Toreador, O, Don't Spit On the Floor

Years and years ago I saw Debussy's Peléas et Mélisande at der Wiener Staatsoper. Although I do not know French terribly well, I knew enough, sadly, to understand some of the libretto: "O, the sea, the sea, the beautiful sea, the sea, the marvelous sea, the sea, the sea" (I paraphrase, but that's not far off). I suppose it's unfair to blame Debussy for the libretto – I guess many operatic composers didn't write libretti – but he was responsible for the music, and even that was considerably more annoying than enjoyable. And I'd paid $5 for a standing-room-only place, too, dagnab it! So my principal memory of it is that it sucked; but then, I do still remember it. That's gotta count for something, surely?

Now, in the belated process of learning myself what to listen for in music (part of my larger project of learning to appreciate art in general), I got me one o' them music appreciation textbooks, that come with the music CDs. Early on, one of the pieces to which the book instructs you to listen is Debussy's "Prelude to 'The Afternoon of a Faun'". And of course it was the longest piece in that particular playlist, too. Oh, joy.

In the event, the first image it evoked was of the surprisingly clear home waters of The Creature From the Black Lagoon, followed by a variety of nature scenes in a sort of 1950s and 1960s Disneyesque nature-photography style. I'm sure I've heard the piece before, perhaps even in a 1950s/1960s Disney nature program, but I can't place it with certainty. At any rate, I concede that Debussy wasn't a total idiot, nor musillards (cf. "fashionistas") complete suckers.

I also had to listen to a piece by Schoenberg on that textbook CD. Even had I not heard Debussy's "Prelude," I still would have drawn this conclusion: Debussy may be hard, but Schoenberg is painful (like Cage, but with a vestigial sense of shame).