Monsieurs Debussy and Ravel

Ravel - Debussy String Quartets; Quatuor Ysaye

I can’t remember when I first heard Terry Gross from NPR’s Fresh Air. But I do remember “boycotting” the show by keeping it off of my car speakers. I had heard a couple of interviews that I enjoyed. But the third interview that I listened to her conduct was with Monica Lewinsky. I didn’t like the questions, I didn’t like the answers, I didn’t like Ms. Lewinsky or Ms. Gross. All I picked up was a bad vibe.

Politics don’t flash brightly on my conversation topic radar. However, allow me to say that, though I lean strongly to the conservative side, I celebrate with all of my fellow United States citizens the freedom to be as different from one another as we like. And just as I appreciate their attempts to decipher and respect why I cling tightly to my Christian worldview, then so must I venture boldly and frequently into camps where the global climate has a warmer or colder temperature than I like in order to extend the warmest handshake and decrypt those matters that determine the path of those that accommodate a broader spectrum of lifeways. At least, that’s what I should do.

NPR tends to lean a little left of center. And so does Fresh Air. But NPR's love of the arts brings me to their front step frequently. The specifics of that particular Fresh Air interview never stuck with me. Apparently I was put out sufficiently that I decided that I didn’t need to hear this kind of interview anymore.

About two years later, my friends G. and D. were discussing a recent interview on Fresh Air and I proceeded to spout off about my last visit to her time slot on NPR. G. briefed me on an article that she had read about Terry Gross where a question had been posed to her about her worst interview. Are you surprised to hear that it was with Ms. Lewinsky? Me neither. I had failed to grant Ms. Gross the benefit of the doubt and to afford her not so much a second chance, but another chance. After hearing this new information, and learning a little lesson, I can gladly report to you that Fresh Air now visits my Trailblazer Bose speakers with much more frequency.

It’s a phenomenon in the world of art that those attributes that graciously accord sustainability to the music of any one composer confound the experts. They encounter an inexact science. We listen to the music of J.S. Bach three centuries after he scored it. And yet, while he lived, his colleagues considered him old fashioned. His music sat mostly idle until Felix Mendelssohn repremiered (can you repremiere something?) the St. Matthew Passion nearly one hundred years after Mr. Bach revised it. The world probably won’t know the true greatness of today’s composers, or lack thereof, for decades.

With so many aspects of music in common anyway, the circumstances of the premiers of both Claude Debussy’s and Maurice Ravel’s string quartets attract fascination. Contemporaries and critics alike panned both these chamber works. Mr. Debussy’s audience didn’t like his String Quartet in G Minor because it didn’t sound German. Mr. Ravel’s own composition teacher, Gabriel Faure, found fault with the last movement of his String Quartet in F. No one should wonder, then, that Mr. Debussy cabled Mr. Ravel this message: “In the name of the Gods of music and in my own, do not touch a single note you have written in your Quartet.”

Both giants only wrote one string quartet. Who can blame them? And yet both composers and string quartets have emerged above those who criticized. A more open-minded musical public, who could sequester the jury for a little while longer so that the evidence of musical genius could accept closer scrutiny, eventually embraced and championed what appears to be, so far, the world’s finest Impressionistic composers.

Credits: To NPR, for bringing the performing arts to anyone with a radio.