Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky an Analysis

Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky

An Analysis of the Compositional Styles of Debussy, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky

Claude Debussy, Arnold Schoenberg, and Igor Stravinsky all had a kind of modern compositional style. Debussy's style was considered to be impressionistic, although he himself never cared for the term. Schoenberg, whose 12-tone system essentially inverted counterpoint (to indicate the modern's removal from past masters), gave every note equal importance, allowing music to be written without a key. Stravinsky was another musical revolutionary, whose famous Rite of Spring played with rhythm and, like the artwork of Kandinsky, thoroughly cut itself off from past structures. This paper will assess the relative significance and influence of these three composers on the 20th century and show how their compositional styles reflect one another's.

Debussy's style, for example, has been noted for its lack of tonality -- a fact that the listener is sometimes distracted from by stirring passages in which a melody arises. He often coupled tones together, producing an effect of bitonality -- prefiguring in a sense the work of American composer Charles Ives, who would couple melodies together for a discordant effect. Debussy, moreover, was not afraid to make entire use of the pentatonic scale and would leap in modulation without deference to harmony. Debussy was conscious of trying to do something original -- and it may be argued that he was attempting to put into music what Turner was able to put onto canvas: the mysterious. Nonetheless, impressionism (ala Van Gogh) was in vogue at the time of Debussy, and it is no surprise if the composer's style be identified with the name.

Schoenberg, on the other hand, devised the 12-tone system and fundamentally altered the way 20th century composers wrote music: the technique of using 12 notes without a key is, in fact, what is most identifiable about much of 20th century music: it is anchorless, free, atonal. Schoenberg developed a kind of experimental method of music composition that was completely relativistic: the free use of 12 tones, in which the relationships are merely one-on-one and not related to a whole (in the traditional sense), mirrored the philosophical modern worldview of the times. This method was meant by Schoenberg to follow in the Germanic tradition of greatness. However, his break from traditional methods of composition (and even from revolutionary methods, such as Wagner's), served to effect a kind of musical equivalent to the future architectural methods of Breuer, who was renowned for Brutalism.

Stravinsky, like the other two, was an innovator who played with rhythm and harmony in an effort to devise an original style. Stravinsky would add or take away notes from a motif without addressing the ways in which this would affect meter. There was a spontaneity to Stravinsky's work, like the revolutionary Rite of Spring, which essentially allowed passages to clash violently with one another in the musical depiction of the rejuvenation of life. Stravinsky was not afraid to contort, bend, warp and alter familiar melodies to fit what might be called the warping societal structures of the 20th century.