(WIKI)
At the time of its composition, Golliwoggs were in fashion, due partly to the popularity at that time of the novels of Florence Kate Upton ("golliwog" is a later usage). They were stuffed black dolls with red pants, red bow ties and wild hair, reminiscent of the blackface minstrel shows of the time. The cakewalk was a dance or a strut, and the dancer with the most elaborate steps won a cake ("took the cake"). The piece is a ragtime with its syncopations and banjo-like effects. The dynamic range is quite large and very effective.
During the piece, Debussy alludes satirically to Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde. The opening bars turn the famous half-diminished Tristan chord into a jaunty, syncopated arpeggio, while the middle 'B' section of this dance is interrupted on several occasions by the love-death leitmotif, marked avec une grande émotion (with great feeling). Each quotation is followed by banjo imitations.
(Valse Mélancolique)
Debussy was probably one of the only Composers that Liszt could not imitate. On January 13, 1886, while Claude was staying at the Villa Medici in Rome, Liszt met him there with Paul Vidal and Ernest Hébert, director of the French Academy. Even in great age, Liszt appears to have admired the young listener who did not fall asleep while his Faust Symphony was being performed, unlike another who partook actions with his ill diligences and gross inappropriate mannerisms during Liszt's own revolutionary Sonata in B-minor performances and thereafter presented a long, exhausting, repetitive composition in E-flat minor, which Liszt sight-read perfectly and deemed non-hygienic - The Composer and Editor agrees with Liszt concerning that particular vomiting of sound upon paper and thus will never record the work.
13 июн 2024
