9. Pagodes

Knee 2b

Welcome back again. This week I’m talking about the ninth track to be released from ‘You Could Be Happy’. It’s called ‘Knee 2b’.

Pagodes

Just in case you’re new to these emails, the ‘Knee’ tracks are (sometimes) where we get to step aside from the story a little bit and think about other ideas or emotions that influence the album. I explain them a bit more here. Knee 1b (Big Tree) was also the first time we came across the idea of nostalgia, and we’re back to it again this week. This is a different idea of nostalgia though. Can you be nostalgic for something you didn’t experience?

In 1889, the Eiffel Tower had been complete for just under a year, well in time for the event for which it was designed, the Paris Exposition. The fair was intended to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. One of the competing designs for a grand monument to celebrate the Revolution was a gigantic guillotine, so let’s be happy that one didn’t win out. I think. As is typical for the grand exhibitions of the time, the Paris Exposition brought together things from all over the world in a huge celebration of humanity’s newfound industrially-driven globalisation. And, needless to say, its evil twin colonialism hitched along for the ride. Art, artefacts, performers, foods, and even buildings were dragged from the four corners of the globe to be shown to an amazed public in Paris.

It was at the Paris Exposition that the composer Claude Debussy heard Javanese Gamelan for the first time. I’m aware that some people (i.e. my partner) tend to tune out when these emails talk about a bunch of music people they’ve never heard of, but this is kind of important, so let me try to explain it in the quickest and most straightforward way I possibly can. Any musicologists out there will forgive me I’m sure (assuming they haven’t already gone blind from rolling their eyes at these emails).

Gamelan is music native to what is now Indonesia, and is played by an orchestra comprising a bunch of things you hit, such as bells and things a bit like xylophones. In fact, the orchestra itself is called a Gamelan. It looks and sounds like this -

Super cool, right? Well, Debussy thought so.

Before Debussy heard a Gamelan at the Paris Exposition, piano music sounded like this.

After he heard it, piano music sounded like this.

I’m really hoping you can hear how massively different the second piece is from the first. If this kind of thing is new to you, maybe focus first on the rhythms. The first Chopin piece is definitely a waltz, in that it goes ‘RUM tum tum RUM tum tum RUM tum tum’. The Debussy piece, on the other hand, sort of goes ‘boodly boodly boodly boop boodly boop’ and wanders around all over the place. Nobody was whirled round a genteel ballroom to the strains of that one.

Longing and fiction

The influence of Asian music and culture on French music and culture of the late 19th century was colossal. Delacroix’s paintings of ‘the orient’ from earlier in the century set a tone for an enduring fascination with North Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, reflected in the works of Flaubert, Saint-Seans, Massenet, and many others. Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa was instrumental in the spread of Japonisme and Cloisonnism, styles which resulted in some of the best known art of the whole of Western history; Van Gogh, Degas, Klimt, and most obviously, Monet’s garden pictures, and waterlilies.

But despite an abiding cultural interest, deep respect, wholesale appropriation, and all points in between, for the most part, these guys were making it up. They were dreaming of, depicting, copying, incorporating and representing something they hadn’t actually seen or experienced. Ok, Flaubert did actually go to North Africa for a few trips, and the odd character like Gaugin actually made it as far as Tahiti in real life, but for the most part this was a deep longing for something these artists hadn’t actually experienced and would never experience. The jury is out on whether they even tried.

It was me all along

I’m telling you about this for two reasons. Firstly, because the music of that period is hugely important to me. If I had space, there would be a shrine to Ravel in my house, and probably another one to Debussy right next to him. I really hope you can hear a bit of Debussy in this Knee; in fact, I’d be thrilled to bits if you could.

But more importantly, in a really weird way, I’m nostalgic for that time. I was never there, and I’m equally sure I probably wouldn’t enjoy being there, but honestly, 1900s Paris sounds like somewhere I belong in spirit. The piece I linked to above - Pagodes - is the first of a set of three pieces by Debussy called, collectively, “Estampes” (or ‘Prints’, as in woodblock prints, as in Hokusai…). The third piece from that collection is called “Jardins sous la pluie”, or ‘Gardens in the Rain’.

When I listen to that piece, I can see, incredibly clearly, the tall hedges, close cropped lawn, and ageing paved patio that I’m looking at through the french doors at the back of a Parisian townhouse. I can see the black, wrought iron garden furniture, and smell the rain as it falls on the garden. I can see the percolated coffee and croissant I’ll be eating for my breakfast. I want nothing more than to be there, in that place, at that time. I feel weird and squiggly just writing about it. I chose the Giesking recording of Pagodes above, partly because I think he just plays the best Debussy, but partly because the recording is old, and sort-of belongs to that time that I’ve never experienced, and that place I’ve never lived. But these are the places and times I most want to return to; and maybe this is what those composers felt about the ‘oriental’ times and places that were in their minds when they wrote that music.

All the piano pieces on this album are in some way a reflection of my love of that music, a tribute to it, and a way of sharing a deep desire to go to that place. They aren’t all pastiche (in fact they’re not even pastiche), but to the extent that western piano music changed fundamentally after Debussy heard that gamelan, I’m living in a world that exists after that happened, so my music must reflect it. All music is copying. F for fake.

Next week, we get back to the story, and find things have moved on in our absence. Gonna need a montage…

What next?

Glad you asked! Firstly, thanks for reading this far. You’ve already been part of the creative journey of this album, and I very sincerely thank you for paying attention. All I’d really like is for people to listen and be part of what I’ve made. Job done. However, if you have friends or people you think would enjoy this, please encourage them to sign up to these updates via www.thesixteenth.net. It would mean a lot. And maybe actually listen to the songs in whatever way you enjoy!

You can listen to the music here, or through the links below.