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Debussy's Paris

Piano Portraits of the Belle Époque

Catherine Kautsky

Claude Debussy’s exquisite piano works have captivated generations with their dreamlike atmosphere and mysterious soundscapes.Written in Paris at the height of the Belle Époque, the music creates a soundtrack for Parisians’ enjoyment of such delights as clowns, mermaids, eccentric dances, and the dark tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Debussy’s Paris: Piano Portraits of the Belle Époque explores how key works reflect not only the most appealing and innocent aspects of Paris but also more disquieting attitudes of the time such as racism, colonial domination, and nationalistic hostility. Debussy left no avenue unexplored, and his piano works present a sweeping overview of the passions, vices, and obsessions of the era.

Pianist Catherine Kautsky reveals little-known elements of Parisian culture and weaves the music, the man, the city, and the era into an indissoluble whole. Her portrait will delight anyone who has ever been entranced by Debussy’s music or the city that inspired it.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 254 • Trim: 6 x 8¾

978-1-4422-6982-8 • Hardback • September 2017 • $48.00 • (£37.00)

978-1-5381-3715-4 • Paperback • October 2019 • $31.00 • (£25.00)

978-1-4422-6983-5 • eBook • September 2017 • $29.00 • (£19.99)

Subjects: Music / Individual Composer & Musician, Biography & Autobiography / Music, History / Europe / France, History / Modern / 19th Century

Debussy's Paris

Piano Portraits of the Belle Époque

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Claude Debussy’s exquisite piano works have captivated generations with their dreamlike atmosphere and mysterious soundscapes.Written in Paris at the height of the Belle Époque, the music creates a soundtrack for Parisians’ enjoyment of such delights as clowns, mermaids, eccentric dances, and the dark tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Debussy’s Paris: Piano Portraits of the Belle Époque explores how key works reflect not only the most appealing and innocent aspects of Paris but also more disquieting attitudes of the time such as racism, colonial domination, and nationalistic hostility. Debussy left no avenue unexplored, and his piano works present a sweeping overview of the passions, vices, and obsessions of the era.

Pianist Catherine Kautsky reveals little-known elements of Parisian culture and weaves the music, the man, the city, and the era into an indissoluble whole. Her portrait will delight anyone who has ever been entranced by Debussy’s music or the city that inspired it.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 254 • Trim: 6 x 8¾

978-1-4422-6982-8 • Hardback • September 2017 • $48.00 • (£37.00)

978-1-5381-3715-4 • Paperback • October 2019 • $31.00 • (£25.00)

978-1-4422-6983-5 • eBook • September 2017 • $29.00 • (£19.99)

Subjects: Music / Individual Composer & Musician, Biography & Autobiography / Music, History / Europe / France, History / Modern / 19th Century

Author

Catherine Kautsky is chair of keyboard at Lawrence University and has been lauded by the New York Times as “a pianist who can play Mozart and Schubert as though their sentiments and habits of speech coincided exactly with hers.” Visit https://www.debussysparis.com/ to enjoy Kautsky’s performance of many of Debussy’s works, as well as additional artworks, poems, and primary source materials from this book.

Table of Contents

Ch. 1: Pierrot Conquers Paris
Ch. 2. Poets, Clowns, and Circus Daredevils
Ch. 3. Dance Steps out of Line
Ch. 4. The Cakewalk Wars
Ch. 5. A Taste for the Orient
Ch. 6. Asia on a Pedestal
Ch. 7 Child’s Play and Make Believe
Ch. 8. Fairies and Fairy Tales
Ch. 9. Crossovers on Land and at Sea
Ch. 10. The Floating World
Ch. 11. Fair-haired Maidens
Ch. 12. Edgar Allan Poe’s “Imp of the Perverse”
Ch. 13 The Sounds of Nationalism

Afterword: In Conversation with Baudelaire and Proust

Reviews

In this fascinating fusion of music, literature, and social history, Kautsky, a pianist and piano professor, transports us to the milieu of a composer whose music captured the spirit of the times. Her purpose, she writes, isn't to ‘to provide a lengthy biography of Claude Debussy but rather to view him through the lens of his piano music and the city he so fully embraced.’ Debussy, ‘the dreamy French composer par excellence,’ counted among his acquaintances luminaries of the worlds of art (Degas, Gauguin, Rodin); literature (Proust, Mallarmé, Colette); and dance (Nijinsky, Diaghilev, Loie Fuller). Setting a number of his compositions in the context of the times, Kautsky explores a glittering world of music, dance, art, and poetry as well as its less appealing underside of racist minstrel shows, colonization, and nationalism. Her graceful and erudite prose is embellished with period illustrations and bolstered by a carefully selected bibliography. Kautsky has also recorded the complete Debussy Preludes (Centaur, 2014), a work that figures prominently in these pages. A treat for music lovers, Francophiles, and anyone who appreciates the arts.
— Booklist

Debussy’s Paris offers social and historical background for the time and place in which Debussy wrote his music. . . . the gorgeously written, colorful prose that is vividly presented immerses the reader in the Parisian Belle Époque and the culture that inspired Debussy. After reading this book I have a deeper and more holistic understanding of Debussy’s world— his influences, contemporaries, and artistic and musical philosophies.
— Clavier Companion

The book is enlivened by an often informal writing style, and the notes and bibliography reveal the depth of Kautsky’s research into a wide variety of graphic and literary sources.
— Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association

Catherine Kautsky has written a wonderful book, a kind of total immersion in the Debussyan magic, and in the endless fascination of fin-de-siècle Paris. The writing fizzes with the excitement of connecting the countless different strands of the composer's artistic influences and inspirations. Musicians will particularly appreciate the masterly survey of the piano works, and all readers will enjoy the extraordinary cast of characters, from Poe and Baudelaire to half-forgotten clowns of the circus and music hall. I was entranced and delighted throughout.
— Richard Goode, Grammy Award–winning concert pianist and teacher

Debussy's Paris presents a unique and panoramic view of this remarkably rich time in the history of both music and a changing world. It will delight both musicians and non-musicians alike.
— Gilbert Kalish, pianist, distinguished professor at Stony Brook University and artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

With her exceptional gift for bringing to vivid life the context of this great composer's work, Ms. Kautsky succeeds brilliantly in offering new and arresting perspectives regarding Debussy, Paris, and the extraordinary world that defined them.
— Robert McDonald, award-winning concert pianist and professor, the Juilliard School and Curtis Institute of Music

[An] often entertaining exploration of Debussy’s Belle époque “piano portraits”
— H-France Review

Debussy's Paris

Piano Portraits of the Belle Époque

Catherine Kautsky

Debussy's Paris

Piano Portraits of the Belle Époque

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