Songs About Moonlight

There’s a popular aphorism that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” The saying as a whole suggests a common but interesting idea: that art forms are discrete entities, and attempting to use one to represent the other is a meaningless exercise. In my opinion, this general sentiment is easily challenged by the existence of innumerable works of art inspired by other art forms: the paintings of the Renaissance inspired by Classical sculpture, operas and concept albums inspired by literature, or theatre and film inspired by the musical catalogues of pop stars. In the late 19th to early 20th century, a new generation of classical composers were faced with such comparative labels. They were called “Impressionists,” a name taken from the contemporary visual art movement of the same name. That movement was birthed by a group of Parisian painters which included Monet, Renoir, Bazille, and others. Their focus on still life over posed portraiture, dappled textures rather than defined lines, and sunny, naturalistic colours instead of overdramatic chiaroscuro, evoked realistic sensory perception instead of the romantic traditionalism of the art establishment.

A similar rejection was occurring in the world of music too, as composers like Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy were unraveling traditional western musical structures in their work. They embraced cloudier, more alien tonalities, and extended, complex harmonies. Like their counterparts in painting, they emphasized texture over defined form in many cases, and composers like Ravel experimented with new orchestral timbres, an exercise which is very apparent in his defining 1928 piece Boléro. Boléro consists of a relentlessly repeating single melody, with a different combination of instrumentalists performing each time, with the exception of a perpetual snare pattern. Upon a single melody, he explores a whole world of timbres and intensities. Boléro makes for a decently comprehensible demonstration of one of the aesthetic principles of Impressionist music, but that piece isn’t necessarily representative of the compositional structures that characterize the rest of Ravel and his contemporaries’ work. It’s worth mentioning that the composers didn’t really call themselves “Impressionists,” and that was just a label put upon them by critics. Claude Debussy referred to said critics as “imbeciles.”

For a very different piece by the same composer, let’s see Ravel’s 1912 “symphonie chorégraphique” Daphnis et Chloé, which he wrote for the Ballets Russes. There’s something uncanny about listening to an hour long ballet at home without ever having seen any of the dance itself, but the power of the piece stands on its own regardless. Distinguishing the sensibilities of this Impressionist composer from the painters, Daphnis et Chloé is an adaptation of a classical pastoral romance, written in Greece in the 2nd century AD. Ravel was born in Basque country, on the border of France and Spain, and from a young age was familiar with musical traditions that fell outside the central European classical canon. An interest in the music of the (then) mysterious wider world is underscored throughout his work, as well as the work of Debussy. These ideas of adventure are quite prevalent in the ethereal, impossibly romantic music of Daphnis et Chloé. Being written for dance, the score is entirely about movement, whether it be round, spacious arcs and swells, or tight, percussive chaos. “Lush” is an overused word when it comes to describing harmony, but it’s hard not to compare the organic-feeling layers and textures in this ballet to a flourishing garden.

Original 1912 set design for Daphnis et Chloé by Léon Bakst

One of Maurice Ravel’s closest contemporaries (and probably the better known of the two) was Claude Debussy. Debussy was about 13 years older than Ravel, and often a somewhat more delicate composer than his friend; like the Impressionist painters, nature and everyday life were Debussy’s muse. In probably his best-known composition, Debussy became a musical alchemist, making moonlight out of the notes of a piano. The title of this piece is taken from a poem by Paul Verlaine, called “Clair de Lune”:

Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair,

    Peopled with maskers delicate and dim,

That play on lutes and dance and have an air

    Of being sad in their fantastic trim.

The while they celebrate in minor strain

    Triumphant love, effective enterprise,

They have an air of knowing all is vain,—

    And through the quiet moonlight their songs rise,

The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone,

    That makes to dream the birds upon the tree,

And in their polished basins of white stone

    The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy.

Illustration by: Sarah Jihye Kaye

Debussy’s Clair de Lune is actually the third section of a larger four-part work, called the Suite Bergamasque, inspired by the street theatre of the Italian city of Bergamo. Seemingly, it feels best to listen to Clair de Lune as a sort of dance, structured loosely around a misty, swaying rhythm. With this central rhythm as his canvas, Debussy paints broad, rich brushstrokes of notes and harmonies that build and cascade, and settle into glittering pools of silence. The manner by which he explores unconventional harmonies is very gentle, so the atmosphere of the piece maintains tonal unity while we are taken by the hand through a prism of intimate sensations.

So, it’s the second half of the semester, and things feel a bit bleak. In times like these, I can sometimes find myself drifting into an escapist state of mind. Listening to music that takes me far away from where I am can be a distraction from an uncomfortable reality. But as I inevitably return to the world and sink back into my body, everything is just as grey and foggy as it was. I’m a wholehearted advocate of escapism when the time is right, but maybe sometimes the healthier course of action is to let ourselves be still for a moment. Taking a cue from the Impressionists, we should open ourselves up to the depth and beauty of everyday life. I don’t mean to suggest that there’s a total lack of escapism in a composition like Daphnis et Chloé, but the strength of that piece, in my opinion, while lying partially in its grand, mythological gestures, lies equally in its quiet subtlety. Similarly, the soul of Clair de Lune doesn’t just lie in the notes themselves, but in the moments of silence between them.

There’s more I could say, but I think I might run the risk of dancing about architecture. I suppose one way of interpreting that old saying is that it’s futile to attempt to recreate the effect of one medium through another, and that much is certainly true, so I’ve assembled a playlist of some of my favourite works by Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy to speak for themselves. I hope it can be a charitable companion in your studying.

Header by: Sarah Kaye and Foster McAffee