Klima / ‘A Trick of the Sea’ (Piano Magic cover)
You, waking up from a dream of the sea, safe in the harbour from sailors like me
The Magic Lantern
Tagged
the sea
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Claude Debussy / “La Mer: 3. Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea)” [1905] performed by Max Pommer and the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra [2003]
Last night I took my wonderful girlfriend to dinner and a show at Orchestra Hall. We saw the second performance of the The Minnesota Orchestra’s Inside the Classics series, Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” and La Mer. To share at least a portion of my music history outing, posted above is a different recording of the third and final movement of La Mer, descriptively titled “Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea.”
Things I learned at the show: La Mer is notable historically for being the first music in the Western Classical tradition to eschew traditional melody lines in favor of sound layers. In other words, no single instrument carries the lead melody for more than a bar or two. At the same time, Debussy avoided cliched techniques of orchestrating themes related to water (i.e. rolling cello arpeggios). Despite the subtlety of each movement, finding one’s own imagery to match Debussy’s descriptors is not difficult.
Innovative composition and style with a perfect balance of subtlety and clarity -that combination is the genius of La Mer and why the piece remains a staple of symphonic music.
Let me just add that this specific movement is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard. The climax in particular is transcendent.
(Thank you, fuckyeahclassical & musichistory)
![‘Longing’ by James Archer [Scottish Painter, 1823-1904]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l5454o8qbQ1qzimr0o1_500.jpg)
lushlight:aubade:loveandzombies: ontheborderland:
“In November 1799 this meteor shower was observed at full moon off the coast of Florida by Andrew Ellicott. He wrote: In every instant the meteors were as numerous as the stars. The storm of the Leonids of 1799 was a key event with the discovery of the 33 years lasting period of the Leonids. This illustration appeared 1872 in the book The Midnight Sky by Edward Dunkin.”
(Image via NASA, caption source; courtesy of Mme. Ghoul, who has ever been a true friend to me.)
He wanted to talk about the sea - he might have said something like this: “It was the sea that made me begin thinking secretly about love more than anything else; you know, a love worth dying for, or a love that consumes you. To a man locked up in a steel ship all the time, the sea is too much like a woman. Things like her lulls and storms, or her caprice, or the beauty of her breast reflecting the setting sun, are all obvious. More than that, you’re in a ship that mounts the sea and rides her and yet is constantly denied her. It’s the old saw about miles and miles of lovely water and you can’t quench your thirst. Nature surrounds a sailor with all these elements so like a woman and yet he is kept as far as a man can be from her warm, living body. That’s where the problem begins, right there - I’m sure of it.
