9/21/2023 0 Comments Debussy compositions 1914 1915Step 2: Actor in the Public Sphereīerceuse was followed by two similar pieces: Page d’album and Elégie. On the right, high prices for basic necessities. On the left, a queue for a café snakes around several streets. Two photographs showing daily life in Paris during World War One. Debussy acknowledges this himself, describing his piece as “melancholy and discreet… with no pretensions other than to offer homage to so much patient suffering.” Thus Debussy’s music claims to be symbolically representing the mood of the civilian population, with himself as spokesperson. The misery of feeling powerless in events, combined with everyday unhappy shortages of necessities, is expressed in Berceuse héroïque. Psychoanalytic descriptions of trauma generally agree that one response to trauma is to ‘displace’ it into another form, such as art Debussy does this exactly. He contributed a short piano piece, Berceuse héroïque. The Book was aimed to increase the Allies’ support, and Debussy was one of the few composers featured. His first work from this period appeared in November 1914, in King Albert’s Book: A Tribute to the Belgian King and People from Representative Men and Women Throughout the World. Step 1: Symbolic Representationĭebussy was not a natural patriot, declaring once that he never “had occasion to handle a gun.” But after being confronted daily by newspaper reports of “the Hun’s atrocities”, his attitude changed. The translation of this trauma from event to art to cultural narrative is what Jeffrey Alexander calls “the trauma process”, and its stages can be traced through Debussy’s compositions between 1914 and his death. World War One epitomises “a horrendous event”: entire families were wiped out, a large portion of young men were killed or injured, and civilians grieved. “Cultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks on their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways.” In Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, Jeffrey Alexander states that: France, and Debussy’s national identity, was under very real threat. Huge numbers of wounded began to return, the landscape became physically mutilated through trench warfare, and no end was in sight. Living in a fashionable, elegant neighbourhood near Bois de Bologne, Claude Debussy had little on his mind beyond his growing debts.ĭebussy’s friends and family become increasingly politically involved. By considering how artists are influenced by, and become influencers of, cultural trauma, and the role of this in national identity, we can understand how the impact of World War One affects our sense of self today.
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