The Memory of Debussy.
This article, written by the critic Marcel Rouff in Paris in 1932, generalizes the description of Claude Debussy’s music, taking as a point of reference the monument that was built to pay homage to the essential French composer also in 1932. In the first description, the critic mentions that the memorial does not include all the information about Debussy’s great work. However, there are three aspects much more interesting than the criticism of the monument.
The first is the description that his music gave the public a new way of feeling and expressing themselves through nuances where human sensitivity was expanded.
In the same way, he makes a description of the elements that Debussy describes in his music, such as the sea, clouds, Landscapes, the Afternoon of a Faun, water, strange dreams, spirits, dark and cosmic immaterial beings, birds, etc. which is expressed through discovery to go further than expected. At this point, the critic makes a parallel reference to the literary work El Fauno by Victor Hugo, in which there are also the same creative elements as in Debussy’s work, through the creation of fantastic stories, with mysterious beings and in places that cannot be defined if they exist or not. This point calls my attention because one of the Latin American literary currents called “Magical Realism” has the same characteristics as the music of Debussy or Victor Hugo’s texts. The most relevant writer of this vast literary trend is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Colombian novel, who received this award in 1982 for his magnificent work “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” I had the fortune to meet this great writer. At some point, I made some small compositions for the string quartet, describing some excerpts from this work. I remember that French impressionism directly influenced my way of composing.
Second, the critic compares Wagner and Debussy, indicating that Wagner’s music does not reach as deeply into human emotions as Debussy’s music does. Third, the critic makes a historical analysis of Debussy’s music’s good novelty in the form of a question: is his novelty not rather a resurrection? The author of the article refers to the inclusion of ancient modes in Debussian music, specifically the Greek tragedy, which was lost in the emergence of the new Christian liturgical music. The critic establishes the doubt whether Debussy’s music is new or is merely reorganizing sounds from Greek poetic elements, which also used the description of aspects of nature.
