Debiao [On Debiao's "Visual" Piano Work "Sail"]

Debussy is the founder of Impressionism and one of the most respected and admired musicians since the 20th century. The birth of Debussy's music marks that western music has entered the modern music period from romanticism. In a sense, Debussy's musical style opened up a brand-new road for the development of modern music such as atonality and twelve-tone system in the twentieth century, and became a veritable originator of impressionist music.

1 Times and Features of Works

The industrial revolution has promoted the great development of all walks of life. In the field of art, the study of spectrum became the fuse of the birth of Impressionism. Great changes in the oil painting industry have also affected the music field. Debussy has been exploring how to turn sound into "color" and has achieved remarkable results. Sail is a powerful masterpiece of Debussy, which combines music with the new culture developed at the same time ―― symbolism poetry, impressionist painting and oriental music. It skillfully "turns all the impressions accepted by the five senses into music". Just like the Impressionist painter Monet's Sunrise, there is no Mozart-style melody or Bach-style rigorous music level in this work, only sporadic music fragments and hazy and three-dimensional music effects. The creation of Sail originated from a scene that touched Debussy's life image-a little girl put a paper sailboat by the water, and the sparkling waves were reflected on the little girl and the sailboat. This song runs through the techniques of major chromatic and diatonic scales, and the pentatonic scale is also typical in the middle of the song. The whole song is full of visual fantasy. Impressionist painting and oriental music have a great influence on the formation of Debussy's musical style. Debussy's piano music perfectly combines the association of "symbolism" with the essence of "Monet impression"-capturing the instantaneous changes of color and light and shadow. Strong visibility is the most important feature of this work, which gives people a touching feeling. Except that the six bars in the middle are pentatonic scales, the whole work is based on diatonic scales, which is the most commendable one of his works using diatonic scales.

2 works analysis

Analysis of curved body: The whole curved body structure is developed from a single theme material, and it is a connected curved body structure with ***64 relatively free sections. Its structure is A-B-C-D-E-A 1 (epilogue), which is a typical Debussy-style French impressionist music: the arrangement of paragraphs in the structure, the natural coherence between paragraphs and the infiltration of single theme materials; There is no obvious contrast between paragraphs, they are often extended and developed by material music fragments, and then become new paragraphs. Sail is Debussy's most distinctive and outstanding diatonic work. There is not much variability in describing the specific scene of the sailboat swinging on the water, so the whole song adopts a relatively stable technique in tonality. At the beginning of the music, the whole tone stage with C as the main tone is theme music. A temporary five-tone performance "water wave" appeared in the D voice in the middle section, which set off a small climax: the E voice returned to the whole tone stage with C as the main tone and went up repeatedly; A 1 partially reproduces the theme fragment of diatonic scale with the key of C at the beginning, which forms an echo.

Color and Harmony Analysis: The chromatic diatonic scale used in this piece, also known as the six-tone scale without leading tone, has an overall tonal relationship. For example, the paragraph paving the way for the ending in part E of the song is a very typical diatonic paragraph (see the score example of part 49-5 1 in the song). The use of diatonic scales casts a strange color on the whole song. The distance between vertical and horizontal makes people feel the physical space with one of the five senses-the hearing of the ears-when enjoying music works, just as painting can be felt with eyes and sculpture can be touched with hands. Secondly, there is a big third interval and a third chord in this song, which makes this song have a mysterious atmosphere. Throughout the whole song, from the beginning, the transverse chords are all connected in parallel with the major third degree, while in the longitudinal chord, a lot of strange harmonic progression main connections are used, such as the seventh chord composed of parallel octaves, quartic accents and major third degrees (see the music examples in verses 58-59 in the song), which makes the whole song full of infinite imagination space and makes people quickly associate with the sparkling water.

In the aspect of atmosphere contrast, the continuous use of the third dimension gives people a sense of uncertainty, while increasing the tension of chords creates a sense of mystery. In such an unstable artistic conception, the whole song runs through with bB bass. After the diatonic scale is connected with major triad, the added triad has a central point, which can stabilize the style. The very weak bass performance depicts the water depth and softness. When describing the dynamics of water waves, the repeated expression of the ascending segment of diatonic scale is used, and the different forms of water waves are described through rhythm changes. The chords in this piece do not create beautiful lines, but let people feel a physical depth first.

3 performance analysis

Debussy's music must be played in strict accordance with the beat and prompt. Be sure to read more slogans before playing. The song is not long, but there are many slogans. In particular, there are many weak tips. Impressionist composers like to use weak intensity range to mark intensity.

In Part A (section 1-2 1), the double-tone downward performance should lead the fingers through all the third notes with a relaxed wrist; Secondly, the skipping in the connection should not only keep the gap between the two tones at the moment of crossing, but also keep the connection between the two tones "until the sound dies" to make the connection "sticky"; Thirdly, the "line-level" performance should maintain the independence and distinct layers of the sound played by both hands. When the melody line is thickened by adding a triad, we must pay special attention to the integration of sounds, because Debussy hopes that the piano will not have a "hammer".

Part B (Section 22-28) pays special attention to the fact that the progressive strength of pp does not represent PP..