Debussy: Resolved to be Unresolved

On the heels of this month's program on Ravel, we invite you to explore a composer with whom Ravel is often compared, despite being significantly different: Claude Debussy.

Debussy was a groundbreaking innovator who departed from late-Romantic and Wagnerian styles. He was a rule-breaker who cultivated a style that is at the same time flexible, elusive, spontaneous, fluid, and unpredictable. Often avoiding traditional harmonic progressions, his use of unresolved dissonances and chords creates a dreamlike, hazy, and floating quality. He favored free-form structures that evolved with an improvisational feel.

Debussy’s melodies can be elusive and fragmented, blending into the harmonic texture. His rhythms are flexible, plastic and amorphous, creating a timeless sense. The hallmark of his style and his revolutionary impact is a willingness to forego predictable resolution of chords, disregarding or disguising traditional functional harmony, using chords for their sonority (color) rather than their prescribed role in a cadence.

Join our host Wayne to discover new facets of this intriguing composer.