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How to Listen to and Understand Great Music
Season 1 · Episode 46
Early 20th-Century Modernism—Claude Debussy
0.045mOctober 23, 2023
The big break with the tonal tradition came with the French composer Claude Debussy, whose music grew from the French language’s proclivity for color, nuance, and blurred sound. Debussy was a stunningly original composer for whom timbre was as important as melody, rhythm, and harmony. His extraordinary Nuages illustrates his conception of timbre as a thematic element, his rejection of conventional major/minor modes in favor of non-traditional pitch collections, and his studied disregard for conventional harmonic practice in favor of a sense of suspended time.
Episodes
- Episode 1How to Listen to and Understand Great Music
- Episode 2Sources—The Ancient World and the Early Church
- Episode 3The Middle Ages
- Episode 4Introduction to the Renaissance
- Episode 5The Renaissance Mass
- Episode 6The Madrigal
- Episode 7Introduction to the Baroque
- Episode 8Style Features of Baroque-era Music
- Episode 9National Styles—Italy and Germany
- Episode 10Fugue
- Episode 11Baroque Opera, Part 1
- Episode 12Baroque Opera, Part 2
- Episode 13The Oratorio
- Episode 14The Lutheran Church Cantata
- Episode 15Passacaglia
- Episode 16Ritornello Form and the Baroque Concerto
- Episode 17The Enlightenment and an Introduction to the Classical Era
- Episode 18The Viennese Classical Style, Homophony, and Cadence
- Episode 19Classical-era Form—Theme and Variations
- Episode 20Classical-era Form—Minuet and Trio: Baroque Antecedents
- Episode 21Classical-era Form—Minuet and Trio Form
- Episode 22Classical-era Form—Rondo Form
- Episode 23Classical-era Form—Sonata Form, Part 1
- Episode 24Classical-era Form—Sonata Form, Part 2
- Episode 25Classical-era Form—Sonata Form, Part 3
- Episode 26The Symphony—Music for Every Person
- Episode 27The Solo Concerto
- Episode 28Classical-era Opera—The Rise of Opera Buffa
- Episode 29Classical-era Opera, Part 2—Mozart and the Operatic Ensemble
- Episode 30The French Revolution and an Introduction to Beethoven
- Episode 31Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5 in C Minor, op. 67, Part 1
- Episode 32Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5 in C Minor, op. 67, Part 2
- Episode 33Introduction to Romanticism
- Episode 34Formal Challenges and Solutions in Early Romantic Music
- Episode 35The Program Symphony—Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, Part 1
- Episode 36The Program Symphony—Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, Part 2
- Episode 3719th-Century Italian Opera—Bel Canto Opera
- Episode 3819th-Century Italian Opera—Giuseppe Verdi
- Episode 3919th-Century German Opera—Nationalism and Experimentation
- Episode 4019th-Century German Opera—Richard Wagner
- Episode 41The Concert Overture, Part 1
- Episode 42The Concert Overture, Part 2
- Episode 43Romantic-era Musical Nationalism
- Episode 44Russian Nationalism
- Episode 45An Introduction to Early 20th-Century Modernism
- Episode 46Early 20th-Century Modernism—Claude Debussy
- Episode 47Early 20th-Century Modernism—Igor Stravinsky
- Episode 48Early 20th-Century Modernism—Arnold Schönberg