HERSHEY FELDER: It's
a pleasure to be back.
It's a pleasure
to see you again.
I don't know how many of
you were here last time when
I came to talk about
Beethoven, or how many of you
have seen the shows.
By a quick show of hands,
who plays an instrument
who's in the room?
Anybody?
All right.
Largely piano, or many things?
Various things?
Piano?
Piano?
Lots of things?
All right.
Great.
Well, one of the things
that has fascinated me
about the music of Debussy, in
particular because he really
was the change of all music as
we know it in Western music,
is the question about
where things come from.
Now one of the wonderful
things about talking at Google
and talking to people like
yourselves is essentially
what you are are inventors.
You're the Debussys of today.
I think about
Debussy and I really
can't understand
where he came up
with these ideas that
essentially didn't exist
before he came up with them.
And if we think about that,
and think of the kind of work
that you yourselves are
doing, the question I always
have with people
like yourselves--
you know me, in
terms of inventing,
I'm not really an inventor.
I'm a recreator.
I'm an interpreter.
I'm that kind of person.
I'm somebody who takes
pictures from another world
and presents them to the public.
But essentially
they've all existed.
I give my own taste to
the whole thing, perhaps,
but nothing more than that.
What you guys are doing,
and what Debussy did,
is really create
something out of nothing.
All Debussy had were tools.
He essentially
had, at that point,
the 12 tones of the scale.
[PLAYING NOTES]
That's all he had.
And he had chord configurations.
He had history of music
that came before him.
But he didn't look
to that music.
It's amazing that he picked
stuff out of thin air.
So conceptually, what
I'd like to look at today
is this idea of where
things come from
and how they actually
arrive there.
How did you guys come
up with the ideas
that you come up with?
Are they just dreams?
Did Debussy suddenly
close his eyes
and say, what does
this sound like to me?
And how do you create that?
In going backwards a
little bit, let's think
of Beethoven for a second.
Here was a man who
essentially pushed music
so far that he basically
did what everybody did,
but only after Bach
had did it before him.
If you think of
this with Beethoven,
it's really just a
few pounding notes.
[PLAYING NOTES]
He claimed to have heard
this because he was walking
through the streets of
Vienna, he got tired,
and he sat down at
the foot of a tree,
and he couldn't hear
anything by this point.
It was quite late in his career.
Well, not late.
It was middle of his career,
but his hearing had completely
gone, and he
claimed that he felt
knocking of a bird on a tree.
And that's where he came home
and interpreted that from.
It's a fascinating idea.
We understand how he came up
with it, where he found it,
and then how he
developed that and used
those four notes to continually
push further in music.
We can look at Bach and
understand how he captured,
essentially all
of written music,
all of music that we have
[INAUDIBLE],, in such simple--
you start with
the first prelude.
[PIANO MUSIC]
This literally sounds like
it was composed yesterday.
It's that fresh.
The voice leading is so perfect.
The colors are so perfect.
It doesn't matter what
instrument you play this on.
For those of you who
play many instruments,
no matter which one you
choose, this is eternal music
and it will stay.
It's miraculous
how that happens.
Where did these guys
come up with this?
But all this has a tradition.
It comes from point
0 to point A to point
B to point C. If we think
of following the composers
we can see how each one of
them leads to the next guy,
in some way or other.
Beethoven was curious
because, once he went deaf--
I've always wondered this.
Once he went deaf, was he
able to then self-edit?
For instance, all of
you guys, whatever
it is you put out
there on the net
or whatever, you're doing it,
you're coding, you're working,
you're busy preparing.
You put it out there for the
world and you go, oh god.
That's really bad.
That's doesn't work at all.
I've got to take that back.
I can't believe my
name is attached to it.
I've got to fix it.
Because suddenly when it
evolves into public form,
we see it in a very
different context.
Beethoven as a composer
never had that ability.
He would go into the theatre.
He would listen to the music.
He couldn't hear it at all.
He would listen
to it in his head.
So he was never able to say,
ooh, that really sounded great.
It looked great on
paper, but the moment I
start to do this in front
of the public it's terrible.
The physical
reaction is visceral.
My idea has always
been that he's
pushed music so much
further because we
went with his imagination.
Now Debussy did not have that.
The interesting
thing about Debussy,
he was very, very crotchety.
He, in fact, created a character
called Monsieur Croche.
Now, croche is an
eighth note in French,
but it also means
old crotchety one.
And he created this character
that basically was a critic,
and it was his alter
ego, and he was not
nice to anybody about anything.
He could be very nice
in public, although he
was quite scandalous,
but Monsieur Croche
was really a terrible guy.
Basically he said,
Beethoven, oh, Beethoven.
He's just the old deaf one.
Can you imagine?
And then he said of
Beethoven, the guy
has something to say, just, poor
thing, has no means to say it.
Mendelssohn, for
instance, Debussy
said, oh, he's nothing more
than a proper accountant.
And this would go on and on.
He had enemies in Paris
and it was terrible.
But Debussy somehow understood
that each one of them
contributed something.
Debussy's whole goal
in art and in music
was not to do any of that.
It was to create
something completely new.
He was fed up with rules.
He wasn't interested
in any of the rules
that music came before him.
He said, there is only one
guiding factor in all of music,
and that's what pleases the ear.
If it's beautiful for the ear,
and if it feels like something
for the ear, then
it's worthwhile,
which is the antithesis
of what Beethoven did.
He couldn't care about what
the ear sounds like because he
didn't know at that point.
He couldn't access it that way.
He could imagine, but
he couldn't access.
So we go back to Debussy and
we have him living in Paris
in the late 1800s
and the early 1900s.
It's a time where the entire
world of music is changing.
The entire world
of art is changing.
If you think about
Debussy's great influence,
there were two of them.
One was Turner, the painter.
The other was
Whistler, the painter.
In Whistler's day-- and I just
read about this the other day--
I think it was in the 1870s.
He had painted "Nocturne
in Black and Gold."
It's called "The
Falling Rocket."
It's a wonderful image.
You can look this up.
It's basically this dark
image with these explosions
of fireworks in
it, and it doesn't
look like anything
until you stand there
and let yourself feel.
And it was interesting
that the critic, Ruskin,
who was the major British
critic at the time,
basically accused
him of flinging paint
in the face of the public.
If you look at it
today, it gives us
such a sense of emotion,
such a sense of feeling.
So how do these guys,
in particular Debussy,
look at the world
and say, I don't want
to paint what I see in sound.
What I see in sound
is very simple.
It's raindrops.
It's this or the other.
I want to paint in sound
what I feel when I'm actually
engaging with nature.
So his whole idea was to
paint feeling in sound.
Now how do you accomplish that?
His whole concept about
accomplishing that
was actually using
color of sound.
For instance, I'm using
words and so on and so forth.
But if I place my voice
here and I talk like this,
you'll hear something.
You'll hear the words.
It may be interesting,
but it may not necessarily
communicate the color
that we're looking for.
And yeah, this is
somebody from Brooklyn
who talks maybe a
little bit like this,
where I live some of the time.
But at the end of the day, if
you want to give color of sound
and create that beautiful aura
that makes us feel something,
you all have to use a color.
And color and timbre was
so important to Debussy,
and to try and explain
it, it was a lifetime
of trying to understand
how sound actually
affected the spirit.
When we use words, are
they the actual words--
and this has always been
a fascinating idea for me.
Are the actual words that we
put on paper or on our screens--
is it their meaning, or is
it the meaning and everything
plus the meaning?
So is it not just
the technical word
itself that we are using
to express something
to communicate, but it is the
cultural and all the rest that
is around that
word that makes it
so fascinating in terms of how
we communicate one to the next.
So Debussy-- he is looking for
a way to communicate that's new.
He was looking for a way to
communicate that's fresh.
He's looking for a way
to tell you stories.
He did some early
things, stuff like this.
[MUSIC - CLAUDE
DEBUSSY, "ARABESQUE, NO.
1"]
It's so pretty.
It just floats, like water.
Where did he come
up with this water?
The blend of sound.
Now, this is an early
piece of Debussy.
He believed that he
didn't even begin
to touch what one
could express in music.
Here he sort of thought,
well, that's pretty.
It's nice, isn't it?
It's got this kind
of watery color.
Except nobody was even
doing this before that.
Somehow that blend
of color, that
blend of sound that allowed
us to feel liquid in water,
was really remarkable.
And it only took
about 25 or 30 years
from that sound for the Russians
to come to Paris and say,
we are sick of this water.
We are sick of this sound.
We are sick of all of
these flowing things.
Now we need to have music.
And so of course then you
have "The Rite of Spring,"
and all of a sudden
Debussy gets pushed
to the side with Stravinsky who
thought Debussy was OK but not
really so great.
And then we have all kinds
of Russians influencing.
So this goes in cycles,
much like the world is, much
like we can only hope
that the world continues
going in cycles.
But Debussy-- when
did he actually change
the world of music?
Strangely, he changed
it with one instrument
and with one note.
That instrument was a flute
and the note was a C sharp.
One note.
Now, there are lots of
ways to play a C sharp.
[PLAYING NOTES]
Or the idea of having the
sound that's around the sound,
and what I think
Debussy understood well
was that sound is not just
in and of itself a sound.
I think what Debussy
understood perfectly
was sound is created
by the sound itself
and by the overtones
and the aura around it.
So when that first flute
played, it had to do that.
[PLAYING NOTES]
And then for the first time, he
tells us where we are, sort of.
That magic.
[PLAYING NOTES]
So with these few bars-- one,
two, three, four, five bars--
Debussy introduced the world
to an entire new life in music.
Why?
The first thing
is, up until him,
the people who
really pushed music
and that he took a
little bit from-- you
had Rimsky-Korsakov in
Russia, who was pushing music
with chromaticism, making
chromaticism kind of sexy,
and when Rimsky-Korsakov looked
at Debussy's music, he said,
Debussy has absolutely
no talent whatsoever.
He has nothing to
say, and worse,
whatever he does have to say,
he doesn't know how to say it.
That was him.
And then you had,
also, Tchaikovsky.
Tchaikovsky was sent to one
of Debussy's manuscripts,
and Tchaikovsky looked at
it and said, for an amateur,
it's not bad.
There's a few notes here.
There's a few ideas, but he
doesn't develop anything.
He doesn't understand.
He doesn't--
And yet here was a man
who pushed everything
forth so much, so looking at how
and why is the real question.
Then we have Wagner.
Now Wagner was a real,
real problem for Debussy.
First of all, at the point
where Debussy discusses Wagner--
his love of his
life and his wife--
he was first his lady friend
and then later his wife--
was Emma Bardac, whom he stole
away from a very rich banker
because that was
Debussy's thing.
It sort of was!
And so Debussy, now having
Emma Bardac in his life,
she was Jewish and Wagner
had no patience for that.
I mean, this goes
back all the way
to the mid 1800s
where Wagner basically
said, in "Das Judenthem fur die
Musik," Jewishness in music,
he said--
it's paraphrased but
you get the idea--
at the end of the
day, the only thing
that will save you
Jews from your curse
is being annihilated.
And it's interesting.
Now why I bring this up--
it's morbid, but it's good--
that "Judenthem in der Musik,"
the Jewishness in music,
actually began with
Wagner in 1850.
From there, much later,
Goebbels and Goering
took the basis of what
Wagner said and made
it the basis for
the final solution,
way long after Wagner is dead.
But this is what
happened and these
are how these things generate.
This is how terror generates.
This is how
annihilation generates.
This is how genocide generates.
Bad ideas that only get
taken on by crazy people
and get much, much, much worse
and lead to the worst things
in the universe.
And so here you have Debussy in
this cross-hairs with Wagner.
First of all, he
hated his ethic,
and he hated his
theories about music
because they were just
so constantly overt
and constantly repetitious,
and yet at the same time,
Debussy stole as much as he
could from Wagner to make
it work for him.
The interesting thing
about Debussy and Wagner
is, at the end, Debussy
said of him, well,
Wagner is basically
a sunset that people
are mistaking for a dawn.
Essentially, that
Wagner's time was over.
He came.
He went.
There was nothing more
interesting to learn from him.
But you see, the
thing about Wagner
that is really remarkable that
then leads us to Debussy, if we
think about something like
this, [INAUDIBLE],, Death
and Transfiguration,
he goes through keys.
Basically death
is transfiguring.
This is where she sings,
[SINGING IN GERMAN]..
How soft his smile.
And basically what's happened by
this point is that he's died--
he's been killed-- and she's
standing over his dead body
and she wants to
join him in death,
because that's the only place
that they can be together.
And what Wagner does is he
takes us through so many keys
to get there.
[MUSIC - RICHARD WAGNER, "DEATH
 AND TRANSFIGURATION"]
And then if that's not
enough we transfigure again,
and we keep on transfiguring
until we get to here,
and so on and so forth.
And then because
that wasn't enough,
we transfigure some more.
[MUSIC - RICHARD WAGNER, "DEATH
 AND TRANSFIGURATION"]
We keep on going through keys.
Now, the essence of
this going through keys,
to keep on going this
way, was Wagner's approach
to telling us about sex.
Now the interesting thing
about this is, in those days,
of course, people
were sexually overt.
It's not quite like today.
It wasn't quite as free or--
I don't even know
which way it's going.
I don't know what it is today.
It's true!
But in those days to
be able to express
this kind of sexual and
sensual energy in music
was of prime importance
how to do that.
Wagner's way of getting
out all his frustration--
against the Jews,
apparently-- was
to write these kinds
of never ending,
constant turns in
music, these cadences
that would never resolve.
So this idea that the cadence
kept on pulling us and pulling
us more and more and more,
and if you listen carefully
to what he does, even just
a little bit later in this,
he does something like this.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And it keeps on going and it
keeps on building like this.
He never lets us
breathe, and that's
what he does with
musical tension.
Wagner figured that out.
Debussy then went
one step further.
He said, OK, now how can I
take that, but not as gross,
and make it just so
sensual and so beautiful,
to use this kind of never-ending
color and use of sound
and never be bound to a key.
So this all goes back to what
I spoke about very early on.
The real question
in all of this is,
when you are
inventing something,
what are the parameters?
Are there parameters?
What kind of rules
must we abide by
so that we actually
get to something
that can be used, adapted,
interesting to the public,
something that can be used all
over the world, something that
can be of interest?
Do we invent exclusive of
how things are received,
or do we invent with
the mind that this is
how this is going to be used?
It's a question I pose you,
because the question for me
when it comes to great
music and Debussy,
was he creating these
colors and these ideas
because they just
came to him and he
didn't care what the
public felt, or this
is what it sounded like
to him and it was fine,
and so invented a completely
new world of music?
Or was he saying, I have
an entire superstructure
of how music should
go in my head,
and he placed the
system in order to work?
That system, a lot of it
based on a whole tone scale.
So many of you know the
scales, simple as it is, right?
But if we keep the whole
tones, that means--
[PLAYING NOTES]
--half tones between each.
[PLAYING NOTES]
Now if you play it loud with
no ambience, it's just noise.
But then you start--
feels a little bit
like Fantasy Island.
And you speed it up and it
gets even more Fantasy Island
and so on and so forth.
So the idea is, where
does this all come from?
And that's how I'd like to
start our discussion today,
this idea about asking
questions about this,
trying to understand where
it comes from, how it works.
I will use musical examples,
but in order for this to work,
you need to ask these questions
that are interesting to you.
And if we engage
together, then I'll
be able to answer specifically.
So the floor is open.
Don't waste time thinking
about your question.
Just ask.
Go ahead.
I see you're looking.
Ask me a question about
something like this.
You've got to think.
All right.
Anybody else.
A question.
Go ahead.
That's a very
interesting question.
So I'll repeat for sound.
The gentleman asks, here
you have music or sound
that has changed over
years throughout history,
and the reception
to it has changed.
There were rules.
In the old days, there was
no such a thing as this.
[PLAYING NOTES]
The parallel notes.
In the very early days, yes.
But then as we got into
great Western music,
putting the parallel--
I mean, that was
against the rules,
completely against the rules.
And our ears have adapted to
these things in various ways.
So the question
is, at what point
does something like
impressionist music
actually take on a pale of ugh,
and it's not interesting to us
anymore?
Well, that's the magic
about great music,
but here's the thing
about impressionist music.
Debussy could not stand
the term Impressionism.
Basically what he said was,
Impressionism is for imbeciles.
I can do it for real.
Because this whole
idea of impressionism,
it was basically a disparaging
term to sort of slough people
off.
You're not really
good at what you do.
If you were really
good at what you do,
you could actually do it within
the context of the rules.
So anything that you're
doing, breaking the rules
or softening the edges,
means you can't really do it.
And so instead of really playing
a scale the way it should be
played, you're now softening it
and mixing it up and doing it,
it's because you can't.
And Debussy said, it's
not because I can't.
I very much so can.
I very can do that.
The idea of Impressionism
was a term that was used
and it's stuck.
But it really didn't
mean anything to Debussy
and I don't think
it meant anything
to a lot of his compatriots.
What they were doing was
creating a new method of art
and a new method
of reaction to art.
And so, how do we
know if it stays?
Well, if we're still doing
it 100 years from now,
it's going to stay.
And that's the other interesting
thing about what's great
and what isn't.
Chopin said in
the early days, he
was playing a mazurka for
somebody, something like this.
[PLAYING NOTES]
And somebody who
was sitting there,
listening to him play this very
elegant dance, said to him, so,
is it good?
And he said, I don't know.
Ask me in 100 years.
Because it's true.
Time is really the
test for all of this.
There's a reason
Shakespeare stuck around.
And if you look
at all this stuff,
no matter what you're
looking at artistically,
we have today, artists
put out things.
We have-- there are critics
who say, oh, it's great.
It's the greatest thing, and
critics say, oh, it's terrible.
And Debussy had his share
of both of those sides.
Most people largely
hated what he did.
They said it was an
abomination to music.
For us to think
about something so
tame as being an
abomination to music
is really quite remarkable.
But at the end of the
day, we don't know.
The thing that seems to stay
in terms of your question
is if it touches any part of
our souls as human beings.
If it touches our intellect, of
course there's something there.
But if it touches our
souls, our sensibilities,
just the sense of feeling--
and I think feeling
is very important.
And sometimes I worry that
we've lost sense of feeling,
especially the way the
world is going now,
the way people feel
to talk to each other.
Does not anybody feel that there
is somebody on the other end,
you know?
There is a sense of
being aware of feeling,
and I think people
like Debussy--
crotchety as he was,
difficult as he was--
understood what it meant
to actually feel something.
Even though he couldn't express
it to the people in his life,
perhaps, as people
who knew him said,
oh, he was very much
in love with himself.
And he was in love with
his little daughter,
completely, madly
in love with her,
and he was in love
with his genius.
But he understood how people
communicated and he understood
how they felt. And certainly
when it came to something
like "Pelleas et
Melisande," his opera,
he understood how
people interact.
And it's interesting.
I know somebody
very much like this.
Put them in a room
and they can tell
you everything about every
interaction between the people
and how people feel.
Ask him how he feels and
how he interacts himself,
he can't begin to even share it.
It's a very interesting thing.
I know a director like that.
Fascinating to
watch him operate.
He can look on a
script and tell you
how every character
is supposed to behave
to the deepest of their souls.
Talk to him, it's like talking
to a wall, quite literally.
So it's a very interesting
kind of thing how that works.
I think music like
this will stay forever
for the simple reason that I
think it has the human element.
It has a sense of humanity
that's not going to go away.
Another question.
How do different people react
to various influences in music
when it comes to music and
its cultural relationship?
That was very interesting.
I was performing the Beethoven
in San Diego, three, four weeks
ago, whatever it was.
And it was fascinating that
somebody in the audience
took me to cast during this for
claiming that, in all of music,
nobody had ever composed
like this of Beethoven,
in all of music.
And they accused me of
appropriating things.
And I said, appropriating what?
Well, what about
African American music
and African music
and eastern music?
And then I thought about that.
I said, one could
reshape that term
and say, in the history
of Western music.
So the interesting thing about
Debussy, and this has been,
since you bring it up, on my
mind very much about what do we
react to in terms of
our-- because culturally
we're sensitized
to certain things--
is very interesting that a
lot of what Debussy drew on
were eastern influences.
One of the things, he saw the
Javanese Gamelan Orchestra
at the 1889 Paris Exposition
for the first time.
These were guys with shaved
heads and they wore robes
and they were sitting on
the floor, gongs and bells
and [INAUDIBLE].
And nobody had ever seen this
in the Western world before.
And remember, it's
not like today.
You make a click,
you see whatever.
And this idea.
[PLAYING NOTES]
Using timbre and color
to actually create
the sound of the
Gamelan Orchestra.
Now what's interesting here is
he uses the pentatonic scale.
What's the pentatonic scale?
Five notes.
[PLAYING NOTES]
And it's interesting
how that sounds eastern,
and he does all these
beautiful colors with this.
So now I have a question.
You have [INAUDIBLE] by Debussy.
You have many other
pieces by Debussy
that use this pentatonic
scale, the scale of the East,
that was brought to
the West by whenever
it was presented at the time.
So is that cultural
appropriation
or is that homage?
And is homage OK?
So in terms of how
we react to things,
it's very interesting to
put Debussy in that box
and say, OK, well, did he use
all of these oriental colors--
and oriental doesn't
mean Asian in this case.
Oriental means
really the Orient.
It means Russian,
all those kinds
of colors with the open,
weird pentatonic colors.
Did he appropriate that, or did
he find wonderful color in that
and translate it
into his own art?
And does he then owe royalties
to wherever he stole it from?
So there are so many
questions to ask here.
But you know, you
ask the same question
of a guy like George Gershwin.
OK, you have this.
[PIANO MUSIC]
So you have that guy.
This is clearly a guy who
took African American music
and African American idioms
and basically cleaned it up.
And by that I don't mean
made it pure or holy.
He basically cleaned it up in
that he put it into a structure
so that it could fit
into a concert hall.
In his day, they said he
made a lady out of jazz.
Today, I'm not so sure that
would be such an easy thing
to say or do because
we are looking at it
in-- you know, he
basically, essentially,
appropriated what was the
blues and put it into his music
and created an American music.
So can we say of him
that that was an homage,
or that was outright
thievery, or is it right?
Is it wrong?
We're now, I think, coming
to the point in the world
where we're starting to look
at these things very seriously.
What belongs to whom?
What is allowed to be borrowed?
What is not?
What's correct?
What isn't?
And I think these are
a lot of questions,
and they're important questions.
I think for the
longest time, whoever
was running the business, they
said, my rules are the rules.
But now we have to
look differently.
I actually think
that's a great thing.
But by the same token,
in the case of Debussy,
the culture that was around him
was not prepared, necessarily,
to accept what he was going
to give them so freely and so
easily, but the artist culture
was very much so interested
in these new colors
that he was opening,
and that's a fascinating thing.
So in terms of how we
react to it culturally,
it's like anything.
If we're familiar with
it, it's easier to accept.
If we're not familiar with it,
we have to have an open mind
and wonder if we can
see other and have
an emotional reaction to that.
We're now becoming a
very interesting world--
because I get to tour a
lot and be around and see
a lot of people--
where that is being closed
off, where now what I am
is what I am and I'm not
interested in anybody else
or anything else or any other.
I'm not interested in anything.
That scares the living
daylights out of me.
But for some people that's
the only way to live now.
So all the questions
you're asking-- it's
very important, scary, and at
the same time, eye-opening.
And in the case of Debussy,
will the next generation
tell us that all that
stuff that he originated
is cultural appropriation and
we can't listen to it anymore?
I was just in Kentucky.
I was performing the
Irving Berlin piece.
And, of course, Irving Berlin
was a Russian immigrant.
He was born in 1888, he came
over in 1893, saw Lady Liberty,
and gave us "God bless
America" and all the rest.
So it's interesting.
Over there, the question
of Stephen Foster came up.
Stephen Foster was
Irving Berlin's hero.
Basically he said that the real
great American songwriter was
Stephen Foster, and he
was able to create based
on Stephen Foster's ideology.
But now Stephen Foster is
coming under tremendous attack.
First of all, he'd
never been to the south.
I think once on a boat, and I
don't even think he got off.
So that's a fascinating thing.
But if you look at
the lyrics of Doo-Dah
and [INAUDIBLE] and
all these things,
they are much worse than
the verses that we sing.
They're absolutely dreadful.
They're unsingable.
And all the black-face
and so on and so forth.
So the whole question
now comes to,
is Stephen Foster-- do we take
all of that music and we say,
that's not American because
it's not an American value.
I mean, this is big questions
that we have to deal with,
and because we have the internet
and because so many people can
talk to one another,
these are questions
that we have to deal
with and I think
the idea is to deal with them.
So in terms of
culture, it affects.
It affects and it affects
very, very deeply.
Another question, please.
Yes.
How much did being grouchy
allow Debussy to actually
be as creative as he was.
Probably a whole lot.
I think being miserable, finding
a way out of being miserable,
this was his way out
of being miserable.
He went to his art.
But it wasn't just
that he was grouchy.
I think he was an
uncomfortable personality.
First of all, as a kid,
we learned about Debussy
that his parents--
he was the eldest.
They didn't pay much
attention to him,
so they don't really
care about him at all.
Then he finds himself
being a pianist.
He goes to the conservatoire.
They tell him at
the conservatoire
he doesn't have much
talent, that he's never--
He keeps on trying.
He keeps on getting second rate.
He then wins the
[FRENCH] in France
and he goes to Italy and studies
in Italy and creates in Italy,
and he can't stand that there.
In fact, he can't
stand it anywhere.
He's constantly
looking for his place.
And I think the constantly
looking for his place
and the way he fits in is
why he composes in the colors
that he does, because it allows
him to create a world of sound
and a world of music
that makes sense to him,
and it's a place
for him to live.
He can feel comfortable.
And I have to tell you, in the
world that we're in, I too--
and I think all
of us-- we're all
looking for what it is we do
that allows us to feel safe
and allows us to feel
whole and allows us not
to feel frightened
and threatened
by the world around us.
In his case, it's music.
In my case, it's this
and telling stories.
And we're all
looking-- in your case,
it's creating what it is
you do every single day.
Another question.
Yes.
Well, what do I
think about living
in this world where we can do
so many things with machines?
Well, essentially,
this is a machine.
It's a machine with its limits.
Today machines are
much less limited.
The interesting
thing is, if we look
at the history of
the piano, so you
have the original
clavichord, and then you
had the harpsichord
that plucked--
a funny sound.
Then you had the
clavichord and then
you had the piano
forte, which hit a note.
None of it sounds like this.
Essentially what we're doing, of
any of this, if you played Bach
or if you played
Beethoven, this does not
sound at all what it sounded
like on Beethoven's piano.
I've played one of them.
It doesn't sound like this.
It doesn't have these colors.
Not whatsoever.
Chopin's piano doesn't
sound like this.
This is far too rich.
Chopin's piano had this
airy, light, silvery tone.
We try and create that
on this instrument,
we try and make it sound
beautiful, but believe me,
it sounds nothing like a real
[INAUDIBLE] in Chopin's day,
which had this kind
of mystical sounds.
So to answer your question, if
these guys, these inventors,
would be around, I
think they would tap you
for every single thing
that you could possibly
give to them as an inventor.
To create new and more--
you can't look at a
guy like Debussy, who
changed the entire
world of music
and how color is sound, and
say, he'd come to Google
and say, oh, terrible people.
They have digital sound.
It's awful.
He'd want to know everything
about how to use that sound,
how to manipulate it, in
order to make color and make
the world sound beautiful.
I think it's interesting.
As a pianist who likes
to deal with this
and not play a keyboard--
I don't like to play keyboard.
It has a lot to do with
the sound that comes out,
but also the immediacy,
because when I do this,
it's an immediate
action, you see?
When I'm doing it digitally,
what it has to go through
is quite a bit different.
And yet here you have the
escapement, you have the push,
you have the shove,
you have the color,
you have all these things,
you have the string,
so it's still a machine.
But there, there seems
to be one extra step that
removes it from being
slightly human, so to speak.
So I don't know how
they'd react to that.
I personally find digital music
and things that we can create
and the kinds of color
of sound amazing.
It's a staggering thing.
What is confusing
and complicated
for me is taking
a piece by Debussy
that was intended for
particular instruments,
digitizing them as if
that's the real thing.
That's not the case.
It's not the real thing.
The real thing is essentially
what he composed for.
It's a transcription.
But it is very interesting
to create new things
with the real thing
with these instruments,
with these wonderful, digital
colors that we can use.
And people are doing it.
They're doing it every day.
The interesting thing for
me is we're living in a time
where there is so much sound.
There is so much influence.
What's sound that's
going to be new?
What is the sound
to us that's going
to be a sound that's going
to be new that we have never
heard before?
When are we going to
hear a Debussy come up
with something--
[PIANO MUSIC]
--that sounds so
romantic and so sensual?
When are we going to hear that
that just moves us in that way?
And what is it going
to be based on?
Is it going to be
based on the notes
that we know, 12 tone scales
and so on and so forth?
Or is it going to be
based on something
that we don't even know and
hasn't been invented yet?
What will the human ear
tell us that is necessary
as time goes on?
We don't know.
Another question.
Yes.
They have more tools,
they invent less,
and why do I think that?
I don't think it's that
they have more tools
and they invent less, but if
you look at the line of history,
we can go all the way back to
the very beginnings of Corelli
and [INAUDIBLE] and all these
types, and at the same time
you have Bach and then
you'll have Beethoven
and then you have Brahms.
Well, you're looking at,
basically, a straight line.
Sometimes they cross.
There's Chopin at
a period and Liszt
and then Schubert
just at the beginning.
And then you look
who comes next.
You have a little bit somebody.
But what are you looking?
You count here,
and you count here.
You use your feet.
And then you count
maybe again here.
30, 40, 50.
You're talking about
tens of thousands
of composers over years.
And basically my theory is
time is the great decider
of what's good and what's not.
So thousands and
thousands of composers
have done this inventing, but
only the great ones stayed.
So when you ask,
why are we seeing
so many more tools and
so much less invention,
I don't believe we are.
I only think we can
know what invention
is in 100 years from now.
And perhaps somebody is
composing in some room
somewhere, doing something
absolutely fascinating,
but at the same time, we're
not exposed to it yet.
We don't know.
In 100 years, hopefully, we will
know what our great music is.
And the truth is,
we don't know now.
Will it be Hamilton?
I don't know.
Hamilton is a lot of stuff.
I find it fascinating.
It's a phenomenon.
But it's a lot of
stuff-- admittedly,
by the composer-- that is drawn
from stuff that's immediately
before it and there's
also quotations that
were immediately before it.
It's not particularly
new in that way.
So all of this to say
that we just don't know
who's inventing.
Somebody in this building could
be inventing some kind of music
that one day will
be discovered and we
will be able to see as
being absolutely remarkable.
We don't know yet.
Just a couple more.
Yes.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
AUDIENCE: What do you think
about artificial intelligence
creating music?
HERSHEY FELDER: What
do I think about--
well, sometimes I wonder if I
have artificial intelligence.
What do I think about artificial
intelligence creating music?
The question to you is,
because I don't know this,
is artificial intelligence as
smart as its creator or not?
Does artificial
intelligence actually
have a life of its own, or it
doesn't have a life of its own?
And to me, I don't know
how artificial intelligence
would have a sense of humanity
beyond the creator behind it.
So if that's the
case, then why not
just be human and create music.
I'm not against
artificial intelligence.
I think it's a
wonderful thing that
needs to be
controlled and managed
by very smart people,
because ultimately,
if you don't control something
like that it could get out
of hand, as we know.
So could that mean
that, all of a sudden,
we have great composers who
are artificial intelligence?
The only amount of
artificial intelligence
that could do that
would be drawing
on real intelligence
that came before it,
and so we'd probably only hear
repetitious stuff because--
but you know, how do I know?
I don't know.
It's not my field.
But I'd like to believe
that human beings still
have the height on that.
Anyway.
It's one or two more and
then I'll do some playing.
Yes.
AUDIENCE: So on Debussy in
particular, did he view himself
as a part of the avant garde
or was he just a composer
that critics didn't like?
HERSHEY FELDER: Was he a part
of the avant garde or something
that critics didn't like?
I think Debussy viewed
himself as an inventor.
He viewed himself
as somebody who
wanted the old guard-- he said,
this whole symphonic thing,
this whole approach
to music, needs
to end because it's boring.
It's structured.
It's full of rules.
It's full of laws.
And we're done with it.
It's enough.
And he wanted to
invent something new,
and that whole circle, the
group of them-- the poets,
the symbolists, and so on-- he
looked to them for inspiration.
That didn't come out of nowhere.
Musically, coloristically, I
think it came out of his mind.
But in terms of the concept,
of the cultural concepts
surrounding him, it didn't
come out of nowhere.
It came out of a whole group
of people who were looking
for new ways to tell stories.
As he said, the world
relied for far too long
on the bloody Germans
for the good music.
It was time to change that.
And that's exactly what he did.
He changed it, and
he created what
was a French color
and a French sound.
Listening to Debussy, he is
as avant garde as they go.
There are crazy things that
he does that even Ravel--
a totally different aesthetic
and also a modernist in that
way--
didn't even begin to
attempt what Debussy did.
He really went as
far as possible
in terms of using emotional
output to just create music,
and I think he viewed
himself as a new composer
in a very classical sense,
if that makes sense.
Yes.
AUDIENCE: So if you
think about Debussy,
two things stand out to me.
One is that the feedback
loop, the time between when
he made something and when
he got feedback on it,
was quite long,
and also the number
of people that he would
have had contact with
was relatively limited, like
tens of people in his circle.
Compared to today,
a musician, not only
do they have contact
to billions of people,
but when they put something out,
they get feedback immediately.
How do you think that
impacts the creation process,
and do you think that's
pressuring music in a way
that it wouldn't have been
pressured in Debussy's time?
HERSHEY FELDER: Well, in terms
of that, I think nowadays
it's a very complicated thing
because people can become
stars, on YouTube or
whatever it else it is,
or on "American Idol"
or whatever chat show
or so on and so forth, by not
really having the lifetime
of effort put into it because
we look at it in a box.
If that box works
for us, that's great.
How many careers,
potential great artists,
have been destroyed by
getting there too early
because they had pretty
faces or because somehow they
sounded good, and
they really weren't
ready with all that
work that needs to go
in it to make it really great?
The answer to
that, I don't know.
What would Debussy do?
I think he'd be
horrified, quite frankly,
if he had to put something
out there and not
be able to go in and fix, not
be able to go in and rework,
not be able to go in
and look how it went,
not be able to struggle with it
to make it really, truly great.
Now the great things are
that we have tools to fix.
We have auto tuning things.
We have colors and
sounds that we can
cover all this kind of stuff.
I think it's all part of
the way the world is going.
But I think it's
also very important
not to forget the huge amounts
of work that must go in
to really creating something
that is really great
and will have staying power.
Debussy understood that.
Any great artist
understands that.
And I think all of you
here understand that,
sitting in front of your
computers doing your work.
It doesn't just appear and,
OK, let it out to the world
and it's fine and that's it.
You want to go back in.
You want to make it better.
You constantly want to push the
envelope so that your output is
as best as it can
be, and I don't
think there's any
alternative to that.
And I think they were just
luckier in that they didn't
have this kind of access.
Going back to George
Gershwin, who I mentioned,
I think one of the big
problems with him was--
he was a great
composer, no doubt.
He had very much to say.
But he became famous so young,
and he became so popular
so young, and he said very
early on, I want to be famous.
I want to be famous.
So he composed things
that made him famous.
Would he have been a greater
composer if there wasn't radio?
He was the one who,
basically, was essentially
one of the first to get his
music played across the nation.
So when you heard
stuff like this--
[PLAYING NOTES]
--it wasn't United Airlines.
It was Gershwin playing 1927
Rudy Valley radio show, or WSJ
or whatever it was in
New York, being heard
all over the country at once.
That was the first time that
such a thing could happen.
Imagine, the first
time the entire country
heard this together.
Or when Kate Smith sang
that, the whole country
was able to hear it
on the radio together.
But 25 years before that,
even 20 years before that,
such a thing could not happen.
And so it was, as
you say, limited.
So the world has opened
up to such a degree.
The converse problem is that
now everybody's a judge.
Everybody is judge,
jury, and everything.
So you open up your
stuff to the world,
and you can be
finished in two seconds
because too many people give
the like or give the don't like
or whatever it is.
Does that make it good?
Does that make it bad?
It doesn't make it anything.
It just makes the people
sitting at the computer
and this is what they push.
Who gives it that much thought?
This, there was thought.
Then again, Debussy
had terrible critics.
They hated him.
They said the worst
things about him.
So is it any different?
No.
And then it was
printed in a newspaper,
so everybody read in
Paris, that for the 200
people there at
the concert, this
was the worst experience ever.
They said of his "Le Mer"--
I love this quote.
"Le Mer," the ocean.
"They came.
They were expecting
something huge,
something big,
something colossal.
And all they got was a little
agitated water in a bowl."
So that then got quoted and
that went all over the place
and it got reprinted in
newspaper to newspaper.
It just took a
little bit longer.
But the truth is, I do
believe that if it is great,
and if it above all
is human, then it
will remain, because that's
the only thing that ties us
and the world together.
If we can connect to each other
on some level and it makes
us feel.
If it doesn't make us
feel, it's worthless.
[INAUDIBLE]
And the last one,
and then I'll play.
There we go.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: You mentioned
Ravel a moment ago.
Can you briefly compare
Ravel and Debussy.
HERSHEY FELDER: Yes.
Ravel and Debussy are two very
interesting characters, sort
of crossing at the same time.
Ravel lived longer and
Ravel was very elegant.
You look at Ravel and
you think, there's
a modern, elegant Frenchman.
You think the Belle Epoque,
'20s, '30s, hair slicked back,
beautifully appointed,
so elegantly dressed.
Debussy felt like he
was a bit of a remnant
from the late 1800s, and
yet at the same time,
he was so modern.
If you ask me, I
think these aesthetics
are completely different,
completely, completely,
different.
However, there are things
that relate in each of them.
They use similar colors.
Ravel is considered
a jewel worker.
He goes in there
with his little tools
and he corrects his diamond
until it's 100% perfect.
Debussy is a wild animal.
Sometimes the music
is just simple
and it's expressive and so on.
Ravel, it's in the construction.
It's in the architecture.
It's in the miracle
of what that is.
Debussy-- for me.
I speak only for me--
somehow is a much
broader emotion.
Ravel describes things
musically, aesthetically, very
elegantly.
It's all proper.
Debussy is slightly
unhinged in all ways.
It's a little bit more open.
Ravel uses many more
notes than the Debussy.
He feels the need to.
Lots of notes.
Do you play?
No?
Ravel is just so many notes.
Debussy uses a lot of notes.
Ravel uses times
five, and you always
wonder why he needs
so many notes.
Well, it's because that's how
he accomplishes his goals.
But it's really a
fascinating thing to listen.
I'll bid you farewell with
just a little Debussy piece.
It's something
that's so familiar.
It's the thing that
actually, people
say, really changed piano
music and so on and so forth.
It's something I've loved, a
very special piece, something
that every kid plays.
But it's amazing how he
captured what he captured in it.
[MUSIC - CLAUDE DEBUSSY, "CLAIR
 DE LUNE"]
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
