World Claude Debussy and the Javanese Gametal Article Summary The article “Claude Debussy and the Javanese Gametal” clearly showed a change in Claude Debussy music style from the time before he originally heard the native gametal music at the Paris Exhibition, until all of the time after he was influenced by this music. There were many examples of how Debussy was greatly influenced by the gametal music.
The author of this article uses quotes from letters, and other writings, as well as the author lists five pieces of criteria required to show that a song imposed by Debussy after the Exhibition was influenced greatly by gametal in comparison to the composed works of Debussy prior to this experience. The quotes that Debussy stated in some of his letters mainly hit the points that the gametal music shows its freedom from rules of functional harmony, its free forms, unrelated to those of European music, the fascinating timbre of the percussive instruments, and the layered texture, free from the European rules of counterpoint.
Next, the five pieces of criteria to show the influence on Debussy music included and were listed n the article as, titles suggestive of the orient or exoticism. Passages or formal structures built around station techniques or large-scale repetition, including forms which are built on circular or symmetrical patterns, rather than on the tonal logic of western music. After that, Pitch materials, motives or scales suggestive of gametal.
Aside from the few examples of direct borrowing, this mostly consists of the use of non-diatonic scales (whole-tone and pentatonic, among others) which suggest slender and people tunings used in gametal music, or at least scales and tunings which are different from the major-minor system. Timbres and tone colors evocative of the gametal. The resonating piano is perhaps Western music’s closest approximation of the sound of the gametal.
Soft, pedaled, staccato notes, soft seconds, low fifths held in the pedal, and high, fast, station-type figures all suggest aspects of the gentleman’s timbre. Finally, Textures reminiscent of layered gametal texture. The most characteristic texture is a low, slow-moving, sustained gong sound, overlaid by a moderately moving melody in the middle range of the piano, and faster- vowing fugues in the upper range of the piano. These were all ways that the author of this article was able to see the clear influence of Gametal music on Debussy music.
The author believes that Debussy was definitely influenced by their music, but he did not Just try to make a form of Western music using Gametal influence, he tried to write include many of their techniques in his musical repertoire. Also the author still asks the question at the end of the article in wonder if Debussy was fully influenced by Gametal or was he influenced by many other unknown forms and quenches of other musical cultures. I found this article to be extremely interesting as well as informative due to many reasons.
For example, I liked the authors way of testing to see if Debussy music compositions changed greatly after seeing the Gametal music exhibition. Another thing I found to be interesting was the quotes and ideas Debussy had regarding music, as well as gametal music more specifically. It truly seemed like he grew to love music from around the world By filtered well written, and was very informative when it came to the history of Gametal and its influence on Claude Debussy.
