Dr. Music Season 2 Episode 13

Hearing a jazz chord automatically makes us think of the jazz idiom, but who actually wrote the first jazz chords?  Those rich sonorities actually have their beginnings in the Romantic period with composers like Chopin and Liszt.  But  we can actually hear the beginnings of the jazz style in the music of late 19th century French impressionism.  In this episode, we will revisit the composer of Season 1, Episode 1, Claude Debussy, one of the most important composers of the Western European music tradition. As we examine one of the preludes from Debussy's second book, Heather, we shall see how he synthesizes basic tonal progressions of his predecessors with a new approach to how music can paint a picture. And when you hear those jazz progressions, remember that "jazz" as a historical current has not been invented yet!