He wrote to his wife on 11 August from Dieppe, telling her that their marriage was over, but still making no mention of Bardac. The course included music history and theory studies with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, but it is not certain that Debussy, who was apt to skip classes, actually attended these.
Debussy: Première rapsodie for Clarinet and Piano
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- His music was to a considerable extent a reaction against Wagner and the German musical tradition.
- Wagner fulfilled the sensuous ambitions not only of composers but also of the Symbolist poets and the Impressionist painters.
- Above all he went to Bayreuth—the great German Wagner festival—and heard Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde for the first time.
- The academic and journalist Stephen Walsh calls Pelléas et Mélisande (begun 1893, staged 1902) “a key work for the 20th century”.
- From around 1900 Debussy’s music became a focus and inspiration for an informal group of innovative young artists, poets, critics, and musicians who began meeting in Paris.
- In May 1898 he made his first contacts with André Messager and Albert Carré, respectively the musical director and general manager of the Opéra-Comique, Paris, about presenting the opera.
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Claude Debussy, along with other notable composers such as Igor Stravinsky, sought to explore new and innovative ways to expand harmonic language and in so doing move away from the Germanic influence of the previous two centuries. It was their view that Western harmony had exhausted it potentialities as a potent emotive syntax by the end of the nineteenth century. Like Stravinsky, he looked for inspiration in non-European harmonies, which he incorporated in his music, without rendering it “heathenish,” in the sense of undermining its synchronization with the physics of sound. The three Nocturnes for Orchestra, Pelleas and Melisande, La Mer, and Images established his reputation as one of the most influential composers in post-Wagnerian and the twentieth century music.
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- It was in this spirit that Debussy wrote the symphonic poem Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894).
- A contemporary influence was Erik Satie, according to Nichols Debussy’s “most faithful friend” amongst French musicians.
- In his work, as in his personal life, he was anxious to gather experience from every region that the imaginative mind could explore.
- Debussy became a close friend of a wealthy composer and member of Franck’s circle, Ernest Chausson.
- Here again he bids farewell to a large late-Romantic orchestra, favoring a smaller ensemble that lends itself to an exploration of orchestral colors and timbres of the instruments.
- Debussy’s orchestral works include Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894), Nocturnes (1897–1899) and Images (1905–1912).
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Debussy Sonata for Cello and Piano
Here again he bids farewell to a large late-Romantic orchestra, favoring a smaller ensemble that lends itself to an exploration of orchestral colors and timbres of the instruments. Debussy became a close friend of a wealthy composer and member of Franck’s circle, Ernest Chausson. Debussy received piano instruction from Chopin’s pupil Madame de Fleurville, and being very gifted, entered the Paris Conservatoire when he was 11 years old. In Paris during this time he fell in love with a singer, Blanche Vasnier, the beautiful young wife of an architect; she inspired many of his early works.
Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune
- He dedicated Children’s Corner for piano to his daughter, whose sweetness and love would quell his depressions.
- The composer Olivier Messiaen was fascinated by its “extraordinary harmonic qualities and … transparent instrumental texture”.
- He 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.
- He wrote incidental music for King Lear and planned an opera based on As You Like It, but abandoned that once he turned his attention to setting Maeterlinck’s play.
- Debussy received piano instruction from Chopin’s pupil Madame de Fleurville, and being very gifted, entered the Paris Conservatoire when he was 11 years old.
- He aimed to design a new style that would not emulate those of the acclaimed composers, yet his music also reflects that of Wagner, whose operas he heard on visits to Bayreuth, Germany in 1888 and 1889.
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Yet he had no real desire to spend three years in Rome, writing more music to please the Conservatoire moguls while unable to visit his mistress. Repelled by the gossip and scandal arising from this situation, he sought refuge for a time at Eastbourne, on the south coast of England. In addition to the composers who influenced his own compositions, Debussy held strong views about several others. Debussy did not give his works opus numbers, apart from his String Quartet, Op. 10 in G minor (also the only work where the composer’s title included a key). It made Debussy a well-known name in France and abroad; The Times commented that the opera had “provoked more discussion than any work of modern times, excepting, of course, those of Richard Strauss”. The Apaches, led by Ravel (who attended every one of the 14 performances in the first run), were loud in their support; the conservative faculty of the Conservatoire tried in vain to Casinojoy casino stop its students from seeing the opera.
How high can you score in this composer version of ‘Who Am I’?
He made his music very different from the Romantic style, which other composers used at the time. The main musical influence in Debussy’s work was the work of Richard Wagner and the Russian composers Aleksandr Borodin and Modest Mussorgsky. Wagner fulfilled the sensuous ambitions not only of composers but also of the Symbolist poets and the Impressionist painters.
Style & Works
String Quartet in G Minor and the orchestral prelude “L’Apres midi d’un faune,” composed between 1893 and 1894, were the first masterpieces of the new style. This early style is well illustrated in one of Debussy’s best-known compositions, Clair de lune. Bartók first encountered Debussy’s music in 1907 and later said that “Debussy’s great service to music was to reawaken among all musicians an awareness of harmony and its possibilities”. Not only Debussy’s use of whole-tone scales, but also his style of word-setting in Pelléas et Mélisande, were the subject of study by Leoš Janáček while he was writing his 1921 opera Káťa Kabanová. The application of the term “Impressionist” to Debussy and the music he influenced has been much debated, both during his lifetime and since. Although considering Images “the pinnacle of Debussy’s achievement as a composer for orchestra”, Trezise notes a contrary view that the accolade belongs to the ballet score Jeux.
