Scale, Imagery And Metaphor: The Developmental Features Of Debussy 's Creation

The objective of this paper is to analyze the usage of non-traditional musical scale, musical imagery and musical metaphor in the Debussy’s composition. Through the microanalysis, the paper will bring the deeper understanding on the overall style of Debussy’s music character.Referring to the concept of high-pitch collection from N ·Joseph· Strauss ‘tone after theory’ and the sound-level collection from Alan Ford, the paper will analyze the feature of the eight pentatonic, diatonic and pentatonic characteristics as the harmony support structure. Meanwhile, observing the non-traditional scale used in Debussy’s composition, the innovative aspects of his music will be also explored in this paper. Moreover, extracting from the theory of the Aesthetic Imagery, the theory of the music interpretion and the theory of the modern hermeneutics “metaphor" focusing on music and imagery emotional integration and modern "metaphor" connotation beyond rhetoric, and clarifying how he generated and converted between emotion and expression in the domain of composition thoughts, we will strive to grasp the nature of Debussy’s saying "to create an unique real".This paper is divided into three parts: The first part is to understand how to use the unconventional scales of the octatonic, pentatonic and diatonic. The second part is to analyze Debussy’s music imagery from natural imagery, myths exotic appeal and personal characters. The third part is to study the musical metaphor from the overall structure of Debussy’s composition.