Debussy and Eastwood

I didn’t even wanna check to see just how little classical music I’ve actually posted on this blog – because it’s probably very, very few and far in between all else. And yet, I find myself admitting that classical music is definitely one of the best genres ever. Maybe not as amazing as jazz will ever be, but that’s a different argument for another day.

Claude Debussy was a French composer that is definitely my favorite ‘impressionist music’ composer. To say he was an impressionist simply maintains that he made music that focused on the atmosphere of the composition, as opposed to maybe having a strong story. Following Romanticism, Debussy, along with other European composers, created music that was richly beautiful and still melodically strong, but indebted to the atmospheric touches music could prevail with. Still, it’s not really too important but more so, a label, we’ve come to use to easily identify with. I especially love Debussy’s actual style of these moving passages, that all follow the tonality with deep chords that are often parallel.

My radio has been acting up in my car lately, so sometimes I will turn it on to play my CDs and the radio wont play them. So I switch it to the radio and play whatever is on NPR at the time. Last week they played Debussy’s Préludes and I turned it on just as the first one was being introduced. I hadn’t heard them in many many years – I wanna say at least six, seven years – and I immediately realized why I fell in love with Debussy so many years ago. This particular piece is a piano piece that focuses on his parallel chord structure (basically meaning that his chords move together, in parallel fashion, instead of slicing in and out of the lines, like some perpendicular structure) and it’s a slow building piece that follows the piano on its linear path. Debussy himself was opposed to the ‘impressionist’ tag everyone gave him but what’s important was that it’s a label of complimentary measure: that the music is so gorgeous and moving, it’s atmospheric and needs something else to describe it. Whatever it is, here is “Préludes I - 10. La cathédrale engloutie (1909-1910)” (The Sunken Cathedral)

And as I sat there, on my way to mundane work, and listened to that aforementioned piece, I began to realize just how much it reminded me of the original score to Mystic River. When I first saw this film, I immediately loved the acting, the story, the directing and the music paired with it was just so moving. I still feel angry it lost out best picture that year (very deserving for the LoTR trilogy but the best movie is and always was the second one), nonetheless, it’s a great movie. The composer to that score is actually Clint Eastwood, who happens to make a lot of movies too. Built around a simple melody that is recurring, here is where a 20^th century, modern-day composer if you will, can take an influence like Debussy and make it something brand new. I don’t know for sure if Debussy is a direct influence to Eastwood, but I can’t see why not. Especially when you hear the piano at the end (last minute or so) play the same melody the strings did earlier, it’s obviously using the same parallel harmony, only this time with even more accompanying sounds and yes, more atmosphere. It’s beautiful music in my opinion, hopefully you all can enjoy both. – Bryan.