Classical Music: Reassessing Debussy.
The search for meaning
In a Tel Aviv bookstore where the weight of history lives I stumbled upon a book by the author Vicktor Frankl: Man's Search For Meaning. This tells of his terrible time at a Nazi death camps as the inmates struggle to find meaning in their lives during Hitler's final solution for the Jews. To find this meaning is to find the very existence of their lives.
If only this ethos was applied to classical music. There are two camps here: one that believes the notes of music have meaning to the human condition, and those that believe the notes have no significance at all.
In the one hand you have Gustav Mahler who looks for heavenly guidance in his music, and on the other you have someone like Strauss who thought there was no need to behave like that - he worked in an almost dry and methodical manner.
Searching for soul
Chopin was another who found meaning in every note. Every note contained a burden of Polish history. The Russian Prokofiev on the other hand wrote perfectly arranged scores, but there seemed to be a lack of soul at the heart of his work if you truly looked hard enough.
All of this makes it seem there is no middle ground here. Either the music has meaning to the composer or it does not. They are either a Victor Frankl or not.
This all might help explain the title of this post. I myself cannot fall in love with the work of the French composer Debussy - no it has nothing to do with Brexit I promise you.
Debussy fails to stir the blood in my veins as I can feel no meaning behind his compositions. To me his music has the nutritional value of eating spoonfuls of sugar. Cheaply purchased to be consumed immediately upon buying.
Debussy was a man of lower class who was a serial philanderer, and had very few musical friends. He had a venom like no other composer, and even gave it to his friend Maurice Ravel who never had anything but respect for him. Like the majority of great composers, Debussy has a large ego, and this made him not a very nice man. He never reached the soulful heights of Chopin.
Right, I must leave you now to return to my Victor Frankl book.
Are you a fan of Debussy or classical music? Please do leave a comment below.
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Who is your favourite classical composer @screenname?