Piano Journal: Clair de lune
Alexa, play Debussy
I can report, as someone thoroughly assimilated to Smart Home life, that for many years if you asked Alexa to “play Debussy”, it would promptly spit out four or five versions of Clair de lune in a row (including some knockoff orchestral arrangements that doubtless appeared on a “most relaxing classical music” CD in the 90’s). This is an indication both of how streaming algorithms were long blind to the particular requirements of classical music listeners, and of the popularity of the piece, overwhelmingly the most recognizable thing Debussy ever wrote. I am pleased to report that Alexa’s engineers have since solved the problem; on recent listening it played the piece fourth, and only once.
It may be the quintessence, now, of what people talk about when they describe a piece as pretty: it’s gentle and gauzy, opening with a slow, clear melody before unfurling into harp-like rippling arpeggios. It goes without saying that Debussy wouldn’t have liked it to be described that way, and to listen carefully to Clair de lune for me is often a meditation on the difference between “pretty” and “beautiful”.
Back when I was a teenager, my high school occasionally asked me to play the piano as background music for whatever event was taking place in their student art gallery. I enjoyed it and they paid me a small sum, and Clair de lune was firmly in my repertoire. To say it makes perfect background music is not to knock it, although Debussy would likely have hated that too. I taught myself to play it, and there are some sections I never learned properly and still cannot play with fluency, in particular the bridge section from 2:13 to 2:23. Another persistent problem: the chords in the opening are a series of thirds, and for the best effect the two notes should sound at precisely the same time. I have not been able to consistently do this — one note inevitably precedes the other by a fraction, leading to a “broken” sound. When I asked my teacher, she said that this happens because my fingers are different lengths, and the solution is to curl them up. The physics of the problem had simply not occurred to me before, but it now seems embarrassingly simple. I’m still working on it.
My teacher tells me that playing Debussy is primarily about creating layers of sound, carefully negotiating the depression of the keys and pedals so that the impression is of a translucence that fades in and out. The performance notes in my edition suggest the following:
Debussy insisted, according to one of his pupils, Louis Laloy, that there should be no special emphasis on the melodic line or on chords. The music is so written as to make this unnecessary. Those who heard Debussy play spoke of tones that “seemed to be produced without hammers.” The words “dim,” “veiled,” “iridescent” and “transparent” were often applied to his music. Debussy instructed his students to play with sensitive fingertips and and to play chords as if the keys were being attracted to the tips of the fingers and rose to the hand as if to a magnet.
Part of what dooms Clair de lune to a kind of insipid popularity is that it so perfectly evokes the image suggested by its title — moonlight shining on rippling water. When the animators at Disney created a tableau for the piece to be included in Fantasia they felt no need to diverge from this imagery. The piece (which you can watch below via YouTube) was ultimately cut from the film, but was eventually rediscovered and restored. Watching it, I was prepared to find it merely pretty, and be therefore annoyed; I surprised myself when I found it to be in fact beautiful. I’m unimpressed by the animation of sparkles on water, but something about the way the egret extends its neck, takes little sips of water, or something about the stalks and hinges of its legs, made me think of what it is to stay by the water and watch the birds.
What is the difference between pretty and beautiful, anyway? We know what we mean when we describe a person, a piece of music, a landscape as either pretty or beautiful. To define pretty in relation to beautiful is easy: it is something that pleases, but does not do more. But what is that more? To say that it carries some deeper meaning, calls forth some emotion, is not enough because it does not name the thing. I don’t expect to do any better on this question than the many, many philosophers who have asked it over the centuries. The best I can do is that, simultaneous with pleasure, it carries a threat — it might make us do something we otherwise wouldn’t; it might remind us of the realities of time and mortality; it cannot be easily dismissed. In the orchestral “most relaxing ever” arrangements of the piece, or as background music, Clair de lune is easily dismissed. But to a receptive ear, it depicts pure, delicate, temporariness: a play of light that fascinates and is soon gone.