Clair de lune - PHH 011

Welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness, the Harp Mastery podcast. My name is Ann Sullivan and I'm a harpist, teacher, and founder of Harp Mastery. I'm all about creating more harp happiness in the world by helping harp players like you play the music they want the way they want. But as a harpist who nearly flunked out of one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, I, although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there. I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave or learning music faster, or getting your piece's performance ready, or just learning to enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started.

Welcome to the show. Today's show is more of a mini masterclass on Debussy's beautiful piece, Clair de Lune, which means moonlight.

Now, some composers change music forever, and Debussy was one of those. He is generally credited to have initiated the impressionist movement in music, which happened at the end of the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th century. Impressionist music was all about mood and color and atmosphere. And the ways that Debussy used musical elements to explore those avenues of expression was what made his music so revolutionary at the time, and it's what makes it so beautiful for us. But that doesn't mean it's easy to play, particularly for harpists, because Clair de Lune is a piano piece originally, and so we harpists have some challenges when we approach it. But what I really want to talk about in today's show are some of the things that make Debussy's music very special, make it more challenging than other kinds of music to play. It can be a real adventure the first time you try a piece of Debussy's music because it seems like it ought to be very free form and that the expression comes from the liberties that a performer can take. But this is true to a much smaller extent than you might think. Much of the expression in this kind of music is written right on the page. And I'm going to show you how to interpret what is on the page so that your Debussy's or your Ravel or any of that impressionist music, and in particular Clair de Lune, can be just as expressive as you want. Believe it or not, following the directions that Debussy gives you is much easier than trying to make it up for yourself and you'll find that the results are totally worth it. In fact, the same kind of approach that you use when you learn a piece by Bach or Beethoven or Mozart is the same kind of approach you're going to use for this music. In particular, we're going to look at three elements of Clair de Lune and how Debussy used them to create that magical moonlight mood, how you need to practice them in order to convey what he wanted and sort of how to figure out what it is he wanted in the first place. So we're going to look at that. Believe me, these principles will not only help you learn Clair de Lune or any other piece by Debussy or the Impressionists, but they're going to be useful to any other piece of music as well. So I'm excited to share those with you. At the end of the episode, you will find. Well, I'll talk about a two page practice guide that I have for Clair de Lune and I'll put the link in the show notes so that you can download that and you can use that to follow along so you don't get stuck. But in the meantime, let's start talking about Clair de Lune. Debussy wrote Clair de Lune in 1890. So it's. The piece is well over 100 years old, but it hasn't lost its contemporary feel and it still is quite meaningful to a modern audience. It sounds sort of contemporary. It would be perfectly at home in a New age music setting. It's truly ageless music and that's part of its appeal. I think there's a lot to cover with this piece, but today we're going to talk about three main aspects of the piece. If you're not familiar with the piece, go ahead and look for a YouTube recording. I will play the piece through for you myself at the end of today's recording. But for right now, I want to dive into these three aspects and see how much information I can share with you in the time that we have. So, first of all, one of the things to be very clear about and to understand very thoroughly is the way meter and rhythm work in this piece. The piece is in 9, 8, meaning that there are nine eighth notes to each measure. So that's what the meter is. The meter is that repeating pattern that is a measure of music. So that in every nine eighth notes we repeat that same pattern. And those nine eighth notes are generally divided into three big beats. And you can count those beats in a number of ways. You could count them as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 1, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3. Which would emphasize the fact that there are three big beats in the measure, or what perhaps is a little bit more manageable. 1 and 2 and 3. And so there are three big beats with three portions of a beat to each beat, kind of like a triplet, but not exactly, and you'll see why in just a moment. So 1 and 2 and 3. And now the rhythm is the way the notes themselves overlay on the meter. And sometimes when the rhythm lines up well with the meter, we feel a very strong pulse. Sometimes in any kind of music, the rhythm will contradict the meter. And where the meter says there should be a strong beat, the rhythm puts a weak beat and it puts a strong beat someplace else. This is the essence of syncopation. And there are some elements of syncopation in this particular piece, one element mainly that could cause some trouble for you. And so I want to be sure to explain it, but let's talk about the 9, 8 for just a moment first. You can sense the 98 in here very easily, partway through the piece, when it starts getting that 16th note pattern rolling, and you hear.

Hello, that was a wrong note.

Right? So.

1, 2, 3, 1, or 1 and 2 and a 3 and a 1 and a 2 and a 3. And so you can hear the beat very clearly. And nine, eight is well established, but that only comes into the middle part of the piece. The two outer sections of the piece, the beginning and the ending, are much more freeform sounding. They aren't free form. And that's that wonderful dichotomy, right? The music sounds like it's outside of time. It sounds like there's no meter. It just sounds like atmosphere. But Debussy couldn't write it as atmosphere. He had to be able to put on the page exactly his ideas in. In a way that a performer could understand them. After all, he didn't have recordings, he didn't have YouTube, where he could instantly tell people, see, I. You know, I wrote it this way, but this is really what I meant. He had to write it as closely as he could to what he wanted you to play. So we have an interesting.

Combination of meters and rhythms here. So our meter is 9, 8, and we can see the 9 8th notes pretty clearly some of the time, but some of the time, those eighth notes seem to disappear and they're replaced by two notes to a beat, as opposed to three notes to a beat. Okay, let me back up just a step. You're probably familiar with a triplet, right? If you're playing along 1 and 2 and 3 and. Well, a triplet is. Is going to interrupt that flow. And instead of the. The one and the two notes to a beat, you're going to hear three notes to a beat. One triplet, two triplet, or one and two and. Sound kind of like the Debussy counting. Okay, so we can switch back between two notes in a beat and three notes in a beat like this. 1 and 2 and 1 and 2 and 1 and. And 2 and 1 and 2 and. So we keep the beats, the big beats, the same, but the number of subdivisions of the beat change from two to three and back again.

Normally we would have a piece that has two subdivisions, 1 and 2 and to the beat, and the triplet would be the anomaly in this piece. Clair de Lune. It's the other way around. The triplets are our norm. We usually. Usually have 3 8th notes per 1 and 2 and 3 and. But Debussy introduces duples, sometimes called duplets. But they're duples. They're two notes to the beat instead of the usual three. And you'll see them indicated in the score with a little two. So you must be careful to keep the big beats the same length. 1, 2, 3. And most of the time they'll be counted 1 and 2 and 3 and. But sometimes you're going to have a 1 and 2 and 3 and 1 and 2 and 3 and. And this is the. That is what makes that sort of ambiguous quality in the beginning and the ending of the piece. It's metrically ambiguous because there isn't a steady pulse like the portion I just played for you. And it's going back and forth between three notes to the beat and two notes to the beat are triples and duples. So it is going to sound metrically vague, which was what he wanted, right? And this was how he told you, how he was able to tell you 120 some years later what it was he wanted by writing it this specific way. So if you were to look at the beginning of the piece, there's not a lot of steady rhythm going on, and there are duples instead of triples in some of those places. So I'm going to play the first few measures and I will count as I play, and hopefully that will give you an idea of what's going on in the beginning, because what's going on is much more precise and. Than it sounds if I weren't counting it for you. So we'll start. It starts on a rest, which is an interesting thing. So we'll start right here. A one and a two and a three and a one and a two and a three & a one and a two and three and one and a two and three and 1 and 2 and a three and a 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 1 and a two and a 3 and a one and a 2 and a 3 and 1 and. Okay. Did you catch those duples in there? Plenty of triplets, plenty of long notes that just seem suspended in the air like moonlight. Yeah, but those duples just help remove the. The persistence of the pulse because they contradict it and because there's no underlying.

The way my counting was this time, we don't feel it as necessarily a contradiction of the pulse. We feel the music as pulse less at this point. But that doesn't mean that it's is, and it doesn't mean that you should practice it that way. So my recommendation is to definitely practice this with counting. Practice it with the metronome so you can be sure that you've got those big beats equal. Remember that if the triplets, your eighth notes are this speed and your big beats stay the same.

The notes for your duples will actually be slower. Right. One, triplet, two and three. And.

So those triplet notes will be a little bit faster. The duple notes will be a little bit slower, but the big beats have to stay the same. So practicing with the metronome, you can practice away from the harp and practice counting those or. Or clapping them with the metronome, if you like, just to get the feel for it. Surely you have heard people be very.

Rhythmically imprecise with this, and maybe you didn't even know it because you didn't know what the correct counting was.

You, too, will be empowered, and I'll tell you how in just a little bit, you will be empowered to put a little bit of stretching and pulling and pushing into the rhythm here as well. A little bit more flexibility. But it's important that when you're learning this piece, you start from what is correct and what is exact. Oh, my cat just came into the room. That's what that noise was. So it's important that you start with what is exactly on the page, and that way you know how to make your interpretation from there. We'll talk about that more in a second. But your first task with this piece is to be very rhythmically precise.

Conquering the rhythm and the meter in this piece is one thing, but being Able to project the melody well is even more critical. The melody is fairly clear at the beginning, just because there's. The texture itself is so clear. But as Debussy adds notes, it can be much harder to project the melody, mostly because as players, we get involved in all the notes we have to play. And it's important to remember that all notes are not created equal. It's important to find the melody here and to project it clearly if at all possible. That's your goal anyway. Now, in the beginning section of the piece, it's very clear for a while, and then things get ultra beautiful and a little bit more challenging. So we have.

Beautiful chords.

Now, I played those two phrases just a little bit differently. Your right thumb is a melody note here. Now, there's actually a lot of melody going on. We have it in three octaves. In the original, it's the bottom note of the left hand and the right hand, thumb and fourth finger. So we have a lot of melody happening. But it's so easy to have it obscured by just the fact that there are so many notes. So be sure that that melody is audible. Yes.

Whether you roll the chords like that or play them flat.

You want a gentle, supple thumb sound.

But one that's clear.

Now, this is a rubato section, and we're going to talk about rubato in just a moment. But I wanted to play that part for you to show you how that thumb sound is important. Remember that it's hard to balance your thumb. It's right in our ear, so we tend to hear it as projecting more than it actually does. So you might want to experiment a little bit. Practice with the recording. See where you want that thumb to be in terms of volume. You don't want it to underplay. I can hear it, but it's not projecting very well over the rest of the chord. This is a little. Oops, a little bit harsh there, but.

Lots of ways to balance that. Yeah.

But if the melody doesn't come through, we're missing the point of the piece. So projecting the melody is critical in these chords. It's one kind of a task. In the middle section of the piece, though, it becomes something else. This is the part that I was playing for you before or started to play for you. So this one.

The problem here is not that the melody isn't necessarily audible. It's certainly easy enough to discern it and to play it. But the fact is that all the other notes we have to play can end up taking way too much of our attention.

Oops Sorry about that one. Let's try it again.

And we don't want our attention or our listeners attention focused on those 16th notes. Yup. Up, up, up, up, up, up. That's not the interesting part of the piece. That's the undercurrent. And we need to have it sensed, perhaps, or felt rather than heard. Not that it should be inaudible. It's also our harmonic support. So it needs to be there, but the melody needs to rise above it, even when the going gets tougher.

Right. There's all this interplay with the lines.

And all of that has to come out clearly. I'm finding it very difficult to talk and play at the same time. So you'll hear this a little bit better in the performance at the end of this episode. But not getting tied up in the 16th notes, remembering to project the melody, remembering to phrase it. The little phrases that he has in here that are almost motivic. This idea.

Right? Where there's the long note, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3.

There are a lot of notes going on underneath that melody, but that's what the melody is. If you have trouble hearing the melody while you're playing because you're so busy with the notes, take a moment and play just the melody for yourself. Sing along with it. Remind yourself of what that melody is supposed to be, and then keep that in mind as you're practicing and playing the piece. That will help you project it. But thinking about the balance of your hands, the sound of your thumb, and the phrases that you're trying to create are important here. Debussy helps you with dynamics. Those are in there, and you can follow those in this piece. The dynamics all tend to be, except for that one very passionate section in the. In the. In the middle of the piece. The dynamics are sort of underplayed. But be sure that your pianos and pianissimos still have tone and are rich. You don't want to underplay them. You want them to still project to an audience. So use your best technique. Get a nice full sound. Just keep the volume level down, and that will work for you. And I mean the volume of your fingers, right? So, okay, so we've talked about the meter and the rhythm. We've talked about projecting the melody. Let's talk about rubato. Rubato is a common expressive tool, one that we use. You might not even have known that you were using it. And we use it in all kinds of music, not just music of the Impressionists or music of Debussy. It's that push and Pull that, give and take, that little bit of extra time that you add or that you take away to help music flow more smoothly and more appropriately to the idea of the music.

It can be difficult to use well. It's so easy to misuse it. And I'd like to give you some guidelines for that right now. First of all, rubato, Italian term, comes from the verb rubare, which means to steal. So rubato literally means stolen. And you can think of it as stealing time. We're just stealing a little bit of time in order to make the music more expressive and more personal. This is where your own interpretation comes into play. Now, there are definite.

Traditions in the use of rubato in Clair de Lune. And one of the places we hear it most often is toward the end of the first section. I've already played this for you, but we. This is where we have the chords and we hear the interplay between duples and triples. But you can use a lot of rubato here.

So that's one way to do it.

But I could play it again for you and play it with a different kind of expression. You heard where I was pushing some notes ahead, pulling others back. That's rubato. It's not with the metronome anymore.

But the underpinning of the tempo and the pulse is still there. And I think that to some extent, that needs to be there whenever we use rubato. But we could use it differently. So let's look at those same few bars, and I'll do it just a little differently this time.

Just a little different. A different use of rubato, the same idea, but a different sound. And you can do it differently every time you want. But let's talk about how to start using rubato well, because you've heard people not use it well. For instance, using rubato to just get you out of a jam.

Something that you can't play in tempo, is probably not a good idea. I have been known to advocate tactical rubato at times, but you have to be really careful with that so that you're not using rubato.

Just because you can't play the notes. That's not a good idea. But sometimes a little bit of rubato can help get you out of a jam. But if you use too much of it, the audience will know. So don't distort it beyond recognition. That's. That's one key. Also, be sure to start with what's on the page in this piece. Debussy gave you a rhythm. He gave you his idea to the best that he could put it on the printed page. He told you what it was he wanted this longer, this shorter, right? It's a duple, It's a triple. This is the rhythm that I want. And then you can express within those ideas. So as you decide what rubato you'd like to put in, and I would urge you to make it a decision as you decide on your rubato, bear in mind what the peace is supposed to be, what the phrase that you're choosing to put the roboto in, where, what that section, what that line, what those measures are, are conveying, and how does your rubato serve, that we want your rubato to enhance the composer's idea rather than add an element that may be a little incongruous.

I can tell you that you'll probably know if it's wrong.

But.

You will also probably not add more rubato than is actually serving the music well, because it won't feel right to you anymore.

But by starting and checking frequently what you're playing with the metronome to refresh your understanding of what the composer wrote, you won't stray so far from what was intended. And your rubato will sound more organic and more a part of the piece, rather than something that's kind of layered on the top that may or may not actually coordinate with the rest of the musical idea.

One of the performers who used rubato.

Very well, but in a particularly individual and immediately recognizable way was the singer Frank Sinatra. You know, think about his Strangers in the Night, and, you know, shooby dooby doo be dooby doo, right? It had no real relation to what the. The orchestra was playing. The orchestra was playing in time. And his vocal line seemed to kind of go all over. This is a jazz concept. This is something that works, right? Jazz performers, singers, musicians of any kind, they use rubato. They'll start perhaps in the same place, and they'll end in the same place. But what they do in the middle may or may not line up exactly with the beat. That's rubato. So that's a very good model. And I think as long as you think about, you know, the Frank Sinatra sort of rubato, and you don't stray across the line into, you know, the bad wedding singer kind of rubato, I think that you'll be right on target. It's difficult to use too much rubato. And as long as you're checking yourself with. With what's really supposed to be happening metronomically from time to time, you're checking that. I think you're probably going to be fine. Keep counting, check it occasionally with the metronome and then let yourself.

Just pull it a little bit. Stretch it here, shrink it there, push it ahead, pull it back and see what happens.

Once you've learned what's supposed to be there. Your rubato should have exactly the. The. The core that we're looking for and should serve the music. So that is the third of the elements we were going to talk about today and let me quickly review them. We talked about the meter and the rhythm. We Talked about the 9, 8 dividing each big beat into three sections and how duples divide those same beats into just two sections. And we talked about counting them and lining them up with the big beats. We talked about the melody, how to be sure that it's balanced, that it comes through clearly, that it's not obscured by some of the difficult notes that are going on underneath it, and to project it with a clear, rich and relaxed sort of sound. And of course, we talked about rubato. There are do's and there are don'ts for rubato. But I think that you'll find that it's fun to experiment with rubato and I think you'll know if you've done too much and you can always pull it back just a little bit. So feel free to experiment with that. Now, how about if I play through the piece for you?

Well, I hope that you enjoyed that and that you enjoyed learning a little bit more about how to work on music like this particular piece of Debussy's and how to interpret what's on the page. And I particularly hope that you have seen the relevance to doing this kind of musical exploration and how it can play out in your other. In your other playing and practice as well, any kind of music that you want to play. Please remember that you can go to the link in the show notes and download that two page practice guide. I give you some additional pointers for practicing what we've talked about today for practicing working in 9, 8 and working with the duples for especially those techniques on rubato. Correct. That's always a little bit tricky. And figuring out how to practice something that isn't necessarily written on the page can be a little bit difficult. So I think you'll find the steps on the practice guide a little bit helpful in that respect. Also, you will find a link in the show notes if you're interested in playing Clair de Lune and you have never done it. I have published an arrangement. I mean, there are lots and lots of arrangements and you can find wonderful ones for pedal harp and lever harp. I have a reduced version. It cuts out a lot of the piece. It's a much more intermediate or even early intermediate level version. And there are versions for lever harp as well as pedal harp. But you might find this very approachable. And if you've never played Clair de Lune before, these are versions that will sound the way you want them to sound, but they have a lot of the really complicated parts of the piece left out. But there's still enough there for you to practice your expression and your rubato and all your duples, all those good things. So if you're interested in that, you'll find the link to that in the show notes as well. Now, on next week's show, we're going to be talking about confidence, about gaining more confidence. I know that this is something that we often wish we had, right? If only I felt more confident about playing in public or playing in front of anyone or just playing a piece of music in general. And of course, confidence isn't something that you are born with, it's something that you develop. And we're going to be talking about how to easily do that. Not that it's a painless process, for sure, but there are some very specific steps that you can take to feel more confident and to grow your confidence. And that's where the fun in playing is, when you can feel like, all right, this may not be exactly perfect, but I'm going to have a good time with this. And that's the way I enjoy my playing, and that's the way I'd like you to enjoy yours, too. So we're going to be talking about developing more confidence and better playing along the way. And that's all on next week's show. I look forward to talking with you again then. Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.