Page 171 - HandbookMarch1

Pagodes
The preceding overview summarizes the basic elements of gamelan music as documented by twentieth-century
25
ethnomusicologists. Claude Debussy summarizes his own impressions of gamelan in 1913:
There used to be—indeed, despite the troubles that civilization has brought, there still are—some wonderful
peoples who learn music as easily as one learns to breathe. Their school consists of the eternal rhythm of
the sea, the wind in the leaves, and a thousand other tiny noises, which they listen to with great care,
without ever having consulted any . . . dubious treatises. Their traditions are preserved only in ancient
songs, sometimes involving dance, to which each individual adds his own contribution century by century.
Thus Javanese music obeys laws of counterpoint that make Palestrina seem like child's play. And if one
listens to it without being prejudiced by one's European ears, one will find a percussive charm that forces
one to admit that our own music is not much more than a barbarous kind of noise more fit for a traveling
circus. 26

Debussy presents his impressions even more clearly in his 1903 composition Pagodes. It is the first in a set of
27
three pieces entitled Estampes, meaning stamp, or in the world of visual art, a print made by pressing a carved
block into ink and then stamping it onto paper. In Pagodes he presents an aural rather than visual print of the
gamelan.
28
His choice of title has puzzled many scholars, since Java actually is not a land of pagodas. Debussy's ongoing
fascination with oriental art (especially Japanese woodcut prints), his re-exposure to the gamelan at the 1900
Exposition Universelle, and the recent return of a friend from a trip to China and Vietnam may all have provided
29
him with general reminders of the Orient while he was composing Pagodes. Yet his specific choice of title
remains a mystery. A solution to the puzzle might be found in observing, as Debussy would have, the pagoda-
like towers at the entrance to the Javanese village, the pagoda of Angkor Wat right next door, and the many
curved pagoda-appearing roofs in the vicinity at the 1889 Exposition. (See Figure 2.)
Significantly, Debussy chose the piano as his medium. He was a fine pianist himself, trained in the traditional
concert repertory during his student years at the Paris Conservatory. He had also developed considerable
mastery in orchestral composing, with its consequent attention to instrumental timbres. During the decade or so
beyond schooling his concept of the piano seems to have evolved from the nineteenth century ideal as a
"singing" instrument to that of a "coloristic" instrument. Pagodes is his first piece to fully embrace the piano's
innate percussive nature, its mechanism producing sound via hammers hitting strings. 30
A marvelously sensitive pianist, Debussy often amazed listeners with the sounds he drew from the instrument.
Several of his contemporaries have commented on this aspect of his music and his playing:

The power of the magic will be understood by all who have once heard this supernatural piano in which
sounds are born of the impact of the hammers, with no brushing against the strings, then rise up into
transparent air, which combines but does not blend them, and evaporate in iridescent mists. Monsieur
Debussy tames the keyboard with a spell which is beyond the reach of any of our virtuosi. 31

No words can give an idea of the way in which he played . . . . Not that he had actual virtuosity, but his
sensibility of touch was incomparable; he made the impression of playing directly on the strings of the
instrument with no intermediate mechanism; the effect was a miracle of poetry. Moreover, he used the
pedals in a way all his own. 32

Debussy insisted upon . . . the proper way to strike a note on the piano. 'It must be struck in a peculiar way,'
he would say, 'otherwise the sympathetic vibrations of the other notes will not be heard quivering distantly
in the air.' Debussy regarded the piano as the Balinese [sic] musicians regard their gamelan orchestras. He
was interested not so much in the single tone that was obviously heard when a note was struck, as in the
patterns of resonance which that tone sets up around itself. 33
In Pagodes the piano simulates the timbre of the gamelan. The first measure (see Example 1, which contains all
of the musical excerpts in the following discussion) presents a perfect fifth, low B-F#, followed by the same fifth
an octave higher and a seeming discord F#-G# higher yet, all played pianissimo and all blurred together by two
Go to top
pedals (soft pedal and damper pedal). The result is an overtone-rich composite sound evocative of a gong.