Peter Frankl plays Debussy

I have 4 more albums to complete this project. Did i intentionally plan it out to end on Sunday? No. Is it going to end with a Paul? Yes. Do i know what i'm actually going to write? No.
Did i pick them because the composers share their first names with the Beatles? Yes, of course i did. I've taken the liberty of substituting Claude for Richard (Ringo's real name), but only because i had already decided i wanted to listen to Debussy's solo piano music before i came up with the theme for these last essays. Calgon, i mean Peter Frankl, take me away....

Debussy did not consider himself an Impressionist composer. Rather, if he had the word, he would have called himself a Symbolist. Symbolism is a moderately complicated philosophical orientation, but to quote Mallarmé, it is "to depict not the thing but the effect it produces." He was not particularly interested in being serious, and he and Satie got along quite well. He wasn't particularly well regarded for focusing on silly new compositional ideas instead of playing serious piano, or writing serious music, or even really being an upright pillar of any particular community. He did whatever he wanted to do, and said sorry, not sorry a lot. He was a kid during the Franco-Prussian War, got pretty famous at 40 with his decidedly symbolist opera Palléas et Mélisande, and died at 55 in the middle of WW I.

Really, the gist is that he thought experimenting with the musical ideas of the rest of the world was pretty interesting, and told everyone else to like it or leave him alone. 155 minutes of dreamy solo piano music, here we come. Enjoy it, 'cause tomorrow is gonna be a gruesome nightmare by comparison.

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