3.4 Sub-language: montage

3.4 SUB-LANGUAGE: MONTAGE Just as African masks inspired Picasso in making his Cubist paintings, likewise early photography and film inspired composers to use a form of montage. In Minstrels62 (Préludes, book 1, nr. 12) Debussy uses a number of themes that are expressively separated both in material and style in order to present the various musicians who all try to make their own song heard. The thematic entwining and development are replaced by a montage of different genre pieces. As a whole, it is a parody of the turnof-the-century Music Hall, with a bit of Spanish folklore mixed in. Ex. 12: Fragment from Debussy, Minstrels.

The masters of montage were Stravinsky and Messiaen. See the analyses of Le Sacre du printemps and Symphonies d’instruments à vent [Symphonies of Wind Instruments] in sections 4 and 5.1 of this chapter. Olivier Messiaen brings the montage form to a new level. In his later works he creates a mosaic form with a form-rhythm of its own (see page 138, form scheme of Couleurs de la Cité Céleste).

62 The title Minstrels does not refer to medieval minstrels or troubadours, but to the minstrel bands, which presented a sort of variety act with music, dance and comic acts. Debussy witnessed such a minstrel band during his holydays in 1905, in the streets of Eastbourne in South England.