The artistry of Music

focusing on Liszt, Schubert and Debussy

This article started with the question of

"If human kind can bring only 10 pieces of music from Earth to space, which pieces would you choose."

Debussy ‘Moonlight’, ‘Reverie’, ‘La mer’

Liszt ‘Hamlet’, ‘Mazeppa’, ‘Faust’, ‘Totentanz’

Schubert ‘Erlkönig’, ‘Die Forelle’, ‘Heidenröslein’

Music is the art of harmonizing and combining beats, rhythms, and notes into various forms, expressing an idea or emotion through a voice or musical instrument. Therefore, music is a time art that moves in a certain order based on sound. In other words, it is "music that does not have a spatial composition and develops its contents over time." Historically, music has become deeply established in our lives as people around the world enjoy it in various genres from ancient times to today. Classical music, among other genres of music, is Western classical music created in the 17th and 19th centuries during the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods. The reason why classical music has been recognized for its own value despite its hundreds of years of history is that the equality of emotions is consistent in the past and present. In this regard, classical music is in contrast to "pop music with popularity and fashion," which the common people quickly learn and sing along with. Classical music contains "artistry" and "aesthetic" rather than "sensory and momentary enjoyment," which requires basic knowledge and knowledge. In this article, I would like to select and classify works by particular composers based on their artistic and aesthetic qualities. If we look at music from an aesthetic perspective, we can analyze what reason, what factors, and what background it is considered beautiful. In this article, I would like to select and classify works based on their artistic qualities. Of course, every work of art has its own meaning and intentions, but we will analyze what factors can be considered aesthetically beautiful and great that everyone can relate to.

Debussy was a leading French composer influenced by impressionist artists. Impressionist artists performed their work by observing the changes in light and the instantaneous changes in natural scenery in the sunny fields. It can be seen as a style of painting that emphasizes the role of light, faint boundaries, complex shades, emotions, and atmosphere. Among them, his representative song is "Clair de lune," influenced by the poem "Moonlight" by the French poet “Verlaine." It is known as Debussy's most famous overall work, depicting the moonlight floating in the dark night sky. This song can be seen as the first impressionist technique to appear in his music with various changes in beat and rhythm and the use of various harmonies and compositions. Creating new sounds and sounds in music, he greatly influenced contemporaries and later composers. He expressed the atmosphere of his music and the sound of colors. Debussy studied piano and composition at the National Conservatory of Music in Paris, and when the professor asked Debussy what rules she followed, she replied, "I only follow my own pleasure." It's a free expression of music as it sounds. Ignoring the traditional chords and the creation relationship, the music began to emphasize its colourful function. It is believed that delicate expressions and various shining tones have contributed a lot to the development of piano music. So listening to his music makes me feel like I'm in a painting, and I can picture the scenery he imagined while writing songs. Among Debussy's works, the song "Reverie" makes listeners fall into a dreamy atmosphere and feel as if they are in a faint fog. Poetic means something that is impossible to grasp in opposition to "prose" or "literary" as an aesthetic essence common to various arts. Romantic artists thought that such 'poetic art' "exposes the state of the noble and secretive soul, stimulates the fantasy of the audience, and shows a new and original form." As an extension of symphony poetry, the connection between Western classical music and literature is indispensable. List and Goethe are also quite closely related. Faust, among others, is a creative motif for many artists as well as Lizst. It is difficult to explain the contents of literature with pure music without lyrics. However, Liszt exudes the characteristics of the three characters and the stories they have experienced in music through Faust's In other words, it makes us interpret the music based on Faust's content. The title symphony is another genre that introduces orchestral music that can be expressed with elements other than music, thus eliciting various interpretations of music.

Liszt judged contemporary composers lazy, criticizing them as passive succession, for their continued adherence to traditional genres and forms. The opinion is that this kind of music is not a work of art but a handicraft. Liszt wanted to create a "formal idea that transforms poetic ideas into categories of ideas in music". The symphony poem created by Liszt combines the orchestra, the most expressive medium, with "literature." French impressionists, led by Debussy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, also inherited the same title orchestral music as symphonies, but the plot, "the narrative," disappeared from their works. Instead, what they combined with orchestral music was nature, atmospheric change, light, or art. Among other things, Hamlet is his representative symphony poem. It is closely related to Shakespeare's play of the same name, and is a song with his own poetic music. It was thought that music should be a "transmitter of poetic ideology," and it was important for listeners to be able to relate music to certain emotional feelings and pay attention to the poetic ideas it expresses as well as to musical structures. Liszt was impressed by Victor Hugo's poem "Mazeppa" on the theme of human hardship and victory in 1839. The content of being driven to death in the wilderness for loving the noble's wife and overcoming hardships again may have been a self-compensation for the wounds of his first love as a child. It is also famous for its piano work, and Liszt published it as Symphony No. 6. He also composed more than 10 symphonies, which are highly regarded in later generations. Goethe, who is such a creditable writer of the times, was also a genius in music himself. Content and language make a fantastic harmony with musical elements. Schubert as well as Liszt are the best composers to melt his work into music.

Schubert, who showed genius no less than Mozart in the Romantic Era, deserves to be called king of the tune. In addition to Goethe, he made music with poems by various writers such as Schiller and Haine, but among them, his affection for Goethe was known to have been extraordinary. Among them, the famous ones in later generations include 'The Devil', 'The Wild Rose' and 'The Trout'. The most obvious manifestation of Schubert's artistry is the 'The Devil'. As the legend of the devil is famous, Goethe's original work also inspired him a lot, and he reportedly wrote songs at once after listening to the poem. Schubert is singing the story of the devil in a cogent form, as if he were writing a poem with music. Increase tension through changes in notes, and continue tension with a perfect transition. The song ends with the phrase "tod(death)" heightened at the end. It ends one huge tragic epic, ending in vain the gradually heightened tension.