Debut, See?

As far as I am aware, and I should be given that I write it, this is a first for A Story To Tell. For today we are going to delve, albeit briefly, into the confusing, slightly scary and yet infinitely beguiling world of Classical music. We often try to take you back, and sometimes strive to remind or inform you of a box of musical history that has perhaps lain neglected at the back of your cupboard. Of people or musical recordings of repute that deserve to be the subject of re-acquaintance for whatever reason. But rarely do we go this far back, or step so far across the tracks. But a lack of expertise should not be a hindrance to learning, it should be one of the best reasons for it.


Now I am the first to maintain that there are vast, vast gaps in my musical knowledge. We all have them, and as I have said before it is the variation in tastes, and the ongoing, seemingly endless, discovery of the new that makes the appreciation of music such an enduring pastime. And classical music is one such world. It seems so big a topic that it is almost too difficult to know where to start, a massive musical universe that is intimidating in its intricacies, and yet so much a part of all of us, of our collective musical heritage and consciousness. Surely we all have a piece of what would be classed classical music that we instantly recognise and love, even if we don't know the composer, performer, symphony number, or age from which it came. Maybe we hear it occasionally on a TV advert, or in a favourite film. Maybe we wish we knew more about where it came from but don't know where to start. Maybe it is just an area of music that we just haven't got around to starting with properly, just like jazz, country and hardcore Dutch gabba techno. Okay, maybe we'll never get around to the last one, but you get the point.

However, I do know what I like, and there are certain classical pieces, and in rare cases, classical music figures, that I have expanded my flimsy knowledge of as a result of simply being besotted by their sheer beauty and creative brilliance. And one such figure is French composer Claude Debussy. My brother is a brilliant pianist, and has always been a fan of Debussy's work, and it was through him that I first heard Debussy's work and was tempted to find out more. I also had an equal fascination with French contemporary and friend Erik Satie, which acted as another motivation. Satie's "Les Trois Gymnopedies", perhaps his most famous work, is a stunning piano piece of incredible beauty. Melancholic and yet uplifting, it is simply wonderful, and you will almost certainly know it yourself. But it is Debussy who has the greater significance. His life and work span the turn of the twentieth century, and his influence both to contemporaries and in the time since is profound. It serves to underpin and characterise the huge cultural, technological and social shifts at work during this period, as the western world searched for an identity and to define what modernity would mean for us as a society. And it was his innovation and rampant desire to look outside of the western tradition, to ignore convention, which really provides his importance.



For it was through Debussy that modern music was given the license to become the multi-headed beast of variety that we all know and love. As with many advances, it took a far-sighted pioneer to dare to be different, to stand on the shoulders of the giants who had gone before and aim for a different horizon. Debussy is often characterized as a musical "Impressionist", a term which he disliked and disagreed with, which saw him placed within the contemporaneous artistic tradition of the likes of Monet and Renoir. This tag was partly because of his evocation of tone and colour, his layering of sounds, as well as this repudiation of traditional norms in his compositions, favouring dissonance in sound and unlikely scales and chord structures. Debussy was also a great believer in seeking inspiration from Eastern traditions, as well as from the vaults of antiquity, and it is all of these things, this ability to synergise diverse inspirations and make new rules which is the key to his importance for music.



Pop music, from its inception, has always followed set formulae for success, a state of affairs which has led to the blandness and reality-show-type manufacture of much of the output we hear on the charts and on the radio today. But, if pop is the constant in our cultural world, it is also the norm which works of true brilliance and innovation rail against, and it is this for which we must thank Debussy. He is one of the main reasons that those hidden albums of non-convention exist, why musical gems can appear out of their context, and keep music evolving and reinventing itself. Why pop itself can be turned on its head repeatedly and yet retain its pre-eminence. Why artists everywhere continue to bend and break rules and feed our own ongoing desires for new sounds. Debussy's work is not everyone's cup of tea at all, but for me it is often simply beautiful.



Listen, for example to "Claire de Lune" from "Suite Bergamesque" and it is difficult not to be captured entirely by its seemingly simple charms. And so, next time you are wondering why that obscure album you love, of whale song set to afro breakbeats, didn't make it up the charts and isn't essential listening for everyone, wonder no more. Just raise a glass to Debussy and accept that it is because we all have different tastes, and if all music played by the same rules then life would be a pretty boring place. Plus Simon Cowell and his ilk of identikit pop manufacturers would be even richer, and perhaps have achieved their clearly transparent evil
plans of global dominance through pop dross, the opposition of which we can all drink to.