Claude Debussy

So, ya'll know already that itunes is a rip-off, right?  Amazon.com has a much cheaper 1-click-purchase mp3 store, one that offers the same massive music library for (often significantly) cheaper than the same titles on itunes. All your amazon purchases are even automatically saved into the cloud, it's marvelous.  How Apple's itune store stays in business is simply a triumph of marketing, because their business model sucks.

Of Amazon's many perks, the spiffiest I've found of late is that they currently offer entire 100-song collections of the masters of Classical music for only $1.99.  That's right, for 2 bucks, you can own 10+ hours of, say, Mozart, or Bach, or Beethoven--and professionally recordings at that!  You're guaranteed to own all the best known--or even barely known--masterpieces of each respective composer, and then some, all at bargain-basement prices and saving you the hard work of trying to figure out and gather on your own the best pieces of these artists.

I hate to sound like a salesman, but these collections are seriously breath-taking--and if these collections are pulled from amazon due to lack of downloads on all ya'lls parts, I'll be seriously pissed.

It's through these collections, for example, that Claude Debussy has officially become my new favorite composer.  It used to be Beethoven, then Tchaikovsky, and I've certainly warmed to Mozart over the years (as would please my mother).  But sweet merciful heavens, Debussy overwhelms me!  Have you given "Nocturnes, L 91 III. Sirens" a listen lately?  I never understood how Odysseus's men in The Odyssey could be tempted to crash their ships on a mermaid's song; but if these sirens' sounded anything like Debussy's...Mercy, I'm listening to it right now, and am so overcome that I feel an urge to throw myself upon the ocean rocks as we speak.

I also never quite understood the cliche of how a music piece can "transport" you until I heard "Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faun."  Even when he's just jamming on the piano he's amazing: witness for example his Arabesque #2, justly used as the outro-theme for that lovable goofball Jack Horkheimer's stargazer show.  I learned Clair de Lune on the piano about 7 years ago (again, to remember my later mother), and even through my own many, stumbling, imperfect renditions, that piece still has the uncanny ability to move me, near to tears (shame that it's best known today merely as the ending montage score to Ocean's 11). 

And as I've delved deeper into this 100-song set, I can testify that all I've cited thus far is but the tip of the iceberg.  The man was a phenomenon.

The hell is it with this Debussy guy, anyways?!  I mentioned once that my trip to France a year ago left me borderline enraged--they make us look bad you see, what with their dazzling architecture, world-class art, delicious food, stylish people, and beautiful language that is as sweet honey on the ears--and I guess if all that wasn't enough, they had to produce Debussy, too!  The guy was so good he appeared on their 20-franc note before the debut of the Euro. 

The man is artistic experimentation done right--not novelty for its own sake, not boundary pushing just to push boundaries (though all that has its place), but experimentation specifically to make things even more beautiful.  He opens your ears and eyes to sensations you didn't even know were possible, to sounds you weren't aware could exist but now you can't conceive of a world where they don't.  He challenges you, not through some facile project to discomfit the audience, but by showing how much beauty is possible beyond the standard structures. 

He's what I might aspire to emulate as an artist, save that he Debussy didn't become Debussy by emulating others.  Even a century later, he still feels like something strange, something new, yet also something that always should have existed...