Debussy annoys me a bit. Not that I dislike his writing, but so much of his music is about colours, that it makes it difficult to look at the score and quickly understand what is going on. Probably a good reason to study his scores more.
La mer (the sea) is a 3 movement symphonic poem that aims to depict the ocean. In the first 7 pages of the third movement I noticed some really effective devices which provided a sense of nautical essence, or perhaps nausea for some. To create a sense of waves crashing onto a boat Debussy gradually builds the waves by presenting a chord with a crescendo, then as it dimuendos he drops the chord, mostly down a semitone. The waves rise and fall like this with the combination of movement chromatically and rise and fall of dynamics, then once the waves become large enough the stop retreating and instead the strings aggressively rise from a soft piano, surging in pitch and dynamic until the wave smashes onto the deck with a cymbal crash.
Even just from a few pages, Debussy manages to create a strong sense of his subject matter for the listener. I feel that often when music is associated with an extra musical idea we only can make the connection as we have been informed of the extra musical idea, but with this work I’m pretty sure most people would notice the representation of the ocean without being told.
Warren.
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