Sound'n Rhythm

Debussy's rhythm-textures are made to create sound textures, which gain their force through the impact of articulation.

An articulation of sound in patterns or pattern-like melodies query the dominance of a pulse-related system consisting in bars and meters. A system which also ties the melodic structures strictly to those meters: even if syncopated rhythms were composed to create tension and conflict between melodies and meters, the conflict is their to be solved in a confirmation of the base-meters and their related bar structures, als well as to confirm the steady pulse of a preselected tempo: music's pulse normally is a solid continuity and not a flexible strap of frequent tempo changes.

In his piano etude nr. 3 "pour les quartes" Debussy searched for another approach to the relation between melody and meter, between a musical pulse of a piece and its sound textures. Although Debussy uses a conventional 6/8 measure (changed to 3/4 bar later on), this tribute to the bar system does not mean in any way, that his music is dominated by this measures. The pulse of the music is just a “virtual“ screen, which provides a background for the virtuosic sound articulations and their flexible timing.

Debussys musical motivs seem to stretch their background-pulse, as if they were doubting of which musical parameter would be the first: the melodious sounds which create a pulse or the rhythm-pulse, upon which the patterns are finally played.

The truth is, that melody and its intervalls, colours and rhythms are physically interwoven aspects of the same overall thing: sound…

the music's pulse is as relative as time itself just is…

We can divide it in our perception and we normally perceive its parameters as if they were different parts or organs of the music's heart. But this is happening only in our mind. Debussy shows us, that sounds create rhythms and rhythms create sounds. And the music's pulse is as relative as time itself just is, even if nobody could know this fact explicitly, back then in 1915, if this someone wouldn't have already grasped Einstein's brillant theories.

So,what Debussy does, is to shift the time proportions of his sound ideas by quick changes between triplet shapes and duplet shapes, as well as using accents and up tempo speeds of his musical sound-figures to move to high or deep sound registers: these sound colours seem to resume the proportional rhythm speeds in their sole frequency: extremly low or high sonorities, which indicate to be speed rhythms themselves.

The continuity of the intervall shape (the fourths) brings about a sound-shape, which kind of offsets the multible flexibility of the rhythmical proportions and articulations. Moreover this composition-technique of using a certain interval as sound-generator frees the melodic inventions from the bonds of tonal alignment in the conventional major or minor scale. This alignment to the scale structure in traditional music also looks for certain rhythmical implications: traditional tonality normaly means also rhythmic tonality - which is bound to meter and bar as it was described before. 

Debussy already in 1915 showed us, which way music could and would go in the future.