, manner, way, size, limit of quantity, method".

In music theory, the key of a piece is the group of pitches, or scale, that forms the basis of a music composition in classical, Western art, and Western pop music.

Art Nouveau Style of art & architecture about 1890 to 1911

Art Nouveau is an international style of art, architecture and applied art, especially the decorative arts, known in different languages by different names: Jugendstil in German, Stile Liberty in Italian, Modernisme in Catalan, etc. In English it is also known as the Modern Style. The style was most popular between 1890 and 1910. It was a reaction to the academic art, eclecticism and historicism of 19th century architecture and decoration and was inspired by natural forms and structures, particularly the curved lines of plants and flowers, and whiplash forms. Other defining characteristics of Art Nouveau were a sense of dynamism and movement, often given by asymmetry and by curving lines, and the use of modern materials, such as iron pillars and railings, sculpted and curved in naturalistic designs.

“that was the age of the ‘wonderful arabesque' when music was subject to the laws of beauty inscribed in the movements of Nature herself.”

The arabesques

The two arabesques are given these tempo marks: [3]

  1. Andantino con moto
  2. Allegretto scherzando

Arabesque No. 1. Andantino con moto

This arabesque is in the key of E major. The piece begins with parallelism of triads in first inversion, a composition technique very much used by Debussy and other Impressionists which traces back to the tradition of fauxbourdon. It leads into a larger section which begins with a left hand arpeggio in E major and a descending right hand E major pentatonic progression.

E major tonality

E major is a major scale based on E, with the pitches E, F♯, G♯, A, B, C♯, and D♯. Its key signature has four sharps. Its relative minor is C-sharp minor and its parallel minor is E minor. Its enharmonic equivalent, F-flat major, has eight flats, including the double flat B, which makes it rarely used.

Fauxbourdon – French for false drone – is a technique of musical harmonisation used in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, particularly by composers of the Burgundian School. Guillaume Dufay was a prominent practitioner of the form, and may have been its inventor. The homophony and mostly parallel harmony allows the text of the mostly liturgical lyrics to be understood clearly.

The second quieter B section is in A major, starting with a gesture (E-D-E-C♯), briefly passing through E major, returning to A major and ending with a bold pronouncement of the E-D-E-C♯ gesture, but transposed to the key of C major and played forte.

A major tonality

A major is a major scale based on A, with the pitches A, B, C♯, D, E, F♯, and G♯. Its key signature has three sharps. Its relative minor is F-sharp minor and its parallel minor is A minor. The key of A major is the only key where a Neapolitan sixth chord on requires both a flat and a natural accidental.

In music, transposition refers to the process or operation of moving a collection of notes up or down in pitch by a constant interval.

The shifting of a melody, a harmonic progression or an entire musical piece to another key, while maintaining the same tone structure, i.e. the same succession of whole tones and semitones and remaining melodic intervals.

C major tonality

C major is a major scale based on C, with the pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. C major is one of the most common key signatures used in western music. Its key signature has no flats and no sharps. Its relative minor is A minor and its parallel minor is C minor.

In the middle of the recapitulation of the A section, the music moves to a higher register and descends, followed by a large pentatonic scale ascending and descending, and resolving back to E major.

Arabesque No. 2. Allegretto scherzando

The second arabesque in G major is noticeably quicker and more lively in tempo. It opens with left hand chords and right hand trills. The piece makes several transpositions and explores a lower register of the piano. Again notable is a hint of the pentatonic scale. It closes in a similar fashion to the first arabesque. The style more closely resembles some of Debussy's later works.

G major musical key

G major is a major scale based on G, with the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F♯. Its key signature has one sharp, F♯. Its relative minor is E minor and its parallel minor is G minor.

Arabesque No. 1 is used in the Japanese movie All about Lily Chou-Chou (2001).

Arabesque No. 1 is used as background music in the video "Masterpieces Of The Met", to accompany the images and verbal description by Philippe de Montebello of a painting by Monet.

Arabesque No. 1 is appropriated on R&B/Soul singer Alicia Keys' track "Like the Sea", from her 4th studio album The Element of Freedom. [4] Arabesque No. 1 was also sampled by the American musician Panda Bear on the track "Lonely Wanderer", which features on his 2015 album Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper .

A performance of Arabesque No. 1 by Isao Tomita was used from 1976 to 2011 as the theme music for the program Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler (later Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer); [5]

In the video game Final Fantasy V , the final segment uses a small, adapted excerpt from the first Arabesque. [6]

Related Research Articles

In music theory, a scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. A scale ordered by increasing pitch is an ascending scale, and a scale ordered by decreasing pitch is a descending scale. Some scales contain different pitches when ascending than when descending, for example, the melodic minor scale.

A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the more familiar heptatonic scale that has seven notes per octave.

An octatonic scale is any eight-note musical scale. However, the term most often refers to the symmetric scale composed of alternating whole and half steps, as shown at right. In classical theory, this scale is commonly called the octatonic scale, although there are a total of 42 non-enharmonically equivalent, non-transpositionally equivalent eight-note sets.

Julius Baker was one of the foremost American orchestral flute players. During the course of five decades he concertized with several of America's premier orchestral ensembles including the Chicago Symphony and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Toru Takemitsu Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory

Tōru Takemitsu was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu possessed consummate skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre. He is famed for combining elements of oriental and occidental philosophy to create a sound uniquely his own, and for fusing opposites together such as sound with silence and tradition with innovation.

Ninth musical interval

In music, a ninth is a compound interval consisting of an octave plus a second.

Children's Corner, L. 113, is a 6-movement suite for solo piano by Claude Debussy. It was published by Durand in 1908, and was first performed by Harold Bauer in Paris on 18 December that year. In 1911, an orchestration by André Caplet was premiered and subsequently published. A typical performance of the suite lasts roughly 15 minutes.

Gaspar Cassadó Spanish cellist and composer

Gaspar Cassadó i Moreu was a Catalan cellist and composer of the early 20th century. He was born in Barcelona to a church musician father, Joaquim Cassadó, and began taking cello lessons at age seven. When he was nine, he played in a recital where Pablo Casals was in the audience; Casals immediately offered to teach him. The city of Barcelona awarded him a scholarship so that he could study with Casals in Paris.

G-flat major tonality

G-flat major is a major scale based on G♭, consisting of the pitches G♭, A♭, B♭, C♭, D♭, E♭, and F. Its key signature has six flats.

<i>Star Gazers</i> US television program

Star Gazers is a five-minute astronomy show on American public television previously hosted by Jack Foley Horkheimer, executive director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium. After his death in 2010 from a respiratory illness from which he had suffered since childhood, a series of guest astronomers hosted until 2011, when Dean Regas, James Albury, and Marlene Hidalgo became permanent co-hosts. On the weekly program, the host informs the viewer of significant astronomical events for the upcoming week, including key constellations, stars and planets, lunar eclipses and conjunctions, as well as historical and scientific information about these events.

"Beau Soir" is a French art song written by Claude Debussy. It is a setting of a poem by Paul Bourget.

Estampes ("Prints"), L.100, is a composition for solo piano by Claude Debussy. It was finished in 1903.

Jack Horkheimer was the executive director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium. He was best known for his astronomy show Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer, which started airing on PBS on November 4, 1976.

Diatonic and chromatic

Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are most often used to characterize scales, and are also applied to musical instruments, intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. They are very often used as a pair, especially when applied to contrasting features of the common practice music of the period 1600–1900.

La Cathédrale engloutie is a prelude written by the French composer Claude Debussy for solo piano. It was published in 1910 as the tenth prelude in Debussy’s first of two volumes of twelve piano preludes each. It is characteristic of Debussy in its form, harmony, and content.

<i>Snowflakes Are Dancing</i> 1974 studio album by Isao Tomita

Snowflakes Are Dancing is the second studio album by Japanese musician Isao Tomita, recorded in 1973–1974 and first released by RCA Records as a Quadradisc in April 1974. The album consists entirely of Tomita's arrangements of Claude Debussy's "tone paintings", performed by Tomita on a Moog synthesizer and a mellotron. It entered the top 50 charts in the United States, where it was nominated for four Grammy Awards in 1975, including best classical album of the year, and it was NARM's best-selling classical album of the year. In Canada, it reached #57 in the RPM Magazine Top Albums chart.

Piano Quartet No. 3 (Brahms) piano quartet by Johannes Brahms

The Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60, completed by Johannes Brahms in 1875, is scored for piano, violin, viola and cello. It is sometimes called the Werther Quartet after Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther.

La fille aux cheveux de lin is a musical composition for solo piano by French composer Claude Debussy. It is the eighth piece in the composer's first book of Préludes, written between late 1909 and early 1910. The title is in French and translates roughly to "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair". The piece is 39 measures long and takes approximately two and a half minutes to play. It is in the key of G♭ major.

Mimi Stillman is a prominent concert flutist. She has been hailed by The New York Times as "a consummate and charismatic performer." Called "the coolest flute player" by Philadelphia Magazine. A Yamaha Performing Artist, she has appeared as soloist with orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, Hilton Head Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Yucatán, Orquesta Sinfónica Carlos Chávez, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Orchestra 2001, Ocean City Pops, Spartanburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle, and Curtis Chamber Orchestra. She has appeared as recitalist and chamber musician at The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Bard College, La Jolla Chamber Music Society, Kingston Chamber Music Festival, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Bay Chamber Concerts (ME), Verbier Festival (Switzerland), Israeli radio Kol HaMusica, National Sawdust, Roulette, and Festival delle Nazioni (Italy).

References

  1. ↑ Stillman, Mimi (Fall 2007). "Debussy, Painter of Sound and Image". The Flutist Quarterly. 33 (1): 41–46.
  2. ↑ Lesure & Smith (eds.) Debussy on Music 1977, p84. Cited in Stillman, Mimi (Fall 2007). "Debussy, Painter of Sound and Image". The Flutist Quarterly. 33 (1): 41–46.
  3. ↑ Olson, Lynn Freeman (1985). Debussy -- Deux Arabesques for the Piano. Alfred Music Publishing. ISBN   0739023063.
  4. ↑ "Alicia Keys's Like the Sea sample of Claude Debussy's Arabesque No. 1". Who Sampled. WhoSampled.com Limited. Retrieved 13 October 2012.
  5. ↑ "Jack Horkheimer Star Gazer FAQ". Jack Horkheimer Star Gazer official site. Miami, Florida: WPBT. October 2007. Archived from the original on February 25, 2008. Retrieved February 21, 2019.
  6. ↑ Djibriel. "Final Fantasy V Walkthrough". Caves of Narshe FF5. Josh Alvies (Rangers51). Retrieved 13 October 2012.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.