Ballade (Slave)

Welcome back to Tea with Liya! On this mid-May morning, I've uploaded a song called "Ballade," a romantic-era piece composed by Claude Debussy. While learning the song, I noticed some interesting things about how it was written. I hope you like listening to it, too!


Listen to the song here
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I probably would never have learned this song if I didn't find it on my RCM list for this year. I haven't actually listened to a lot of this so-called "contemporary" music. It's still called Contemporary even though it was written at the beginning of the 20th century. (I wonder what we're going to call the 22nd century, then. The modern era can't last forever, so eventually it'll have to become... the "post-modern era"?)

Even though these songs don't seem to have a structure to them like a sonata would, there's still sections with different emotions, so it still sounds like the composer is telling a story - it's just harder to predict what's coming next. This song happens to use a lot of key changes to signify the sections.

Because not all of you will understand the musical terms, I'll try to explain another thing I noticed in a different way. If you see a sentence with a question mark, you would expect it to be at the beginning of a story, not the end. You need a period at the end in order to "resolve" the question mark.

I might not use this picture very often anymore. If you've been looking at music staffs for a while, you might notice something unusual about the lines.

The same thing can happen with musical chords. If you have a C⁷ chord, for example, you would expect to see an F somewhere after it. The C⁷ is the question mark. So you need a period, the F, to follow it.

The only thing is that in today's song, things aren't that simple, because the key is going to change before you get your F. Your story seems to be going in many directions without any resolution, so you might be saying, "hmm, maybe that C⁷ was just put there randomly." A lot of things are changing, but then you notice that you're hearing the same melodies you were hearing at the beginning. And, guess what the song ends with? That's right, an F. But you had to listen to the whole song before the C⁷ was going to be resolved.

Before I learned this song, I didn't think I was going to like it. It wasn't anything like the music I usually played. However, after I learned it, I didn't think it was going to seem a lot like the other songs I've played.

I suppose one thing I've learned is to not completely dismiss a song because I don't think I'll like it. Maybe this song is a metaphor for why I should keep waiting. If I paused the song because I can't make sense of what's happening, I'd never find the F. And if I stopped being patient on something because I couldn't make sense of what's happening, then I might miss the resolution.

Keep filling your teacup with music!
~Liya