Estampes Of Debussy And A Study Of Its Playing

Debussy(1862--1918) is a famous French composer and pianist. As a representative of Impressionism in the history of music, he composed plenty of classic piano works. His mature stage of music composition is from 1901 to 1913 and Estampes is the most important work at this stage. Estampes is composed of Pagodes, La soirée dans Grenade and Jardins sous la pluie.This thesis includes the following parts.The preface is a brief introduction to the process of Debussy's music compostion and his work Estampes.The first chapter is about the historical and cultural background of the compostion of Estampes. During the composing process, Debussy was highly influenced by Symbolism, Impressionism, French traditional music and exotic music culture of 19th century,.The second chapter is a summary of the style characteristics and unique musical language of Estampes. This thesis attempts to interpret it from the aspects of drawing, poetry and nation's fusion, for these three aspects reflect his main style and characteristics at the rising stage of music composing, and make an analysis of its unique musical language from four aspects: the use of pentatonic scale, peculiar dance music rhythm, vivid pantomime and new music form and structure.The third chapter is some personal ideas of playing of Estampes. Through the specific study and analysis on the three music sorces of Estampes, the author tries to interpret the playing methods from the aspects of touching key and pedal. The first part of this chapter contains the use of Debussy'most representative method of touching key; an analysis on how to use finger-touch from linear and vertical arrangements of touching key, and the method of touching key, to which attention should be paid when various audio color is imitated in the music. The second part is discussion on the use of tenuto pedal, sustained tone pedal and soft pedal. It includes author's understanding of Debussy's pedal annotation and some personal ideas.