Claude Debussy - Biography
Claude Achille Debussy was born on August 22nd 1862 in St. Germaine-En Laye and died in Paris on March 25th in 1918. He is generally considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century. Debussy came from the French Petit Bourgeois, his father had a shop that sold china his mother was a seamstress. At an early age he showed musical talent and studied piano and violin eventually at the age of ten receiving lessons from Madame de Fleurvile a pupil of Chopin and the mother in law of the poet Verlaine. A year later he entered the prestigious Paris Conservatory where he studied with the well known figures at the school including famed composer Cesar Franck. The Conservatory was a very conservative institution and Debussy even in his adolescence was an iconoclastic and experimental musical mind who already had a calm assessment of his self worth that he would maintain throughout his life. When he became eighteen he accepted an unusual assignment travelling to Russia become the tutor to the children of Mme. Nadezhda von Meck a very wealthy widow who was to gain fame as Tchaikovsky’s patroness. He stayed in Russia for nearly two years, upon his return he became an accompanist for a singer Mme. Vasnier who helped inspired him to write his first opus a series of Songs to texts by Paul Verlaine. The following year he won the prestigious Prix de Rome which gave him a cash prize and allowed him to study for two years at the French Academy in Rome. Debussy didn’t seem to be a fan of Italian life and seems to have been depressed during his stay longing for Paris ,he did produce a few interesting and un characteristic pieces the Tone Poem Printemps, a Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra and the Cantata La Damoiselle Elue. These pieces seemed to be influenced by his celebrated French contemporary Massenet. Debussy visited the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth in 1888 was initially bowled over by Parsifal but realized that this was not the path for a French composer. What would have a profound effect on his music was the exposure to Javanese Gamelan music at the Paris World exposition of 1889 (for which the Eifel Tower was built). He was intoxicated by the rhythms and harmonies of the music and was to start a lifelong interest in non Western music.
During this time he developed a friendship with the slightly younger Eric Satie and that bohemian personality rubbed off on the somewhat strait laced Debussy. During this period he composed more Verlaine Songs and also set Five Poems of Baudelaire. Around 1890 he came under the influence of the poet Mallarme who was at the center of the Symbolist movement. The movement felt that the world of dreams and the spirit should be the basis of Art then portraying sordid reality. Debussy under the influence of the movement created his piano piece Suite Bergamsque which contains his most famous piece Clair de Lune (moonlight) in 1890. Soon to follow was his almost equally celebrated Prelude a la apres- midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of the Faun). This nine and half minute piece had a revolutionary effect on music through its use of harmony and orchestration. The next year was to produce his only String Quartet which would abandon traditional sonata form and used harmonies that had been rarely used in modern music to create a delicate filigree of sound that once heard could not be forgotten. Debussy to support himself had become a very competent and witty music critic. He was living at the time with a woman Gaby DuPont who was not of the same social status as Debussy but a loving companion he later abandoned her for another women Rosalie Texter which resulted in Gaby’s unsuccessful suicide attempt. Rosalie in turn would attempt to shoot herself when he left her for a wealthy banker’s wife Emma Bardac in 1905. This second incident with Debussy now a celebrated person caused him considerable embarrassment and possible legal jeopardy and caused him to move to London until the scandal died down. For his all his fastidiousness as an artist he often exhibited a coldness in personal relations. Debussy would close out the Nineteenth Century with the famed Trois Nocturnes pour Orchestra that consists of Nuages (Clouds), Fetes (Festivals) and Sirens.
In 1901 Debussy was to complete what was to become his magnum opus the opera Pelleas et Melisande based on a celebrated symbolist play by the writer Maurice Maeterlinck. This opera that will always remain a piece for connoisseurs than the average operagoer is a dreamlike medieval tale of a younger brother falling in love with the strange mysterious young bride of his brother and the fratricide that result. This very beautiful music drama whose characters barely speak above a whisper in an understanding performance is deeply moving. Around that time he produced the suite Pour le Piano other piano pieces including Mazurka and Danse. Another great work came from Debussy in 1904; a suite for orchestra La Mer (The Sea) comprises three pieces that describe impressions of the sea from its calm to its power with the shifting tide. The miracle of this piece is that it conjures up these scenes through subtle suggestion without blatant mature sounds.
During the third phase of Debussy’s career piano music was to become the core of his output. 1903 saw the set of three piano pieces Estampes that through its use of Gamelan Javanese harmonies especially in the section entitled Pagodas. The following year saw the first set of Images for Piano which conjures up the spirit of the great French composers of the 18th century like. Couperin. Debussy was to compose a masterful set of three orchestral Images that would take five years to complete it consists of Gigues, the by far largest piece Iberia and Rondo des Printemps (Dance of Spring). The two shorter pieces are extraordinary but not very accessible but Iberia a marvelous evocation of Spain has always been a favorite. He also completed a second set of Images for Piano in 1908 along with other short piano pieces.
Debussy and his wife Emma had a daughter in 1906 Emma nicknamed Chou-chou who seems to have been the only person Debussy unreservedly loved. He dedicated to Emma his entrancing Children’s Corner Suite which even has a ragtime inspired piece Goliwog’s Cakewalk. Debussy’s music after 1910 becomes starker and less enveloped in ethereal sound. A transitional work is First set of Piano Preludes that include the favorites the Engulfed Cathedral and the Girl with the Flaxen Hair. Debussy was to have on one last fling at the exotic when he wrote music for a theatre piece The Martyrdom of San Sebastian by the Italian poet and political revolutionary Gabriele D’Annuzio. This somewhat morbid play does have about twenty five minutes of very potent music from Debussy that shows he had not completely thrown off the influence of Wagner’s Parsifal. Debussy wrote a Second set of Preludes which are quite experimental in nature with some extraordinary titles an example of which is General Lavine-eccentric. Debussy also wrote a short ballet for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe Jeux (Games). France and Germany went to war in 1914 after the swift collapse of Belgium Paris itself was threatened. Debussy was a fervent patriot and was inspired to write a piece in solidarity with the Belgian people Bercuese Heorique for piano. During the war years he felt strongly enough about the fate of France that he signed his correspondence Claude Musician Francais. Debussy in 1915 developed colon cancer and was surgically treated though the case was felt to be eventually terminal.
He wrote a brilliant set of Etudes for piano in 1915 along with some superb music for 4 hand piano. He was to write three enigmatic Sonatas one for Flute, Viola and Harp, a Cello Sonata and finally a Violin Sonata in 1917. Debussy was to die on March 25th 1918 while Paris was under bombardment form the Germans. A tragic postscript was that his beloved daughter Chou-chou was only to survive him by a year and was to succumb to diphtheria in 1919.
Debussy besides being a great composer was one of the great influences in the course of Twentieth Century music. His influence was felt in the music of Stravinsky, Ravel, Szymanowski, Bartok, Boulez, and Takemitsu through the American minimalists. He was had a strong influence on Jazz artists such as Eliington, Monk and Bill Evans. Debussy’s aesthetic which encompassed the techniques of music from many cultures including Asian and African had no real precedent in Western Art Music. The world of sound he created whether from a piano or orchestra was unique and revolutionary. With all this powerful intellectual armor his music through the sheer beauty of its sound can appeal to the musical neophyte as well as the erudite. Some of the finest musicians of the last century such as the pianists, Cortot, Geiseking, Michelangeli, Arrau and conductors Toscanini, Monteux, Ansermet, Munch, Cantelli and Boulez have made imperishable recordings of his work.