Debussy S Critics

Debussy's Critics: Sound, Affect, and the Experience of Modernism explores the music of Claude Debussy and its early reception in light of the rise of the empirical human sciences in Western Europe around the turn of the twentieth century. In the midst of a sea change in conceptions of the human person, the critics who wrote about Debussy's music in the Parisian press-continually returning to this music's nebulous relationship to sensation and sensibilité-attempted to articulate a music aesthetic appropriate to the fully embodied, material self of psychological modernism. While scholarship on French music in this period has often emphasized its affinities with other art forms, such as Impressionist painting and Symbolist poetry, Debussy's Critics demonstrates that a preoccupation with the specifically sonic materiality of Debussy's music, informed by late nineteenth-century scientific discourses on affect, perception, and cognition, was central to this music's historical intervention. Foregrounding the dynamic exchange between sounds and ideas, this book reveals the disorienting and bewildering experience of listening to Debussy's music, which compelled its early audiences to reimagine the most fundamental premises of the European art-music tradition.

Debussy's Critics: Sound, Affect, and the Experience of Modernism explores the music of Claude Debussy and its early reception in light of the rise of the empirical human sciences in Western Europe around the turn of the twentieth century. In the midst of a sea change in conceptions of the human person, the critics who wrote about Debussy's music in the Parisian press-continually returning to this music's nebulous relationship to sensation and sensibilité-attempted to articulate a music aesthetic appropriate to the fully embodied, material self of psychological modernism. While scholarship on French music in this period has often emphasized its affinities with other art forms, such as Impressionist painting and Symbolist poetry, Debussy's Critics demonstrates that a preoccupation with the specifically sonic materiality of Debussy's music, informed by late nineteenth-century scientific discourses on affect, perception, and cognition, was central to this music's historical intervention. Foregrounding the dynamic exchange between sounds and ideas, this book reveals the disorienting and bewildering experience of listening to Debussy's music, which compelled its early audiences to reimagine the most fundamental premises of the European art-music tradition.

Collects the essays and reviews of the great French composer, together with interviews with him, in which he comments on the composers and musical events of his day and on his own philosophy of music.

This collection of essays by scholars of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French music has been assembled in homage to the influential and inspirational French musicologist Fran?s Lesure who died in 2001. Lesure's immense erudition was legendary and spanned music from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Two French composers who were particular foci in his scholarship were Berlioz and Debussy and this collection is based on scholarship around these two composers and the sources, contexts and legacies relating to their work.

Nearly one hundred years after the death of its composer, the music of Claude Debussy has lost none of its breadth of appeal. With the rare ability to entice listeners on many levels, at its heart lies an engaging simplicity-one which defies traditional analysis and lends mystery to what ultimately is an extremely refined and highly personal approach to composition. Equally fascinating is Debussy's often contradictory personality--at times elusive, but always centered on his devotion to music and his ambition to create a name for himself unlike any other. Author Eric Frederick Jensen provides new insight to the man and the music in this authoritative biography. Although born into poverty, and a failure as a piano student at the Paris Conservatoire, Debussy became the most famous French composer of his day, known for his culture and refinement. His revolutionary music baffled critics but was embraced by audiences. Debussy's scandalous personal life stirred up as much controversy as his music, and his notoriety proved more harmful to his career than the unusual nature of his compositions. Jensen also explores Debussy's relationship to the arts and his career as a music critic. Debussy drew on all of the arts in his development as a composer, including poetry and painting, and his fascination with the arts has often led to his being classified as an Impressionist or Symbolist, two claims which Jensen debunks. One of the finest music critics of his time, Debussy's reviews reveal a great deal not only about his musical taste, but also about what he felt the role and function of music should be. Debussy brings together the most recent biographical research, including a revised catalogue of Debussy's compositions and the first complete edition of his correspondence. With separate, chronological sections on his life and music, Debussy is accessible to the general reader who wishes to focus on his life and personality, while providing detailed discussion of the music to musicians and students.

In Ticket to the Opera, Phil G. Goulding finally makes the magic and mystique of opera accessible to all. Here he offers a complete operatic education, including history, definitions of key musical terms, opera lore and gossip, portraits of famous singers and the roles they immortalized, as well as pithy introductions to the greatest operas of Europe and America and their composers. The book's centerpiece is what Goulding terms "the collection"--85 classics, among them Aida, The Marriage of Figaro, Carmen, and Madama Butterfly, that have been packing the world's opera houses for years. This entertaining, meticulously researched book also includes a fascinating chapter on American opera from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess to Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach and a discussion of the gems of twentieth-century opera featuring works like Leos Janácek's The Cunning Little Vixen, Alban Berg's Lulu, and Serge Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges. Whether you're a curious neophyte, a music lover interested in branching out, or an aficionado eager to compare notes with a brilliant fellow opera buff, you'll prize Ticket to the Opera as an essential volume in your music library.

Turn-of-the-century modernists were involved, implicated, and often locked in a struggle with all the formidable legions of nineteenth-century music. The focus of this collection, essays originally published in the journal 19th-Century Music, is upon modernism in relation to its immediate heritage. Major composers whose reflections on the past come under consideration include Debussy, Mahler, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, and Ives, while older composers such as Liszt and Wolf figure as precursors of modernist harmony and sensibility. The contributors include many leading musicologists, critics, and music theorists known for their work on nineteenth- and twentieth-century music. Some of the essays deal closely with the new musical languages that evolved in that era others deal with reception and performance issues. Many of them bring together insights from various sub-disciplines to achieve a richer kind of composite scholarship than is available to traditional musical studies.