Page 224 - PDF Flip TR Program Demo

And why should melodies be slaves to those standard chord modulations—“those magic changes,” to quote Grease? Melodies should go their own way, not chained to the chords beneath them.
So symbolist poetry, which had the same goal of breaking the rules and using language not for its sense, but for its sound, was ideally suited to Debussy’s own sense of disrupting classic modes. But rather than using dehuman- ized mathematical formulae to set new rules, as happened later in Germany, Debussy and the symbolist poets still maintained a strong attachment to traditional melodies uniting the chaos beneath.
En bateau has the kind of melody a popular French song would kill for. It’s more like an aria by Delibes, Massenet, or Bizet. This is more of a cradle than a boat, while suggesting at the same time the soothing rock of a barque on a great sea. But the poem by Verlaine is about a bunch of disreputable artists traveling by boat to the island of love. The boat is an afterthought, like a milk bottle in Vermeer
or the glass of milk in Notorious. Those who seek love by unorthodox means risk their soul in order to gain it.
I do not seek, I find. It is a risk, a holy adventure. The uncertainty of such ventures can only be taken on by those who feel safe in insecurity, who are
led in uncertainty, in guidelessness, who let them selves be drawn by the target and do not define the target themselves.
—Pablo Picasso
On the other hand, as Archibald MacLeish wrote in his poem, “Rape of the Swan”:
To love love and not love’s meaning Hardens the heart in monstrous ways. No one is ours who has this leaning. Those whose loyalty is love’s betray us.
224 The Music at Tippet Rise
BATEAU
L’étoile du berger tremblote
The planet Venus gleams
Dans l’eau plus noire et le pilote
In the dark water and our hero Cherche un briquet dans sa culotte. Looks for his lighter in his jeans.
C’est l’instant, Messieurs, ou jamais, It’s time, gentlemen,
D’être audacieux, et je mets
To be bold, and from now on I throw Mes deux mains partout désormais ! Discretion to the winds!
Le chevalier Atys, qui grate
The noble Atys plays a chorus
Sa guitare, à Chloris l’ingrate
And shoots a quick look
Lance une œillade scélérate.
At the lowlife Chloris.
L’abbé confesse bas Eglé,
The priest pardons bad Aglé,
Et ce vicomte déréglé
And then the crazy beast
Des champs donne à son cœur la clé. Leads him to his bed.
Cependant la lune se lève
But moonbeams swallow my head:
Et l’esquif en sa course brève Through the brief night merrily we row File gaîment sur l’eau qui rêve.
Our boat along a sea that dreams.
—English translation by Peter Halstead
IDYLL
Setting out in the moonlight
For Cythère, or any island at all,
As Venus brightens the night,
Atys lusts for a highly musical
Nymph, Sangarite, who loves of course Someone else; the knight
Has a goddess for a wife,
But he himself could care less.