when i listen to this music there's something about it that sounds distinctly french it's the calmness the way it blurs together harmonies the masterful blending of sound colors something which i couldn't quite put my finger on something luscious beautiful seamless and somehow french i wanted to figure out what makes debussy sound french what was it that debussy and his contemporaries did that changed music history and created this exquisitely beautiful style of music well to understand how this music works and how it changed the game in music history we first have to understand the way things were for about two centuries the course of music history was spearheaded by germanic composers in the 1700s johan sebastian bach had defined the system of western classical tonality a system which even today remains the foundation of western music theory later beethoven showed us how we could modulate or change key effortlessly between any of these tonal regions he showed us an expanded palette of harmonic functions that every chord could have multiple functions and could go in multiple directions and later still richard wagner pushed these tensions of classical tonality to their limits without actually breaking the system everything was pushed to its expressive max and yet the rules weren't quite broken only stretched to their absolute limits consistently throughout music history germanic composers were the rule makers they set the standards of how classical music was to be written this isn't to say that there weren't other national styles italy had its rich opera tradition and france certainly had national composers to be proud of there was bizet sasson deleid franck and many others and you could certainly describe these composers as having a particular national flavor their music has a sense of delicacy opulence you could argue that there's more focus on charm and beauty in this french music rather than on exploring the innermost torments of the soul but musically speaking all these composers still play by the german rulebook the germanic composers set the rules and then everyone else would play by them including these french composers sure french music had a style but it didn't have its own voice if france was to define itself musically and stop working in the shadow of these germanic giants composers would have to stop playing by the rules but what are these rules that the french will have to destroy in order to break the rules you need to know them first i can't lay everything out here but the simplest way to explain it is with the perfect cadence since the time of js bach musical grammar became governed by the perfect cadence this is how you define what key you're in this is how you set up a new key this is how you'd probably end a piece of music the perfect cadence was the central pillar in musical grammar a key element of the perfect cadence is this semitone this is called the leading tone we feel that it is leading onto the home note there's this tension it wants to go home we just want it to resolve and it does onto the home note so within the perfect cadence there's a sense of tension and resolution that's how music has always worked that would build tension through dissonance through moving away from the home this was considered a dissonant chord and then that tension would be resolved tension and resolution and finally the other important element of the perfect cadence is good voice leading every single voice in this chord moves in a sensible way just by whole steps or half steps to resolve itself there are no strange leaps or strange movements each voice resolves itself logically so perfect cadences tension and resolution the idea of the leading tone or semitone for tension and good voice leading these were all crucial elements of music and even something as far out as wagner's tristan and zolder which pushes these rules to the extreme even then wagner is still playing within these rules he still follows these principles of tension and resolution constantly using leading tones perfect voice leading and while wagner does avoid clear cadences it's this constant suggestion that a cadence is coming which makes the piece so powerful cadences were a necessity a part of the flow of tension and climax in music they were a part of musical grammar and they are arguably what makes us feel tension and resolution in germanic music we might even call this functional music all the harmony serves a function it's designed to take us smoothly from one place to the next all while either creating tension or resolving tension so we set up the rules now it's time to knock them down if france wants to stand out from the crowd it has to change the rules of the game but how will this happen well it started not with a piece of music but with an art movement this painting is known as impression sunrise by claude monet instead of following the traditional standards of art set by the french academy of fine arts monet and a group of other painters like him decided to go their own way rather than following the old theories of art they decided that light and the awareness of light is the most important principle monet's paintings are obsessed with the subtle changing effect of light instead of clearly defined forms the colours blur together to produce one continuous form instead of german pretentiousness logic reason tension climax and the deep personal longings of the soul instead of all that it's like looking into a stream of sensation and consciousness in 1870 a war broke out between the germanic nations and france the franco-prussian war france wanted to restore its dominant position in europe but they were beaten down by the prussians in a german victory the german states decided to become one nation state the german empire france was arguably left weakened and humiliated while germany was left stronger than before it was time for music to step up to the game and instead of fighting germany on its own ground by its own rules one composer would create a ripple that would change music history forever that man was eric satty this guy the guy who dropped out of school whose piano teacher called him the laziest student in the conservatoire who applied repeatedly to france's academy of fine arts just to troll them well yeah this guy in 1887 sati wrote this sarah band just listen to the beginning [Music] it might not sound like much by today's standards but this is game changing every single one of these chords is a seventh chord or even a ninth chord in german music chords with sevenths are considered dissonances longing to be resolved normally through a perfect cadence but here the sevenths no longer sound like dissonances they just are sati turns seventh and ninth chords into consonances chords that sound nice without needing to be resolved moreover there's no sense of a cadence anywhere and there's no sense of wanting a cadence either the germans were over there trying to explore the innermost longings of the soul and sati thought screw that i just want something that's elegant and beautiful there's no sense of humanity there's no sorrow pain joy none of that just something beautiful instead of tension they're simply calm a more famous piece by sati is his first gymnopity it starts with this pendulum swing between two major seventh chords a g major seventh and a d major seventh but neither of these chords are treated as dissonances waiting to be resolved they are just there for their beauty and when the melody comes in it too focuses first on the seventh and ninth degrees of the scale it was around this time that sati and debussy met and became friends and debussy's music was highly influenced by these sati piano pieces a big difference between these two men is that where sati dropped out of conservatoire debussy graduated with distinction and won numerous prizes along the way debussy was a highly skilled and highly accomplished musician and yet he decided that his music would follow these same principles what were dissonances by german standards would become consonances traditional cadences were no longer necessary and the aim above all was not to pour into the innermost depths of the human soul but to create music of elegant or exquisite beauty so here's how debussy's music sounds french or more specifically here's how debussy's music sounds the way a monet painting looks some prime music to understand debussy's style is his preludes for piano debussy wrote two books of piano preludes the first was written in only three months between 1909 and 1910. the first thing we notice about the preludes is their titles these titles don't focus on human emotion or human situations but rather on impressionistic ideas they could just as well be titled to impressionist paintings the sounds and the perfumes swirl through the evening air footsteps in the snow the submerged cathedral but what makes these titles even more interesting is where he places them in the music not at the beginning but at the end after the music is finished often in brackets and preceded by an ellipsis as if these titles were only a suggestion a subtle whisper an impression rather than a fixed idea already debussy is avoiding fixed forms but let's look closer at the music first footsteps in the snow it starts with the direction sad and slow followed by these bare almost haunting notes but debussy focuses on the subtleties of sound color too with the direction this rhythm must have the sonic character of a sad and frozen landscape it's as if painterly ideas are being fused into the music the melody over the top is in a mixture of modes unwilling to commit to any specific key but what happens next is extraordinary debussy harmonizes the music with a series of parallel chords sinking into the depth each chord moves in total parallel motion completely breaking all the germanic rules of voice leading but more than that the chords together make 9th 11th even 13th chords these chords aren't treated as dissonances waiting to be resolved they are treated as consonances sounding lovely just the way they are there's no sense of germanic tension and resolution instead we enjoy the beauty of these chords as they come take another prelude while even the title of this prelude is blurry and ambiguous depending on the gender of the word it could mean sales or it could mean veils he marks the tempo in a rhythm without rigor and caressed and instead of using a standard major or minor scale debussy chooses the whole tone scale this is a scale made up of only whole tones or whole steps because of that it means there's not a single semitone in sight no more leading tones perfect cadences become impossible and so no more germanic tension and resolution in this scale no note is more important than any other they are all of equal value harmonies blur together and so the music just exists in this kind of glassy beautiful texture or take another prelude the submerged cathedral the first direction we are given is profoundly calm in a softly sonorous mist what an extraordinary painterly direction for a musician the music begins with absolute parallelism a complete sin against german music but what's perhaps more interesting is the sound colors that debussy creates with just a piano these chords submerging from the deep like a great mass underwater it's unclear what key we're in if we're in a key at all and so these harmonies which because they seem to lack any tone or relationship sound as if they are blurred together like an impressionist painting perhaps this is the sound of a great cathedral organ from beneath the glassy water and then later perhaps these are the cathedral bells distant sad wistful this piece paints an extraordinary and powerful image and debussy writes as if you were a painter blurring together sound colors and harmonies to create something that is not set in stone but an impression of exquisite beauty finally there's his seminal orchestral piece his prelude to the afternoon of a fawn it begins with a chromatic scale and with no sense of what key we might be in are we in c sharp g maybe e it's completely blurred but even then the sound color he uses is carefully chosen this c sharp can be notoriously hollow sounding on the flute and debussy leaves the flute completely exposed here it's an odd sound color but like an impressionist painter debussy uses it delicately and intentionally then there's this sweep of color the harp and wins in one bar and then muted strings in the next bar seamlessly switching between these different color palettes we next hear the theme harmonized as a d major seventh chord this major seventh is not a dissonance it just is it's just a chord beautiful for its own sake and the orchestra is written with such delicacy the strings marked meaning play it on the fingerboard for an extra soft effect i think it's no stretch to compare the pussy's orchestral writing to the delicacy of color in a monet painting we hear the same theme again now as the 13th note above an e major chord again this isn't dissonance but a beautiful new consonant and there's so much more to say about this work that i might have to break it down in a separate video but i think it's clear how france defined itself and escaped the shadow of germany following in the style of their impressionist painters these composers began to focus on elegance and beauty rather than human passions and tensions chords that once needed resolving now became beautiful for their own sake and the harmonies and sound colors became blurred together expertly producing an effect that wasn't focused on solid forms but on the subtlety of impressions to create these sensations of exquisite beauty i hope you enjoyed this video don't forget to subscribe to this channel if you want to see more like this and if you want to help support this channel or buy me a coffee to say thank you you can do so on patreon there's a link in the description thank you for watching