Debussy himself used to play with the piano's lid down.
Clair de Lune, Arabesque, Preludes, the list goes on. Debussy has written such beautiful ‘contemporary” music. And it got me interested to find out about this person and his music. His music is said to be influenced by the French impressionist painters like Monet, Renoir, Manet, although Debussy himself refused to refer his music as impressionist. In the impressionist painting, shapes and forms are not precise, we don’t see in great details like those in the painting of Vermeer or Caravaggio. But the overall shades, tonality, lights and colors, give an impression or a sense of feeling to it, it feels like a memory. Breaking away from the traditional composition of music (clear melody, A-B-A structure and etc.), his passion for music was too great, he can’t help to disappoint his school and he wanted to free music. Unlike painting, music is extremely precise, you play specific notes in a specific rhythm. Debussy used the pedal and arpeggios to create a watery texture, closing the piano’s lid also drown the sound and blur out lines. The use of pentatonic and whole-tones scales create a dreamy suspense chords, where they sound unresolved, floating in the mid-air.
Well, during this pandemic period, I dragged my ass back to the piano seat and learned Clair de Lune, one of my favourite piece. It’s extremely beautiful, they are a lot of minute details in the score that made me respected this genius a bit more during my learning process. I wanted to reflect on Debussy’s music on how it can affect my cinematography since music and film are just different medium of art. If the quality of Debussy’s music or impressionist painting can be translated into cinematography, that will be more powerful since cinematography tells stories visually through an impression of the frame. First of all, there’s a liberating force in the work of Debussy, the freedom to flow around following your instinct. In many ways, this is something for any artist, to be honest with one’s feeling and act on it. A short film “There’s only One Sun” by Wong Kar Wai came to mind, lensed by Phillip Le Sourd. The liberating force is what I felt after watching the film through the moving lights and camera. The pedal and the arpeggios in Debussy’s music is like the dolly track movement in cinematography, it lingers and flows in the space. This reminds me of the Mark Lee’s cinematography, he always shoot a scene on a dolly track and let the key grip moves him freely like winds. Just like how Debussy created textures/atmosphere with the arpeggios, this can be achieved too with the pattern of shadow and light created in a scene. These shadow can also interact with the environment like the wind or water, and the movement of performing actors. Moving elements in a film, I think that is very crucial in creating texture in a frame, just like Akira Kurosawa’s film, there are always wind, smokes, fire, leaves and etc. So even the actors (the right-hand melody) is static, their surrounding is moving (like the left-hand arpeggios). No wonder Debussy said that “music is the space between the notes”.
It’s funny that I’m taking inspiration from music that is inspired by painting. I’m very thankful for these good music that accompanied me through this reflective and slow seasons. It took me about three weeks to learn through the score, and I still can’t play Clair de Lune without any mistakes but it is definitely something I really enjoyed. So here is my attempt to analyse and internalize Debussy’s music.
