Clair de Lune Analysis Essay

When listening to a different genre of music, the objective is mostly seeking some form of thriller that will break the usual monotony of music that an individual is used to listen. The song "Clair de Lune" is perhaps one of the most iconic songs of the 20th century and it will probably remain relevant for the next years to come. This is because the song is beautifully done and by listening to the song, the listener can identify various components styles, context and influence of the "Clair de Lune." Debussy, the composer of the song at the time of writing the song was at the age of 25 (Chaffin, 2007). It is important to understand the song background to make a complete analysis of the song. Most of the songwriters are influenced by their personal experiences when composing and writing up songs. The song was later on published in 1905 and since then, "Clair de Lune" has remained one of the most beautifully created music composition.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Debussy's songwriting style is confusing, and this is evident from the very first time listening to the song. It creates a strong appeal that makes the listener wonder and gets lost in thoughts when trying to figure out the nature and genre of the music. The song lacks a defined rhythm, and it is very sparse. The first part of the song is captivating because of the space in the intro first part provided by the scattered tones. Debussy as a songwriter as opposed to a traditional romantic style that was the dominant style of playing with chord patterns and theme. The separate notes come together during the second stage of the masterpiece, they are still quite but bring out a potent effect on the listener (Chaffin, 2007). The tone of the song creates ambiguity that makes the listener not to feel secure. D flat major is evident from the opening notes, but it fades as more tones are introduced and hence creating ambiguity. The song does not follow any defined rule breaking characteristics like most of the songs. He chose a cluster of notes that creates a different classical mood that makes the song unique and outstanding.

The song creates an artistic impression with magical influences. The idea revolves around painting something in mind which has a lot of essences. Impression as artistic movement focuses on music composition which conveys the moods and emotions with the main difference being that the music does not focus on a detailed tone composition (Byrnside, 1980). The use of color is the most prominent characteristics of music impression when compared to painter's impressionists. Other aspects of music impression as shown by "Clair de Lune" are ambiguous tone, great harmonies and chord combinations as discussed earlier. Clair de Lune is Dionysian, and this is because the song does not appeal or provoke logical thinking, and instead, it appeals to emotions which are a distinctive characteristic of Dionysian. Music and visual art should be classified arts, this because, art creates an emotional appeal. Both music and visual art trigger emotional reactions and not rational reactions. Music and visual arts both make an individual experience emotional imaginations and not the other way round of trying to rationalize things by looking for hidden meaning. By just listening or viewing, automatically, a person can identify the emotions without even thinking about the meaning of the song. Therefore referring "Clair de Lune" as impression makes sense.

References

Byrnside, R. L. (1980). Musical impressionism: the early history of the term. The Musical Quarterly, 66(4), 522-537.

Chaffin, R. (2007). Learning Clair de Lune: Retrieval practice and expert memorization. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 24(4), 377-393.