# Debussy & major seconds, and Ravel & minor seconds



## spradlig (Jul 25, 2012)

Hello:

I was wondering if anyone else had noticed that Debussy's favorite interval seems to be the major second. 
This is noticeable especially if you play his piano music. Often you play two notes at the same time that are a 
major second apart. Ravel's favorite interval seems to be the minor second. In his piano music, it seems often
you strike two keys that are a minor second apart (not even separated by an octave). This occurs in the 
very first chord at the beginning of the "Forlane" in "Le Tombeau de Couperin", and that movement contains many more minor seconds. Near the end of the Menuet movement of his "Sonatine", you play the c below middle c, the d-flat directly above it, and the d directly above that (or their enharmonic equivalents, I don't 
remember exactly how they work out) at the same time. That's three tones separated only by a minor second! It somehow sounds good in the music.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

You should try Ginastera then...:






At 0:53, a typical resource by Ravel:


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Another composer that was quite fond of using minor seconds to spice up his music (and was influenced by Ravel) was Joaquin Rodrigo. I'd suggest people look into some of his music for solo guitar and piano, its great. There is a lot of quality music to explore by Rodrigo outside of the concertos he is mostly known for.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Bartok loved bare minor seconds, often used in parallel, just used to thicken up the sound and provide a bracing edge. Scriabin and Schoenberg were both very fond of the perfect fourth and chords created from stacked fourths. Messiaen's favorite interval, melodically and harmonically, was the tritone.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

In terms of interval-multiplication in octave-cycles, Ravel's minor second is the only interval, with the fourth and fifth, which yield a complete set of 12 chromatic notes when "stacked" or cycled-through. (1, 5, and 7 are relatively prime to 12). In this way, it is related to fourths and fifths, so via the tritone/root substitution, Ravel can create "jazz-like" situations. In this regard, his music is more harmonically "stable" and "rooted" than Debussy's.

Debussy's major second, when cycled, yields a 6-note scale, and there are two of them, separated by a half step, so this creates 2 areas of harmonic activity, which can be said to "complement" each other as a I-V would, but really feeding-off of the tritone. 

Both approaches avoid (Bartók's) somewhat over-used minor third "diminished-itis" sound so common in much early modernism. Good work, boys.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

tdc said:


> Another composer that was quite fond of using minor seconds to spice up his music (and was influenced by Ravel) was Joaquin Rodrigo. I'd suggest people look into some of his music for solo guitar and piano, its great. There is a lot of quality music to explore by Rodrigo outside of the concertos he is mostly known for.


there are works that you would suggest as an introduction? I know only the famous concerto.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

tdc said:


> Another composer that was quite fond of using minor seconds to spice up his music (and was influenced by Ravel) was Joaquin Rodrigo.


I think of Spain, the Moorish influence, Sephardic chant; a lot of exotic minor second scales & scale degree functions, like in flamenco; lots of dissonant guitar chords there. The minor second, with minor third, heads for minor modes, and diminished scales, which Kirchner and Bloch used to create a sort of "modern chant" sound. France was nearby, and had an interest in "exotic" things like that.


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## spradlig (Jul 25, 2012)

There is actually more than one famous concerto (I assume you are referring to his Concerto di Aranjuez). His "Concerto para un Gentilhombre" (sp? I don't know Spanish) is very good and he wrote a flute concerto that is very good (I don't remember if it has a title other than "flute concerto"). There may be others I am unaware of.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

norman bates said:


> there are works that you would suggest as an introduction? I know only the famous concerto.


There are many, as far as his guitar repertoire I'd recommend the Naxos recording with Jeremy Jouve and Judicael Perroy as a good entry point. For his piano works I like the _Complete Music for Piano_ recording on 2 discs by Gregory Allen.

This EMI recording (Best Guitar 100) is quite good, it comes with 6 discs of a variety of classical guitar music for under $20. The 4th disc is all Rodrigo guitar music.









There are quite a few good links to find on youtube of Rodrigo's guitar pieces, but unfortunately there are very few good quality clips of his piano pieces. I hope to see more pianists recording his works in the future.


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