Claude Debussy

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Claude Debussy, photo by Félix Nadar, ca. 1908.Achille-Claude Debussy (pronounced

[aʃil klod dəbysi]) (August 22, 1862 – March 25, 1918) was a French composer. Along
with Maurice Ravel, he is considered one of the most prominent figures working within
the field of Impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when
applied to his compositions. Debussy was not only among the most important of all
French composers but also was a central figure in all European music at the turn of the
twentieth century.

Debussy's music virtually defines the transition from late-Romantic music to twentieth
century modernist music. In French literary circles, the style of this period was known as
Symbolism, a movement that directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an
active cultural participant.

Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early life and studies
1.2 Early works
1.3 Middle works
1.4 Late works
2 Private life
3 Death
4 Musical style
4.1 Mathematical structuring
4.2 Influence on later composers
5 Pop Culture
6 List of works
7 Eponym
8 Media
9 Notes
10 Sources
11 Further reading
12 External links

Biography

Early life and studies

Debussy at the Villa Médici in Rome, 1885, at centre in the white jacketClaude Debussy
was born in St. Germain-en-Laye in 1862, the eldest of five children. His father owned a
china shop and his mother was a seamstress. Debussy began piano lessons when he was
seven years old with an elderly Italian named Cerutti; his lessons were paid for by his
aunt. In 1871, the shy awkward boy gained the attention of Mme. de Fleurville, the
mother-in-law of the poet Paul Verlaine, who had been a pupil of Chopin. His talents
soon became evident, and, at age eleven, Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire.
During Debussy's twelve years at the Paris Conservatoire, beginning in 1872, he studied
composition with Ernest Guiraud, harmony with Emile Durand, piano with Antoine-
Francois Marmontel, organ with César Franck, and solfeggio with Albert Lavignac, as
well as other significant figures of the era.

From the start, though clearly talented, Debussy was also argumentative and
experimental, and he challenged the rigid teaching of the Academy, favoring instead
dissonances and intervals, which were frowned upon at the time. From 1880 to 1882, he
was employed by the patron of Tchaikovsky, Nadezhda von Meck, giving music lessons
to her children.[1] Despite his patron's closeness with Tchaikovsky, the Russian master
appears to have had little or no effect on Debussy. More influential was Debussy's close
friendship with Madame Vasnier, a singer he met when he began working as an
accompanist to earn some money. She gave Debussy emotional and professional support
and influenced his first songs, settings of poems by Paul Verlaine.

As the winner of the Prix de Rome with his composition L'Enfant prodigue, he received a
scholarship to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which included a four-year residence at the
Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome, to further his studies (1885-1887).
According to letters to Madame Vasnier, perhaps in part designed to gain her sympathy,
he found the artistic atmosphere stifling, the company boorish, the food bad, and the
monastic quarters "abominable".[2] Neither did he delight in the pleasures of the "Eternal
City", finding the Italian opera of Donizetti and Verdi not to his taste. Debussy often was
depressed and unable to compose, but he was inspired by Franz Liszt, whose command of
the keyboard he found admirable.

In June 1885, Debussy wrote of his desire to follow his own way:

“ I am sure the Institut would not approve, for, naturally it regards the path which it
ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamored of my
freedom, too fond of my own ideas. ”

[3]

Debussy finally composed four pieces that were sent to the Academy: the symphonic ode
Zuleima, based on a text by Heinrich Heine; the orchestral piece Printemps; the cantata
La damoiselle élue (1887-1888), which was criticized by the Academy as "bizarre"; and
the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra. The third piece was the first in which stylistic
features of Debussy's later style emerged. The fourth piece was heavily based on César
Franck's music and withdrawn by Debussy himself. Overall, the Academy chided him for
"courting the unusual" and hoped for something better from the gifted student. Even
though Debussy showed touches of Massenet in his efforts, Jules Massenet himself
concluded, "He is an enigma."[4]
In his visits to Bayreuth in 1888-9, Debussy was exposed to Wagnerian opera, which had
a lasting impact on his work. Richard Wagner had died in 1883 and the cult of Wagnerism
was still in full swing. Debussy, like many young musicians of the time, responded
positively to Wagner's sensuousness, mastery of form, and striking harmonies, but
ultimately Wagner's extroverted emotionalism was not to be Debussy's way either.
Wagner's influence is evident in La damoiselle élue and the 1889 piece Cinq poèmes de
Baudelaire. Other songs of the period, notably the settings of Verlaine—Ariettes oubliées,
Trois mélodies, and Fêtes galantesare all in a more capricious style. Around this time,
Debussy met Erik Satie who proved a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to
composition and to naming his pieces. During this period, both musicians were
bohemians enjoying the same cafe society and struggling to stay afloat financially.

During 1889, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, Debussy heard Javanese gamelan
music. Although direct citations of gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, or ensemble
textures have not been located in any of Debussy's own compositions, the equal-tempered
pentatonic scale appears in his music of this time and afterward.

Early works

Debussy at the piano, behind him is the composer Ernest Chausson, 1893Beginning in
the 1890s, Debussy developed his own musical language largely independent of Wagner's
style, colored in part from the dreamy, sometimes morbid romanticism of the Symbolist
Movement. Debussy became a frequent participant at Stéphane Mallarmé Symbolist
gatherings, where Wagnerism dominated the discussion. In contrast to the enormous
works of Wagner and other late-romantic composers, however, around this time Debussy
chose to write in smaller, more accessible forms. The Suite bergamasque (1890) recalls
rococo decorousness with a modern cynicism and puzzlement. This suite contains one of
Debussy's most popular pieces, Clair de Lune. Debussy's String Quartet in G minor
(1893) paved the way for his later, more daring harmonic exploration. In this work he
utilized the Phrygian mode as well as less standard scales, such as the whole-tone, which
creates a sense of floating, ethereal harmony. Debussy was beginning to employ a single,
continuous theme and break away from the traditional A-B-A form, with its restatements
and amplifications, which had been a mainstay of classical music since Haydn.

Influenced by Mallarmé, Debussy wrote one of his most famous works, the revolutionary
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, truly original in form and execution. In contrast to the
large orchestras so favoured by late-romanticism, Debussy wrote this piece for a smaller
ensemble, emphasizing instrumental colour and timbre. Despite Mallarmé himself, and
colleague and friend Paul Dukas having been impressed by the piece, it was controversial
at its premiere. Prélude subsequently placed Debussy into the spotlight as one of the
leading composers of the era.

Middle works
The three Nocturnes (1899), include characteristic studies in veiled harmony and texture
as demonstrated in Nuages; exuberance in Fêtes; and whole-tones in Sirènes. Contrasting
sharply with Wagnerian opera, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande premiered in 1901, after
ten years of work. It would be his only complete opera. Based on the play by Maurice
Maeterlinck, the opera proved to be an immediate success and immensely influential to
younger French composers, including Maurice Ravel. These works brought a fluidity of
rhythm and colour quite new to Western music.

La Mer (1903-1905) essays a more symphonic form, with a finale that works themes
from the first movement, although the middle movement, Jeux de vagues, which
proceeds much less directly and with more variety of colour. Again, the reviews were
sharply divided. Some critics thought the treatment less subtle and less mysterious than
previous works and a step backward. Pierre Lalo complained "I neither hear, nor see, nor
feel the sea". Others extolled its "power and charm", its "extraordinary verve and brilliant
fantasy", and its strong colors and definite lines.[5]

During this period Debussy wrote much for the piano. The set of pieces entitled Pour le
piano (1901) utilises rich harmonies and textures which would later prove important in
jazz music. His first volume of Images pour piano (1904–1905) combine harmonic
innovation with poetic suggestion: Reflets dans l'eau is a musical description of rippling
water; Hommage à Rameau, the second piece, is slow and yearningly nostalgic. It takes
as its inspiration a melody of Jean-Philippe Rameau's, Castor et Pollux.

The evocative Estampes for piano (1903) give impressions of exotic locations. Debussy
came into contact with Javanese gamelan music during the 1889 Paris Exposition
Universelle. Pagodes is the directly inspired result, aiming for an evocation of the
pentatonic structures employed by the Javanese music.[6] Debussy wrote his famous
Children's Corner Suite (1909) for his beloved daughter, Claude-Emma, whom he
nicknamed Chou-chou. The suite recalls classicism—the opening piece Doctor Gradus ad
Parnassum refers to Muzio Clementi's collection of instructional piano compositions
Gradus ad Parnassum, as well as a new wave of American cakewalk music. In the
popular final piece of the suite, Golliwog's Cakewalk, Debussy also pokes fun at Richard
Wagner by mimicking the opening bars of Wagner's prelude to Tristan and Isolde.

The first book of Preludes (1910), twelve in total, proved to be his most successful work
for piano. The Preludes are frequently compared to those of Chopin. Debussy's preludes
are replete with rich, unusual and daring harmonies. They include the popular La Fille
aux Cheveux de Lin (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair) and La Cathédrale Engloutie (The
Submerged Cathedral). Debussy wanted people to respond intuitively to these pieces and
so he placed the titles at the end of each one in the hope that listeners would not make
stereotype images as they listened.

Larger scaled works included his orchestral piece Iberia (1907), began as a work for two
pianos, a triptych medley of Spanish allusions and fleeting impressions and also the
music for Gabriele d'Annunzio's mystery play Le martyre de St. Sébastien (1911). A lush
and dramatic work, written in only two months, it is remarkable in sustaining a late
antique modal atmosphere that otherwise was touched only in relatively short piano
pieces.

During this period, as Debussy gained more popularity, he was engaged as a conductor
throughout Europe, most often performing Pelléas, La Mer, Iberia, and Prélude à l'après-
midi d'un faune. He was also an occasional music critic to supplement his conducting
fees and piano lessons. Debussy avoided analytical dissection and attempts to force
images from music, "Let us at all costs preserve this magic peculiar to music, since of all
the arts it is most susceptible to magic." He could be caustic and witty, sometimes sloppy
and ill-informed. Debussy was for the most part enthusiastic about Richard Strauss and
Igor Stravinsky, worshipful of Chopin, Johann Sebastian Bach and Mozart, and found
both Liszt and Beethoven geniuses who sometimes lacked "taste". Schubert and
Mendelssohn fared much worse, the latter he described as a "facile and elegant
notary".[7] He also admired the works of Charles-Valentin Alkan.

Late works
Debussy's harmonies and chord progressions frequently exploit dissonances without any
formal resolution. Unlike in his earlier work, he no longer hides discords in lush
harmonies. The forms are far more irregular and fragmented. These chords who
seemingly had no resolution were described by Debussy himself as "floating chords", and
were used to set tone and mood in many of his works. The whole tone scale dominates
much of Debussy's late music.

His two last volumes of works for the piano, the Études (1915) interprets similar varieties
of style and texture purely as pianistic exercises and includes pieces that develop
irregular form to an extreme as well as others influenced by the young Igor Stravinsky (a
presence too in the suite En blanc et noir for two pianos, 1915). The rarefaction of these
works is a feature of the last set of songs, the Trois poèmes de Mallarmé (1913), and of
the Sonata for flute, viola and harp (1915), though the sonata and its companions also
recapture the inquisitive Verlainian classicism.

With the sonatas of 1915–1917, there is a sudden shift in the style. These works recall
Debussy's earlier music, in part, but also look forward, with leaner, simpler structures.
Despite the thinner textures of the violin sonata (1917) there remains an undeniable
richness in the chords themselves. This shift parallels the movement commonly known as
neo-classicism which became popular after Debussy's death. Debussy planned a set of six
sonatas, but this plan was cut short by his death in 1918 so that he only completed three
(cello, flute-viola-harp and violin sonatas).

The last orchestral work by Debussy, the ballet Jeux (1912) written for Serge Diaghilev's
Ballets Russes, contains some of his strangest harmonies and textures in a form that
moves freely over its own field of motivic connection. At first Jeux was overshadowed by
Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, composed in the same year as Jeux and premiered
only two weeks later by the same ballet company. Decades later, composers such as
Pierre Boulez and Jean Barraqué pointed out parallels to Anton Webern's serialism in this
work. Other late stage works, including the ballets Khamma (1912) and La boîte à
joujoux (1913) were left with the orchestration incomplete, and were later completed by
Charles Koechlin and André Caplet, who also helped Debussy with the orchestration of
Gigues (from Images pour orchestre) and Le martyre de St. Sébastien.

The second set of Preludes for piano (1913) features Debussy at his most avant-garde,
sometimes utilising dissonant harmonies to evoke moods and images, especially in the
mysterious Canope; the title refers to a burial urn which stood on Debussy's working desk
and evokes a distant past. The pianist Claudio Arrau considered the piece to be one of
Debussy's greatest preludes: "It's miraculous that he created, in so few notes, this kind of
depth."[8]

Although Pelléas was Debussy's only completed opera, he began several opera projects
which remained unfinished, his fading concentration, increasing procrastination, and
failing health perhaps the reasons. He had finished some partial musical sketches and
some unpublished libretti for operas based on Shakespeare's As You Like It, Poe's The
Fall of the House of Usher, and Joseph Bedier's La Legende de Tristan.

Further plans, such as an American tour, more ballet scores, and revisions of Chopin and
Bach works for re-publication, were all cut short by the onset of World War I and a
serious turn in his health, which required morphine injections for pain. An operation in
1915 only temporarily checked the condition.

Private life
Debussy's private life was turbulent. He cohabited in Paris with Gabrielle Dupont for
nine years before marrying her friend Rosalie Texier, a fashion model, in 1899. Although
Texier was affectionate, practical, straightforward, and well-liked by Debussy's friends
and associates, he became increasingly irritated by her intellectual limitations and lack of
musical sensitivity. As a result he left Texier in 1904 for Emma Bardac, the wife of a
Parisian banker and the mother of one of his students. In contrast to Texier, Bardac was a
sophisticate, a brilliant conversationalist, and an accomplished singer. The distraught
Texier, like Dupont before her, attempted suicide with a pistol. The scandal obliged
Debussy and Bardac (already carrying his child) to flee to Eastbourne, England, (where
he completed his symphonic suite La Mer) until the hysteria subsided and the legal
entanglements resolved. The couple were eventually married in 1908. The child, a
daughter (and the composer's only child), was named Claude-Emma, more affectionately
known as Chou-Chou, the dedicatee of Debussy's Children's Corner suite. Claude-Emma
outlived her father by scarcely a year, succumbing to the diphtheria epidemic of 1919.

Death

Debussy's grave at Cim. de PassyClaude Debussy died in Paris on March 25, 1918 from
colorectal cancer (he had survived one of the first colostomy operations ever performed
two years earlier). He died in the midst of German aerial and artillery bombardment of
Paris during the Spring Offensive of World War I. At this time, the military situation in
France was desperate, and circumstances did not permit his being paid the honour of a
public funeral or ceremonious graveside orations. The funeral procession made its way
through deserted streets as shells from the German guns ripped into his beloved city. It
was just eight months before France would celebrate victory. He was interred in the
Cimetière de Passy, and French culture has ever since celebrated Debussy as one of its
most distinguished representatives. His wife and daughter are buried with him.

Musical style
Rudolph Réti points out these features of Debussy's music, which "established a new
concept of tonality in European music":

Glittering passages and webs of figurations which distract from occasional absence of
tonality;
Frequent use of parallel chords which are "in essence not harmonies at all, but rather
'chordal melodies', enriched unisons";
Bitonality, or at least bitonal chords;
Use of the whole-tone and pentatonic scale;
Unprepared modulations, "without any harmonic bridge."
He concludes that Debussy's achievement was the synthesis of monophonic based
"melodic tonality" with harmonies, albeit different from those of "harmonic tonality"
(Reti, 1958).

The application of the term "impressionist" to Debussy and the music he influenced is a
matter of intense debate within academic circles. One side argues that the term is a
misnomer, an inappropriate label which Debussy himself opposed. In a letter of 1908, he
wrote "I am trying to do 'something different'--an effect of reality...what the imbeciles call
'impressionism', a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by the critics,
since they do not hesitate to apply it to Turner, the finest creator of mysterious effects in
all the world of art."[9] The opposing side argues that Debussy may have been reacting to
unfavorable criticism at the time, and the negativity that critics associated with
impressionism. It can be argued that he would have been pleased with application of the
current definition of impressionism to his music.

Mathematical structuring
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Given that Debussy's music is apparently so concerned with mood and colour, it is
somewhat unexpected to discover that, according to one author, many of his greatest
works appear to have been structured around mathematical models even while using an
apparent classical structure such as sonata form. Howat (1983) suggests that some of
Debussy's pieces can be divided into sections that reflect the golden ratio, frequently by
using the numbers of the standard Fibonacci sequence. Sometimes these divisions seem
to follow the standard divisions of the overall structure. In other pieces they appear to
mark out other significant features of the music. The 55 bar-long introduction to
'Dialogue du vent et la mer' in La Mer, for example, breaks down into 5 sections of 21, 8,
8, 5 and 13 bars in length. The golden mean point of bar 34 in this structure is signalled
by the introduction of the trombones, with the use of the main motif from all three
movements used in the central section around that point (Howat, 1983).

The only evidence that Howat introduces to support his claim appears in changes
Debussy made between finished manuscripts and the printed edition, with the changes
invariably creating a Golden Mean proportion where previously none existed. Perhaps the
starkest example of this comes with La cathédrale engloutie. Published editions lack the
instruction to play bars 7-12 and 22-83 at twice the speed of the remainder, exactly as
Debussy himself did on a piano-roll recording. When analysed with this alteration, the
piece follows Golden Section proportions. At the same time, Howat admits that in many
of Debussy's works, he has been unable to find evidence of the Golden Section (notably
in the late works) and that no extant manuscripts or sketches contain any evidence of
calculations related to it.

Influence on later composers

Claude Debussy is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the 20th
century. His harmonies, considered radical in his day, were influential to almost every
major composer of the 20th century, especially the music of Igor Stravinsky, Olivier
Messiaen, Bela Bartok, Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, and the minimalist music of Steve
Reich and Philip Glass as well as the influential Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. He
also influenced many important figures in Jazz, most notably Bill Evans,Thelonious
Monk,Duke Ellington, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Jimmy Giuffre and Brad Mehldau.

Pop Culture
The 1980s avant-garde synthpop group the Art of Noise based their 1999 album 'The
Seduction of Claude Debussy' on the life and works of the French composer. The album
blended the music of Claude Debussy with jazz, opera, hip hop, and drum and bass.
Aside from the music on the album, information about Debussy himself is provided via
commentary style introductions to tracks.