(Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born to a family of modest means and little cultural involvement, Debussy showed enough musical talent to be admitted at the age of ten to France's leading music college, the

Conservatoire de Paris The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...

. He originally studied the piano, but found his vocation in innovative composition, despite the disapproval of the Conservatoire's conservative professors. He took many years to develop his mature style, and was nearly 40 when he achieved international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completed, '' Pelléas et Mélisande''. Debussy's orchestral works include ''

Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' ( L. 86), known in English as ''Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun'', is a symphonic poem for orchestra by Claude Debussy, approximately 10 minutes in duration. It was composed in 1894 and first performed ...

'' (1894), ''

Nocturnes A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night. History The term ''nocturne'' (from French ''nocturne'' 'of the night') was first applied to musical pieces in the 18th century, when it indicated an ensembl ...

'' (1897–1899) and ''

Images An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...

'' (1905–1912). His music was to a considerable extent a reaction against

Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

and the German musical tradition. He regarded the classical symphony as obsolete and sought an alternative in his "symphonic sketches", '' La mer'' (1903–1905). His piano works include sets of 24 Préludes and 12 Études. Throughout his career he wrote ''

mélodie A ''mélodie'' () is a form of French art song, arising in the mid-19th century. It is comparable to the German ''Lied''. A ''chanson'', by contrast, is a folk or popular French song. The literal meaning of the word in the French language is "melod ...

s'' based on a wide variety of poetry, including his own. He was greatly influenced by the Symbolist poetic movement of the later 19th century. A small number of works, including the early ''

La Damoiselle élue ''La Damoiselle élue'' (''The Blessed Damozel''), L. 62, is a cantata for soprano soloist, 2-part children's choir, 2-part female (contralto) choir (with contralto solo), and orchestra, composed by Claude Debussy in 1887–1888 based on a text b ...

'' and the late ''

Le Martyre de saint Sébastien ''Le Martyre de saint Sébastien'' is a five-act musical mystery play on the subject of Saint Sebastian, with a text written in 1911 by the Italian author Gabriele D'Annunzio and incidental music by the French composer Claude Debussy (L.124). B ...

'' have important parts for chorus. In his final years, he focused on chamber music, completing three of six planned sonatas for different combinations of instruments. With early influences including Russian and Far Eastern music, Debussy developed his own style of harmony and orchestral colouring, derided – and unsuccessfully resisted – by much of the musical establishment of the day. His works have strongly influenced a wide range of composers including Béla Bartók, Olivier Messiaen, George Benjamin, and the jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans. Debussy died from

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

at his home in Paris at the age of 55 after a composing career of a little more than 30 years.

Life and career

Early life

Debussy was born on 22 August 1862 in

Saint-Germain-en-Laye Saint-Germain-en-Laye () is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, from the centre of Paris. Inhabitants are called ''Saint-Germanois'' or ''Saint-Ge ...

Seine-et-Oise Seine-et-Oise () was the former department of France encompassing the western, northern and southern parts of the metropolitan area of Paris.Clichy, and, from 1868, in their own apartment in the

Rue Saint-Honoré The rue Saint-Honoré is a street in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. It is named after the collegial situated in ancient times within the cloisters of Saint-Honoré. The street, on which are located a number of museums and upscale bou ...

. Manuel worked in a printing factory."Formative Years"
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140926042121/http://www.debussy.fr/encd/bio/bio1_62-82.php , date=26 September 2014 , Centre de documentation Claude Debussy, Bibliothèque nationale de France, retrieved 18 April 2018 In 1870, to escape the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, Debussy's pregnant mother took him and his sister Adèle to their paternal aunt's home in

Cannes Cannes ( , , ; oc, Canas) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. T ...

, where they remained until the following year. During his stay in Cannes, the seven-year-old Debussy had his first piano lessons; his aunt paid for him to study with an Italian musician, Jean Cerutti. Manuel Debussy remained in Paris and joined the forces of the

Commune A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to: Administrative-territorial entities * Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township ** Communes of ...

; after its defeat by French government troops in 1871 he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, of which he only served one year. His fellow Communard prisoners included his friend Charles de Sivry, a musician. Sivry's mother, Antoinette Mauté de Fleurville, gave piano lessons, and at his instigation the young Debussy became one of her pupils.{{refn, Biographers of Debussy, including Edward Lockspeiser, Stephen Walsh and Eric Frederick Jensen, comment that although Antoinette Mauté de Fleurville was a woman of some affectations, with the assumed manner of a grande dame, she was a fine teacher. She claimed to have studied with Chopin, and although many of Debussy's biographers have been sceptical about this, her artistic prowess was vouched for not only by Debussy, but by her son-in-law,

Paul Verlaine Paul-Marie Verlaine (; ; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the '' fin de siècle'' in international and ...

., group= n Debussy's talents soon became evident, and in 1872, aged ten, he was admitted to the

, where he remained a student for the next eleven years. He first joined the piano class of

Antoine François Marmontel Antoine François Marmontel () (18 July 1816 – 16 January 1898) was a French pianist, composer, teacher and musicographer. He is mainly known today as an influential teacher at the Paris Conservatory, where he taught many musicians who became ...

, and studied

solfège In music, solfège (, ) or solfeggio (; ), also called sol-fa, solfa, solfeo, among many names, is a music education method used to teach aural skills, pitch and sight-reading of Western music. Solfège is a form of solmization, though the tw ...

with

Albert Lavignac Alexandre Jean Albert Lavignac (21 January 1846 – 28 May 1916) was a French music scholar, known for his essays on theory, and a minor composer. Biography Lavignac was born in Paris and studied with Antoine François Marmontel, François Benoi ...

and, later, composition with

Ernest Guiraud Ernest is a given name derived from Germanic word ''ernst'', meaning "serious". Notable people and fictional characters with the name include: People *Archduke Ernest of Austria (1553–1595), son of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor *Ernest, M ...

, harmony with

Émile Durand Émile Durand (; 16 February 18307 May 1903) was a French musical theorist, teacher and composer. He was better known for his theoretical writings than for his compositions. Biography Émile Durand was born in 1830, at Saint-Brieuc, Côtes-d' ...

, and organ with

César Franck César-Auguste Jean-Guillaume Hubert Franck (; 10 December 1822 – 8 November 1890) was a French Romantic composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher born in modern-day Belgium. He was born in Liège (which at the time of his birth was pa ...

.Prod'homme, J. G
Claude Achille Debussy
''The Musical Quarterly'', October 1918, p. 556 {{subscription The course included music history and theory studies with

Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray (2 February 1840 – 4 July 1910) was a French Breton composer, pianist, and professor of music history/theory at the Conservatoire de Paris as well as a Prix de Rome laureate. He was born at Nantes and died at ...

, but it is not certain that Debussy, who was apt to skip classes, actually attended these. At the Conservatoire, Debussy initially made good progress. Marmontel said of him "A charming child, a truly artistic temperament; much can be expected of him". Another teacher was less impressed: Émile Durand wrote in a report "Debussy would be an excellent pupil if he were less sketchy and less cavalier." A year later he described Debussy as "desperately careless". In July 1874 Debussy received the award of ''deuxième accessit''{{refn, That is, fourth prize, after the ''premier accessit'', the runner-up (''second prix'') and the winner (''premier prix'')., group= n for his performance as soloist in the first movement of Chopin's Second Piano Concerto at the Conservatoire's annual competition. He was a fine pianist and an outstanding sight reader, who could have had a professional career had he wished, but he was only intermittently diligent in his studies. He advanced to ''premier accessit'' in 1875 and second prize in 1877, but failed at the competitions in 1878 and 1879. These failures made him ineligible to continue in the Conservatoire's piano classes, but he remained a student for harmony, solfège and, later, composition. With Marmontel's help Debussy secured a summer vacation job in 1879 as resident pianist at the Château de Chenonceau, where he rapidly acquired a taste for luxury that was to remain with him all his life. His first compositions date from this period, two settings of poems by Alfred de Musset: "Ballade à la lune" and "Madrid, princesse des Espagnes". The following year he secured a job as pianist in the household of

Nadezhda von Meck Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck (russian: Надежда Филаретовна фон Мекк; 13 January 1894) was a Russian businesswoman who became an influential patron of the arts, especially music. She is best known today for her artistic ...

, the patroness of

Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...

. He travelled with her family for the summers of 1880 to 1882, staying at various places in France, Switzerland and Italy, as well as at her home in Moscow. He composed his Piano Trio in G major for von Meck's ensemble, and made a transcription for piano duet of three dances from Tchaikovsky's '' Swan Lake''.{{refn, In September 1880 von Meck sent the manuscript of Debussy's ''Danse bohémienne'' for Tchaikovsky's perusal; a month later Tchaikovsky wrote back, mildly complimenting the work but remarking on its slightness and brevity. Debussy did not publish it, and the manuscript remained in the von Meck family and was not published until 1932.Andres, Robert
"An introduction to the solo piano music of Debussy and Ravel"
{{webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170406130044/http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classical/raveldebussy/recital1.shtml , date=6 April 2017 , BBC, retrieved 15 May 2018, group= n

Prix de Rome

At the end of 1880 Debussy, while continuing in his studies at the Conservatoire, was engaged as accompanist for Marie Moreau-Sainti's singing class; he took this role for four years. Among the members of the class was Marie Vasnier; Debussy was greatly taken with her, and she inspired him to compose: he wrote 27 songs dedicated to her during their seven-year relationship. She was the wife of Henri Vasnier, a prominent civil servant, and much younger than her husband. She soon became Debussy's lover as well as his muse. Whether Vasnier was content to tolerate his wife's affair with the young student or was simply unaware of it is not clear, but he and Debussy remained on excellent terms, and he continued to encourage the composer in his career. At the Conservatoire, Debussy incurred the disapproval of the faculty, particularly his composition teacher, Guiraud, for his failure to follow the orthodox rules of composition then prevailing.{{refn, The director of the Conservatoire,

Ambroise Thomas Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas (; 5 August 1811 – 12 February 1896) was a French composer and teacher, best known for his operas '' Mignon'' (1866) and ''Hamlet'' (1868). Born into a musical family, Thomas was a student at the Conservatoire de ...

, was a deeply conservative musician, as were most of his faculty. It was not until Gabriel Fauré became director in 1905 that modern music such as Debussy's or even Wagner's was accepted within the Conservatoire., group= n Nevertheless, in 1884 Debussy won France's most prestigious musical award, the

Prix de Rome The Prix de Rome () or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them t ...

, with his cantata '' L'enfant prodigue''. The Prix carried with it a residence at the

Villa Medici The Villa Medici () is a Mannerist villa and an architectural complex with a garden contiguous with the larger Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in Rome, Italy. The Villa Medici, founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, ...

, the

French Academy in Rome The French Academy in Rome (french: Académie de France à Rome) is an Academy located in the Villa Medici, within the Villa Borghese, on the Pincio (Pincian Hill) in Rome, Italy. History The Academy was founded at the Palazzo Capranica in ...

, to further the winner's studies. Debussy was there from January 1885 to March 1887, with three or possibly four absences of several weeks when he returned to France, chiefly to see Marie Vasnier."Prix de Rome"
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171016090958/http://www.debussy.fr/encd/bio/bio2_83-87.php , date=16 October 2017 , Centre de documentation Claude Debussy, Bibliothèque nationale de France, retrieved 16 March 2018 Initially Debussy found the artistic atmosphere of the Villa Medici stifling, the company boorish, the food bad, and the accommodation "abominable". Neither did he delight in Italian opera, as he found the operas of

Donizetti Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (29 November 1797 – 8 April 1848) was an Italian composer, best known for his almost 70 operas. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, he was a leading composer of the ''bel canto'' opera style duri ...

and

Verdi Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the h ...

not to his taste. He was much more impressed by the music of the 16th-century composers

Palestrina Palestrina (ancient ''Praeneste''; grc, Πραίνεστος, ''Prainestos'') is a modern Italian city and ''comune'' (municipality) with a population of about 22,000, in Lazio, about east of Rome. It is connected to the latter by the Via Pre ...

and

Lassus Orlande de Lassus ( various other names; probably – 14 June 1594) was a composer of the late Renaissance. The chief representative of the mature polyphonic style in the Franco-Flemish school, Lassus stands with Giovanni Pierluigi da Pales ...

, which he heard at

Santa Maria dell'Anima , native_name= , image=Santa Maria del Anima I.jpg , caption=Façade of the church. , mapframe=yes , mapframe-caption=Click on the map for a fullscreen view , mapframe-zoom=12 , mapframe-marker=religious-christian , coordinates= , location=Via di ...

: "The only church music I will accept". He was often depressed and unable to compose, but he was inspired by Franz Liszt, who visited the students and played for them. In June 1885, Debussy wrote of his desire to follow his own way, saying, "I am sure the Institute 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 enamoured of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas!" Debussy finally composed four pieces that were submitted to the Academy: the symphonic ode ''Zuleima'' (based on a text by Heinrich Heine); the orchestral piece ''Printemps''; the cantata ''

'' (1887–1888), the first piece in which the stylistic features of his later music began to emerge; and the ''Fantaisie'' for piano and orchestra, which was heavily based on Franck's music and was eventually withdrawn by Debussy. The Academy chided him for writing music that was "bizarre, incomprehensible and unperformable". Although Debussy's works showed the influence of Jules Massenet, the latter concluded, "He is an enigma". During his years in Rome Debussy composed – not for the Academy – most of his

Verlaine Verlaine (; wa, Verlinne) is a municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Liège, Belgium. On January 1, 2006, Verlaine had a total population of 3,507. The total area is 24.21 km2 which gives a population density Population d ...

cycle, ''

Ariettes oubliées ''Ariettes oubliées'' (''Forgotten Songs'') is a song cycle for voice and piano, L. 60 by Claude Debussy, based on poems by Paul Verlaine.Pehlivanian, Elisabeth Zachary. “‘Ariettes Oubliees’: A Sonorous Symbolism.” California State Univ ...

'', which made little impact at the time but was successfully republished in 1903 after the composer had become well known.

Return to Paris, 1887

A week after his return to Paris in 1887, Debussy heard the first act of Wagner's ''

Tristan und Isolde ''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was comp ...

'' at the

Concerts Lamoureux The Orchestre Lamoureux () officially known as the Société des Nouveaux-Concerts and also known as the Concerts Lamoureux) is an orchestral concert society which once gave weekly concerts by its own orchestra, founded in Paris by Charles Lamoureu ...

, and judged it "decidedly the finest thing I know". In 1888 and 1889 he went to the annual festivals of Wagner's operas at Bayreuth. He responded positively to Wagner's sensuousness, mastery of form, and striking harmonies, and was briefly influenced by them, but, unlike some other French composers of his generation, he concluded that there was no future in attempting to adopt and develop Wagner's style. He commented in 1903 that Wagner was "a beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn". COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Gamelanorkest TMnr 60043216

COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Gamelanorkest TMnr 60043216

In 1889, at the

Paris Exposition Universelle The Exposition Universelle of 1889 () was a world's fair held in Paris, France, from 5 May to 31 October 1889. It was the fourth of eight expositions held in the city between 1855 and 1937. It attracted more than thirty-two million visitors. The ...

, Debussy first heard

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

nese

gamelan Gamelan () ( jv, ꦒꦩꦼꦭꦤ꧀, su, ᮌᮙᮨᮜᮔ᮪, ban, ᬕᬫᭂᬮᬦ᭄) is the traditional ensemble music of the Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese peoples of Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussive instruments. T ...

music. The gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, and ensemble textures appealed to him, and echoes of them are heard in "Pagodes" in his piano suite ''

Estampes ''Estampes'' ("Prints"), L.100, is a composition for solo piano by Claude Debussy. It was finished in 1903. The first performance of the work was given by Ricardo Viñes at the Société Nationale de Musique in Paris. This three-movement pian ...

''. He also attended two concerts of

Rimsky-Korsakov Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov . At the time, his name was spelled Николай Андреевичъ Римскій-Корсаковъ. la, Nicolaus Andreae filius Rimskij-Korsakov. The composer romanized his name as ''Nicolas Rimsk ...

's music, conducted by the composer. This too made an impression on him, and its harmonic freedom and non-Teutonic tone colours influenced his own developing musical style.{{refn, Debussy's regard for Rimsky-Korsakov's music was not reciprocated. After hearing ''Estampes'' a decade later, Rimsky wrote in his diary, "Poor and skimpy to the nth degree; there is no technique; even less imagination. The impudent decadent – he ignores all music that has gone before him, and ... thinks he has discovered America.", group= n Marie Vasnier ended her liaison with Debussy soon after his final return from Rome, although they remained on good enough terms for him to dedicate to her one more song, "Mandoline", in 1890. Later in 1890 Debussy met Erik Satie, who proved a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to composition. Both were bohemians, enjoying the same café society and struggling to survive financially. In the same year Debussy began a relationship with Gabrielle (Gaby) Dupont, a tailor's daughter from

Lisieux Lisieux () is a commune in the Calvados department in the Normandy region in northwestern France. It is the capital of the Pays d'Auge area, which is characterised by valleys and hedged farmland. Name The name of the town derives from the ...

; in July 1893 they began living together."The Bohemian period"
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171117105258/http://www.debussy.fr/encd/bio/bio3_88-93.php , date=17 November 2017 , Centre de documentation Claude Debussy, Bibliothèque nationale de France, retrieved 16 May 2018 Debussy continued to compose songs, piano pieces and other works, some of which were publicly performed, but his music made only a modest impact, although his fellow composers recognised his potential by electing him to the committee of the

Société Nationale de Musique Lactalis is a French multinational dairy products corporation, owned by the Besnier family and based in Laval, Mayenne, France. The company's former name was Besnier SA. Lactalis is the largest dairy products group in the world, and is the sec ...

in 1893. His String Quartet was premiered by the Ysaÿe string quartet at the Société Nationale in the same year. In May 1893 Debussy attended a theatrical event that was of key importance to his later career – the premiere of

Maurice Maeterlinck Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949), also known as Count (or Comte) Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in ...

's play '' Pelléas et Mélisande'', which he immediately determined to turn into an opera. He travelled to Maeterlinck's home in

Ghent Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded i ...

in November to secure his consent to an operatic adaptation.

1894–1902: ''Pelléas et Mélisande''

In February 1894 Debussy completed the first draft of Act I of his operatic version of ''Pelléas et Mélisande'', and for most of the year worked to complete the work. While still living with Dupont, he had an affair with the singer Thérèse Roger, and in 1894 he announced their engagement. His behaviour was widely condemned; anonymous letters circulated denouncing his treatment of both women, as well as his financial irresponsibility and debts."From L'aprés-midi d'un faune to Pelléas"
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171117105321/http://www.debussy.fr/encd/bio/bio4_94-02.php , date=17 November 2017 , Centre de documentation Claude Debussy, Bibliothèque nationale de France, retrieved 18 May 2018 The engagement was broken off, and several of Debussy's friends and supporters disowned him, including

Ernest Chausson Amédée-Ernest Chausson (; 20 January 1855 – 10 June 1899) was a French Romantic composer who died just as his career was beginning to flourish. Life Born in Paris into an affluent bourgeois family, Chausson was the sole surviving child of ...

, hitherto one of his strongest supporters. In terms of musical recognition, Debussy made a step forward in December 1894, when the symphonic poem ''

'', based on Stéphane Mallarmé's poem, was premiered at a concert of the Société Nationale. The following year he completed the first draft of ''Pelléas'' and began efforts to get it staged. In May 1898 he made his first contacts with

André Messager André Charles Prosper Messager (; 30 December 1853 – 24 February 1929) was a French composer, organist, pianist and conductor. His compositions include eight ballets and thirty opéra comique, opéras comiques, opérettes and other stage wo ...

and

Albert Carré Albert Carré (born Strasbourg 22 June 1852, died Paris 12 December 1938) was a French theatre director, opera director, actor and librettist. He was the nephew of librettist Michel Carré (1821–1872) and cousin of cinema director Michel Carré ...

, respectively the musical director and general manager of the Opéra-Comique, Paris, about presenting the opera. Debussy abandoned Dupont for her friend Marie-Rosalie Texier, known as "Lilly", whom he married in October 1899, after threatening suicide if she refused him. She was affectionate, practical, straightforward, and well liked by Debussy's friends and associates, but he became increasingly irritated by her intellectual limitations and lack of musical sensitivity.Orledge, p. 4 The marriage lasted barely five years."The Consecration"
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170630195833/http://www.debussy.fr/encd/bio/bio5_03-09.php , date=30 June 2017 , Centre de documentation Claude Debussy, Bibliothèque nationale de France, retrieved 18 May 2018 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. They called themselves '' Les Apaches'' – roughly "The Hooligans" – to represent their status as "artistic outcasts" The membership was fluid, but at various times included Maurice Ravel,

Ricardo Viñes Ricardo Viñes y Roda (, ca, Ricard Viñes i Roda, ; 5 February 1875 – 29 April 1943) was a Spanish pianist. He gave the premieres of works by Ravel, Debussy, Satie, Falla and Albéniz. He was the piano teacher of the composer Francis Pou ...

, Igor Stravinsky and

Manuel de Falla Manuel de Falla y Matheu (, 23 November 187614 November 1946) was an Andalusian Spanish composer and pianist. Along with Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first ...

.{{#tag:ref, Other members were the composers

Florent Schmitt Florent Schmitt (; 28 September 187017 August 1958) was a French composer. He was part of the group known as Les Apaches. His most famous pieces are ''La tragédie de Salome'' and ''Psaume XLVII'' (Psalm 47). He has been described as "one of th ...

Maurice Delage Maurice Charles Delage (13 November 1879 – 19 or 21 September 1961) was a French composer and pianist. Biography Delage was born and died in Paris. He first worked as a clerk for a maritime agency in Paris, and later as a fishmonger in Boul ...

and

Paul Ladmirault Paul Émile Ladmirault (8 December 1877 – 30 October 1944) was a French composer and music critic whose music expressed his devotion to Brittany. Claude Debussy wrote that his work possessed a "fine dreamy musicality", commenting on its cha ...

, the poets Léon-Paul Fargue and

Tristan Klingsor Tristan Klingsor, birth name (Arthur Justin) Léon Leclère (born Lachapelle-aux-Pots, Oise department, 8 August 1874; died Nogent-sur-Marne, 3 August 1966), was a French poet, musician, painter and art critic, best known for his artistic associat ...

, the painter

Paul Sordes Paul Sordes (9 February 1877 – 20 May 1937) was a French painter from Paris and set designer who was an original member of '' Les Apaches'', a group of artists in early 20th-century Paris whose most famous member was Maurice Ravel. It was at So ...

and the critic Michel Calvocoressi., group= n In the same year the first two of Debussy's three orchestral ''

'' were first performed. Although they did not make any great impact with the public they were well reviewed by musicians including

Paul Dukas Paul Abraham Dukas ( or ; 1 October 1865 – 17 May 1935) was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, having abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions. His b ...

, Alfred Bruneau and

Pierre de Bréville Pierre Eugène Onfroy de Bréville (21 February 1861 – 24 September 1949) was a French composer. Biography Pierre de Bréville was born in Bar-le-Duc, Meuse (department), Meuse. Following the wishes of his parents, he studied law with the goal ...

. The complete set was given the following year. Like many other composers of the time, Debussy supplemented his income by teaching and writing.{{refn, Saint-Saëns, Franck, Massenet, Fauré and Ravel were all known as teachers, and Fauré, Messager and Dukas were regular music critics for Parisian journals., group= n For most of 1901 he had a sideline as music critic of ''

La Revue Blanche ''La Revue blanche'' was a French art and literary magazine run between 1889 and 1903. Some of the greatest writers and artists of the time were its collaborators. History The ''Revue blanche'' was founded in Liège in 1889 and run by the Natans ...

'', adopting the pen name "Monsieur Croche". He expressed trenchant views on composers ("I hate sentimentality – his name is Camille Saint-Saëns"), institutions (on the Paris Opéra: "A stranger would take it for a railway station, and, once inside, would mistake it for a Turkish bath"), conductors (" Nikisch is a unique virtuoso, so much so that his virtuosity seems to make him forget the claims of good taste"), musical politics ("The English actually think that a musician can manage an opera house successfully!"), and audiences ("their almost drugged expression of boredom, indifference and even stupidity"). He later collected his criticisms with a view to their publication as a book; it was published after his death as ''Monsieur Croche, Antidilettante''. In January 1902 rehearsals began at the Opéra-Comique for the opening of ''Pelléas et Mélisande''. For three months, Debussy attended rehearsals practically every day. In February there was conflict between Maeterlinck on the one hand and Debussy, Messager and Carré on the other about the casting of Mélisande. Maeterlinck wanted his mistress,

Georgette Leblanc Georgette Leblanc (8 February 1869, Rouen – 27 October 1941, Le Cannet) was a French operatic soprano, actress, author, and the sister of novelist Maurice Leblanc. She became particularly associated with the works of Jules Massenet and w ...

, to sing the role, and was incensed when she was passed over in favour of the Scottish soprano

Mary Garden A Mary garden is a small sacred garden enclosing a statue or shrine of the Virgin Mary, who is known to many Christians as the Blessed Virgin, Our Lady, or the Mother of God. In the New Testament, Mary is the mother of Jesus of Nazareth. Mary ...

.Schonberg, Harold C
"Maeterlinck's Mistress Assumed She Was Going to Sing Melisande. But ..."
{{webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180520123924/https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/15/archives/maeterlincks-mistress-assumed-she-was-going-to-sing-melisande-but.html , date=20 May 2018 , ''The New York Times'', 15 March 1970, p. 111{{refn, Mary Garden was Messager's mistress at the time, but as far as is known she was chosen for wholly musical and dramatic reasons. She is described in the '' Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' as "a supreme singing-actress, with uncommonly vivid powers of characterization ... and a rare subtlety of colour and phrasing.", group= n The opera opened on 30 April 1902, and although the first-night audience was divided between admirers and sceptics, the work quickly became a success. It made Debussy a well-known name in France and abroad; ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' 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 stop its students from seeing the opera. The vocal score was published in early May, and the full orchestral score in 1904.

1903–1918

In 1903 there was public recognition of Debussy's stature when he was appointed a Chevalier of the

Légion d'honneur The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...

, but his social standing suffered a great blow when another turn in his private life caused a scandal the following year. Among his pupils was

Raoul Bardac Raoul Bardac (30 March 1881 – 30 July 1950) was a French classical composer and pianist. Biography Born in Paris in 1881, Bardac was Emma Bardac's son and became Claude Debussy's stepson after the marriage of the latter to his mother. He is the ...

, son of Emma, the wife of a Parisian banker, Sigismond Bardac. Raoul introduced his teacher to his mother, to whom Debussy quickly became greatly attracted. She was a sophisticate, a brilliant conversationalist, an accomplished singer, and relaxed about marital fidelity, having been the mistress and muse of Gabriel Fauré a few years earlier. After despatching Lilly to her parental home at Bichain in Villeneuve-la-Guyard on 15 July 1904, Debussy took Emma away, staying incognito in

Jersey Jersey ( , ; nrf, Jèrri, label= Jèrriais ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey (french: Bailliage de Jersey, links=no; Jèrriais: ), is an island country and self-governing Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west France. It is the l ...

and then at Pourville in Normandy. He wrote to his wife on 11 August from

Dieppe Dieppe (; Norman: ''Dgieppe'') is a coastal commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. Dieppe is a seaport on the English Channel at the mouth of the river Arques. A regular ferry service runs to N ...

, telling her that their marriage was over, but still making no mention of Bardac. When he returned to Paris he set up home on his own, taking a flat in a different

arrondissement An arrondissement (, , ) is any of various administrative divisions of France, Belgium, Haiti, certain other Francophone countries, as well as the Netherlands. Europe France The 101 French departments are divided into 342 ''arrondissements ...

. On 14 October, five days before their fifth wedding anniversary, Lilly Debussy attempted suicide, shooting herself in the chest with a revolver;{{refn, A fictionalised and melodramatic dramatisation of the affair, ''La femme nue'', played in Paris in 1908. A myth grew up that Lilly Debussy shot herself in the Place de la Concorde, rather than at home. That version of events is not corroborated by Debussy scholars such as Marcel Dietschy, Roger Nichols,

Robert Orledge Robert Orledge (born 5 January 1948) is a British musicologist, and a professor emeritus of the University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 ...

and Nigel Simeone; and no mention of the Place de la Concorde appeared in even the most sensational press coverage at the time. Another inaccurate report of the case, in ''

Le Figaro ''Le Figaro'' () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It is headquartered on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The oldest national newspaper in France, ''Le Figaro'' is one of three French newspapers of r ...

'' in early January 1905, stated that Lilly had made a second attempt at suicide.Jensen, p. 85, group= n she survived, although the bullet remained lodged in her

vertebra The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates, Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristi ...

e for the rest of her life. The ensuing scandal caused Bardac's family to disown her, and Debussy lost many good friends including Dukas and Messager. His relations with Ravel, never close, were exacerbated when the latter joined other former friends of Debussy in contributing to a fund to support the deserted Lilly. The Bardacs divorced in May 1905. Finding the hostility in Paris intolerable, Debussy and Emma (now pregnant) went to England. They stayed at the

Grand Hotel, Eastbourne The Grand Hotel is a Victorian hotel, also known as the 'White Palace', located on King Edwards Parade, Eastbourne in East Sussex, England. The 5 star hotel is part of an independent UK based hotel group, Elite Hotels, who also own Tylney Hal ...

in July and August, where Debussy corrected the proofs of his symphonic sketches'' La mer'', celebrating his divorce on 2 August. After a brief visit to London, the couple returned to Paris in September, buying a house in a courtyard development off the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne (now

Avenue Foch Avenue Foch () is an avenue in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France, named after World War I Marshal Ferdinand Foch in 1929. It is one of the most prestigious streets in Paris, and one of the most expensive addresses in the world, home to ...

), Debussy's home for the rest of his life. Debussy's house, Sq

In October 1905 ''La mer'', Debussy's most substantial orchestral work, was premiered in Paris by the

Orchestre Lamoureux The Orchestre Lamoureux () officially known as the Société des Nouveaux-Concerts and also known as the Concerts Lamoureux) is an orchestral concert society which once gave weekly concerts by its own orchestra, founded in Paris by Charles Lamoureu ...

under the direction of

Camille Chevillard Paul Alexandre Camille Chevillard (14 October 1859 – 30 May 1923) was a French composer and conductor. Biography He was born in Paris. He conducted the Orchestre Lamoureux in the premieres of Claude Debussy's '' Nocturnes'' (1900 and 1901) ...

; the reception was mixed. Some praised the work, but

Pierre Lalo Pierre Lalo (6 September 1866– 9 June 1943) was a French music critic and translator. He was the son of the composer Edouard Lalo. His reviews for the Parisian paper ''Le Temps'' combined conservatism and wit; among his principal targets was the ...

, critic of ''

Le Temps ''Le Temps'' ( literally "The Time") is a Swiss French-language daily newspaper published in Berliner format in Geneva by Le Temps SA. It is the sole nationwide French-language non-specialised daily newspaper of Switzerland. Since 2021, it has ...

'', hitherto an admirer of Debussy, wrote, "I do not hear, I do not see, I do not smell the sea".Lalo, Pierre. "Music: ''La Mer'' – Suite of three symphonic pictures: its virtues and its faults", ''Le Temps'', 16 October 1905, ''quoted'' in Jensen, p. 206{{refn, Lalo objected to what he felt was the artificiality of the piece: "a reproduction of nature; a wonderfully refined, ingenious and carefully composed reproduction, but a reproduction none the less". Another Parisian critic, Louis Schneider, wrote, "The audience seemed rather disappointed: they expected the ocean, something big, something colossal, but they were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer.", group= n In the same month the composer's only child was born at their home. Claude-Emma, affectionately known as "Chouchou", was a musical inspiration to the composer (she was the dedicatee of his ''

Children's Corner ''Children's Corner'', L. 113, is a six-movement suite for solo piano by Claude Debussy. It was published by Durand in 1908, and was first performed by Harold Bauer in Paris on 18 December that year. In 1911, an orchestration by André Caple ...

'' suite). She outlived her father by scarcely a year, succumbing to the

diphtheria Diphtheria is an infection caused by the bacterium '' Corynebacterium diphtheriae''. Most infections are asymptomatic or have a mild clinical course, but in some outbreaks more than 10% of those diagnosed with the disease may die. Signs and s ...

epidemic of 1919. Mary Garden said, "I honestly don't know if Debussy ever loved anybody really. He loved his music – and perhaps himself. I think he was wrapped up in his genius",Garden and Biancolli, p. 302 but biographers are agreed that whatever his relations with lovers and friends, Debussy was devoted to his daughter. Debussy and Emma Bardac eventually married in 1908, their troubled union enduring for the rest of his life. The following year began well, when at Fauré's invitation, Debussy became a member of the governing council of the Conservatoire. His success in London was consolidated in April 1909, when he conducted ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' and the ''Nocturnes'' at the

Queen's Hall The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect Thomas Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. Fro ...

; in May he was present at the first London production of ''Pelléas et Mélisande'', at Covent Garden. In the same year, Debussy was diagnosed with colorectal cancer, from which he was to die nine years later. Debussy's works began to feature increasingly in concert programmes at home and overseas. In 1910 Gustav Mahler conducted the ''Nocturnes'' and ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' in New York in successive months."From Préludes to Jeux"
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120628052255/http://www.debussy.fr/encd/bio/bio6_10-14.php , date=28 June 2012 , Centre de documentation Claude Debussy, Bibliothèque nationale de France, retrieved 18 May 2018 In the same year, visiting Budapest, Debussy commented that his works were better known there than in Paris. In 1912

Sergei Diaghilev Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev ( ; rus, Серге́й Па́влович Дя́гилев, , sʲɪˈrɡʲej ˈpavləvʲɪdʑ ˈdʲæɡʲɪlʲɪf; 19 August 1929), usually referred to outside Russia as Serge Diaghilev, was a Russian art critic, pa ...

commissioned a new ballet score, '' Jeux''. That, and the three ''

'', premiered the following year, were the composer's last orchestral works. ''Jeux'' was unfortunate in its timing: two weeks after the premiere, in March 1913, Diaghilev presented the first performance of Stravinsky's ''

The Rite of Spring , image = Roerich Rite of Spring.jpg , image_size = 350px , caption = Concept design for act 1, part of Nicholas Roerich's designs for Diaghilev's 1913 production of ' , composer = Igor Stravinsky , based_on ...

'', a sensational event that monopolised discussion in musical circles, and effectively sidelined ''Jeux'' along with Fauré's ''

Pénélope ''Pénélope'' is an opera in three acts by the French composer Gabriel Fauré. The libretto, by René Fauchois is based on Homer's ''Odyssey''. It was first performed at the Salle Garnier, Monte Carlo on 4 March 1913. The piece is dedicated ...

'', which had opened a week before. Debussy's grave

In 1915 Debussy underwent one of the earliest

colostomy A colostomy is an opening (stoma) in the large intestine (colon), or the surgical procedure that creates one. The opening is formed by drawing the healthy end of the colon through an incision in the anterior abdominal wall and suturing it into ...

operations. It achieved only a temporary respite, and occasioned him considerable frustration ("There are mornings when the effort of dressing seems like one of the twelve labours of Hercules"). He also had a fierce enemy at this period in the form of Camille Saint-Saëns, who in a letter to Fauré condemned Debussy's ''

En blanc et noir ''En blanc et noir'' (; en, "In White and Black"), L. 134, CD. 142, is a suite in three movements for two pianos by Claude Debussy, written in June 1915. He composed the work on the Normandy coast, suffering from cancer and concerned about the in ...

'': "It's incredible, and the door of the Institut

e France E, or e, is the fifth letter and the second vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''e'' (pronounced ); plur ...

must at all costs be barred against a man capable of such atrocities". Saint-Saëns had been a member of the Institut since 1881: Debussy never became one. His health continued to decline; he gave his final concert (the premiere of his Violin Sonata) on 14 September 1917 and became bedridden in early 1918."War and Illness"
Centre de documentation Claude Debussy, Bibliothèque nationale de France, retrieved 18 May 2018 Debussy died on 25 March 1918 at his home. The

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

was still raging and Paris was under German aerial and artillery bombardment. The military situation did not permit the honour of a public funeral with ceremonious graveside orations. The funeral procession made its way through deserted streets to a temporary grave at

Père Lachaise Cemetery Père Lachaise Cemetery (french: Cimetière du Père-Lachaise ; formerly , "East Cemetery") is the largest cemetery in Paris, France (). With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Notable figure ...

as the German guns bombarded the city. Debussy's body was reinterred the following year in the small

Passy Cemetery Passy Cemetery (french: Cimetière de Passy) is a small cemetery in Passy, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France. History The current cemetery replaced the old cemetery (''l'ancien cimetière communal de Passy'', located on Rue Lekain), ...

sequestered behind the

Trocadéro The Trocadéro (), site of the Palais de Chaillot, is an area of Paris, France, in the 16th arrondissement, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. It is also the name of the 1878 palace which was demolished in 1937 to make way for the Palai ...

, fulfilling his wish to rest "among the trees and the birds"; his wife and daughter are buried with him.

Works

{{see also, List of compositions by Claude Debussy In a survey of Debussy's oeuvre shortly after the composer's death, the critic

Ernest Newman Ernest Newman (30 November 1868 – 7 July 1959) was an English music critic and musicologist. ''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' describes him as "the most celebrated British music critic in the first half of the 20th century." His ...

wrote, "It would be hardly too much to say that Debussy spent a third of his life in the discovery of himself, a third in the free and happy realisation of himself, and the final third in the partial, painful loss of himself".Newman, Ernest
"The Development of Debussy"
''The Musical Times'', May 1918, pp. 119–203 {{subscription Later commentators have rated some of the late works more highly than Newman and other contemporaries did, but much of the music for which Debussy is best known is from the middle years of his career. The analyst David Cox wrote in 1974 that Debussy, admiring Wagner's attempts to combine all the creative arts, "created a new, instinctive, dreamlike world of music, lyrical and pantheistic, contemplative and objective – a kind of art, in fact, which seemed to reach out into all aspects of experience". In 1988 the composer and scholar

Wilfrid Mellers Wilfrid Howard Mellers (26 April 1914 – 17 May 2008) was an English music critic, musicologist and composer. Early life Born in Leamington, Warwickshire, Mellers was educated at the local Leamington College and later won a scholarship to Dow ...

wrote of Debussy: {{blockquote, Because of, rather than in spite of, his preoccupation with chords in themselves, he deprived music of the sense of harmonic progression, broke down three centuries' dominance of harmonic tonality, and showed how the melodic conceptions of tonality typical of primitive folk-music and of medieval music might be relevant to the twentieth century"} Debussy did not give his works

opus number In musicology, the opus number is the "work number" that is assigned to a musical composition, or to a set of compositions, to indicate the chronological order of the composer's production. Opus numbers are used to distinguish among composit ...

s, apart from his String Quartet, Op. 10 in G minor (also the only work where the composer's title included a key). His works were catalogued and indexed by the musicologist

François Lesure François Lesure (23 May 1923 in Paris – 21 June 2001) was a French librarian and musicologist. Biography François Lesure studied at the Sorbonne, the École nationale des chartes (graduated in 1950), the École pratique des hautes étude ...

in 1977 (revised in 2003) and their Lesure number ("L" followed by a number) is sometimes used as a suffix to their title in concert programmes and recordings.

Early works, 1879–1892

{{Listen, type=music, filename=Clair de lune (Claude Debussy) Suite bergamasque.ogg, title=''Clair de Lune'' (5:04), description=Composed in 1890, performed by Laurens Goedhart in 2011, , filename2=Claude_Debussy_-_Première_Arabesque_-_Patrizia_Prati.ogg, title2=''Première Arabesque'' (4:53), filename3=Claude_Debussy_-_Deuxième_Arabesque_-_Patrizia_Prati.ogg, title3=''Deuxième Arabesque'' (4:00), description3=Both

arabesques The arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, often combined with other elements. Another definition is "Foli ...

performed in 2016 by Patrizia Prati Debussy's musical development was slow, and as a student he was adept enough to produce for his teachers at the Conservatoire works that would conform to their conservative precepts. His friend Georges Jean-Aubry commented that Debussy "admirably imitated Massenet's melodic turns of phrase" in the cantata '' L'enfant prodigue'' (1884) which won him the Prix de Rome. A more characteristically Debussian work from his early years is ''

'', recasting the traditional form for

oratorio An oratorio () is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is ...

s and cantatas, using a chamber orchestra and a small body of choral tone and using new or long-neglected scales and harmonies.Jean-Aubry, Georges. (trans. Frederick H. Martens)
"Claude Debussy"
''The Musical Quarterly'', October 1918, pp. 542–554 {{subscription His early ''

s'', inspired by Marie Vasnier, are more virtuosic in character than his later works in the genre, with extensive wordless ''

vocalise A vocal warm-up is a series of exercises meant to prepare the voice for singing, acting, or other use. There is very little scientific data about the benefits of vocal warm-ups. Relatively few studies have researched the effects of thesexercis ...

''; from the ''

'' (1885–1887) onwards he developed a more restrained style. He wrote his own poems for the ''Proses lyriques'' (1892–1893) but, in the view of the musical scholar

, "his literary talents were not on a par with his musical imagination".Orledge, Robert
"Debussy, (Achille-)Claude"
''The Oxford Companion to Music'', Oxford University Press, 2011, retrieved 21 May 2018 {{subscription The musicologist Jacques-Gabriel Prod'homme wrote that, together with ''La Demoiselle élue'', the ''Ariettes oubliées'' and the ''

Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire The ''Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire'' ( L 64) constitute a song cycle for voice and piano by Claude Debussy, on poems taken from ''Les Fleurs du mal'' by Charles Baudelaire. Composed from December 1887 to March 1889, these five highly deve ...

'' (1889) show "the new, strange way which the young musician will hereafter follow". Newman concurred: "There is a good deal of Wagner, especially of ''Tristan'', in the idiom. But the work as a whole is distinctive, and the first in which we get a hint of the Debussy we were to know later – the lover of vague outlines, of half-lights, of mysterious consonances and dissonances of colour, the apostle of languor, the exclusivist in thought and in style." During the next few years Debussy developed his personal style, without, at this stage, breaking sharply away from French musical traditions. Much of his music from this period is on a small scale, such as the ''

Two Arabesques The Two Arabesques (''Deux arabesques''), L. 66, is a pair of arabesques composed for piano by Claude Debussy when he was still in his twenties, between the years 1888 and 1891. Although quite an early work, the arabesques contain hints of Debu ...

'', '' Valse romantique'', '' Suite bergamasque'', and the first set of '' Fêtes galantes''. Newman remarked that, like Chopin, the Debussy of this period appears as a liberator from Germanic styles of composition – offering instead "an exquisite, pellucid style" capable of conveying "not only gaiety and whimsicality but emotion of a deeper sort". In a 2004 study, Mark DeVoto comments that Debussy's early works are harmonically no more adventurous than existing music by Fauré; in a 2007 book about the piano works, Margery Halford observes that ''Two Arabesques'' (1888–1891) and "Rêverie" (1890) have "the fluidity and warmth of Debussy's later style" but are not harmonically innovative. Halford cites the popular "Clair de Lune" (1890), the third of the four movements of ''Suite Bergamasque'', as a transitional work pointing towards the composer's mature style.Halford, p. 12

Middle works, 1893–1905

Musicians from Debussy's time onwards have regarded ''

'' (1894) as his first orchestral masterpiece. Newman considered it "completely original in idea, absolutely personal in style, and logical and coherent from first to last, without a superfluous bar or even a superfluous note"; Pierre Boulez observed, "Modern music was awakened by ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune''". Most of the major works for which Debussy is best known were written between the mid-1890s and the mid-1900s. They include the String Quartet (1893), '' Pelléas et Mélisande'' (1893–1902), the '' Nocturnes for Orchestra'' (1899) and '' La mer'' (1903–1905). The suite '' Pour le piano'' (1894–1901) is, in Halford's view, one of the first examples of the mature Debussy as a composer for the piano: "a major landmark ... and an enlargement of the use of piano sonorities". In the String Quartet (1893), the gamelan sonorities Debussy had heard four years earlier are recalled in the

pizzicato Pizzicato (, ; translated as "pinched", and sometimes roughly as "plucked") is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string instrument. The exact technique varies somewhat depending on the type of instrument : * On bowe ...

s and cross-rhythms of the

scherzo A scherzo (, , ; plural scherzos or scherzi), in western classical music, is a short composition – sometimes a movement from a larger work such as a symphony or a sonata. The precise definition has varied over the years, but scherzo often re ...

. Debussy's biographer

Edward Lockspeiser Edward Lockspeiser (21 May 19053 Feb 1973) was an English musicologist, composer, art critic and radio broadcaster on music who specialized in the works and life of French composer Claude Debussy and was considered one of the few British authoriti ...

comments that this movement shows the composer's rejection of "the traditional dictum that string instruments should be predominantly lyrical". The work influenced Ravel, whose own String Quartet, written ten years later, has noticeably Debussian features.Nichols (1977), p. 52 The academic and journalist Stephen Walsh calls ''Pelléas et Mélisande'' (begun 1893, staged 1902) "a key work for the 20th century".Walsh (1997), p. 97 The composer Olivier Messiaen was fascinated by its "extraordinary harmonic qualities and ... transparent instrumental texture". The opera is composed in what

Alan Blyth Geoffrey Alan Blyth (27 July 1929 – 14 August 2007) was an English music critic, author, and musicologist who was particularly known for his writings within the field of opera. He was a specialist on singers and singing. Born in London, Blyth ...

describes as a sustained and heightened

recitative Recitative (, also known by its Italian name "''recitativo''" ()) is a style of delivery (much used in operas, oratorios, and cantatas) in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms and delivery of ordinary speech. Recitative does not repeat ...

style, with "sensuous, intimate" vocal lines. It influenced composers as different as Stravinsky and

Puccini Giacomo Puccini ( Lucca, 22 December 1858Bruxelles, 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer known primarily for his operas. Regarded as the greatest and most successful proponent of Italian opera after Verdi, he was descended from a long ...

. Orledge describes the ''Nocturnes'' as exceptionally varied in texture, "ranging from the Musorgskian start of 'Nuages', through the approaching brass band procession in 'Fêtes', to the wordless female chorus in 'Sirènes{{'". Orledge considers the last a pre-echo of the marine textures of ''La mer''. ''

'' for piano (1903) gives impressions of exotic locations, with further echoes of the gamelan in its

pentatonic A pentatonic scale is a musical scale (music), scale with five Musical note, notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic scale, which has seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale). Pentatonic scales were developed ...

structures. Debussy believed that since Beethoven, the traditional symphonic form had become formulaic, repetitive and obsolete.{{refn, He described the symphonies of Schumann and Mendelssohn as "respectful repetition"Donnellon, p. 49, group= n The three-part, cyclic symphony by César Franck (1888) was more to his liking, and its influence can be found in ''La mer'' (1905); this uses a quasi-symphonic form, its three sections making up a giant

sonata-form Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th c ...

movement with, as Orledge observes, a cyclic theme, in the manner of Franck. The central "Jeux de vagues" section has the function of a symphonic

development section Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th c ...

leading into the final "Dialogue du vent et de la mer", "a powerful essay in orchestral colour and sonority" (Orledge) which reworks themes from the first movement. The reviews were sharply divided. Some critics thought the treatment less subtle and less mysterious than his previous works, and even a step backward; others praised its "power and charm", its "extraordinary verve and brilliant fantasy", and its strong colours and definite lines.

Late works, 1906–1917

Of the later orchestral works, ''

'' (1905–1912) is better known than '' Jeux'' (1913). The former follows the tripartite form established in the ''Nocturnes'' and ''La mer'', but differs in employing traditional British and French folk tunes, and in making the central movement, "Ibéria", far longer than the outer ones, and subdividing it into three parts, all inspired by scenes from Spanish life. 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''.Trezise (2003), p. 250 The latter failed as a ballet because of what Jann Pasler describes as a banal scenario, and the score was neglected for some years. Recent analysts have found it a link between traditional continuity and thematic growth within a score and the desire to create discontinuity in a way mirrored in later 20th century music.Pasler, Jann
"Debussy, ''Jeux'': Playing with Time and Form"
''19th-Century Music'', Summer 1982, pp. 60–75 {{subscription In this piece, Debussy abandoned the

whole-tone In Western music theory, a major second (sometimes also called whole tone or a whole step) is a second spanning two semitones (). A second is a musical interval encompassing two adjacent staff positions (see Interval number for more det ...

scale he had often favoured previously in favour of the

octatonic scale An octatonic scale is any eight- note musical scale. However, the term most often refers to the symmetric scale composed of alternating whole and half steps, as shown at right. In classical theory (in contrast to jazz theory), this symmetric ...

with what the Debussy scholar

describes as its tonal ambiguities. {{Listen, type=music, header=Pieces from first book of ''Préludes'' (1909–1910), filename=The Girl with the Flaxen Hair.ogg, title= ''La fille aux cheveux de lin'', description=Performed by Mike Ambrose, filename2=La Cathédrale engloutie - Claude Debussy - performed by Ivan Ilic.ogg, title2=''La cathédrale engloutie'', description2=Performed by Ivan Ilic Among the late piano works are two books of '' Préludes'' (1909–10, 1911–13), short pieces that depict a wide range of subjects. Lesure comments that they range from the frolics of minstrels at Eastbourne in 1905 and the American acrobat "General Lavine" "to dead leaves and the sounds and scents of the evening air". ''

'' (In white and black, 1915), a three-movement work for two pianos, is a predominantly sombre piece, reflecting the war and national danger. The '' Études'' (1915) for piano have divided opinion. Writing soon after Debussy's death, Newman found them laboured – "a strange last chapter in a great artist's life"; Lesure, writing eighty years later, rates them among Debussy's greatest late works: "Behind a pedagogic exterior, these 12 pieces explore abstract intervals, or – in the last five – the sonorities and timbres peculiar to the piano." In 1914 Debussy started work on a planned set of

six sonatas for various instruments Claude Debussy's ''Six sonatas for various instruments, composed by Claude Debussy, French musician'' () was a projected cycle of sonatas that was interrupted by the composer's death in 1918, after he had composed only half of the projected sonata ...

. His fatal illness prevented him from completing the set, but those for cello and piano (1915), flute, viola and harp (1915), and violin and piano (1917 – his last completed work) are all concise, three-movement pieces, more diatonic in nature than some of his other late works. ''

'' (1911), originally a five-act musical play to a text by Gabriele D'Annunzio that took nearly five hours in performance, was not a success, and the music is now more often heard in a concert (or studio) adaptation with narrator, or as an orchestral suite of "Fragments symphoniques". Debussy enlisted the help of

André Caplet André Caplet (23 November 1878 – 22 April 1925) was a French composer and conductor of classical music. He was a friend of Claude Debussy and completed the orchestration of several of Debussy's compositions as well as arrangements of sever ...

in orchestrating and arranging the score. Two late stage works, the ballets '' Khamma'' (1912) and '' La boîte à joujoux'' (1913), were left with the orchestration incomplete, and were completed by Charles Koechlin and Caplet, respectively.

Style

Debussy and Impressionism

The application of the term "Impressionist" to Debussy and the music he influenced has been much debated, both during his lifetime and since. The analyst

Richard Langham Smith Richard Langham Smith (born 10 September 1947, Barnes, London) is an English musicologist who has written on Debussy and contemporary French music in general. For his contribution to the latter he was admitted to rank of Chevalier of the Ordre d ...

writes that Impressionism was originally a term coined to describe a style of late 19th-century French painting, typically scenes suffused with reflected light in which the emphasis is on the overall impression rather than outline or clarity of detail, as in works by

Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

Pissarro Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies). H ...

Renoir Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Re ...

and others.Langham Smith, Richard
"Impressionism"
''The Oxford Companion to Music'', Oxford University Press, 2011, retrieved 17 May 2018 {{subscription Langham Smith writes that the term became transferred to the compositions of Debussy and others which were "concerned with the representation of landscape or natural phenomena, particularly the water and light imagery dear to Impressionists, through subtle textures suffused with instrumental colour". Among painters, Debussy particularly admired

Turner Turner may refer to: People and fictional characters *Turner (surname), a common surname, including a list of people and fictional characters with the name * Turner (given name), a list of people with the given name *One who uses a lathe for turni ...

, but also drew inspiration from Whistler. With the latter in mind the composer wrote to the violinist

Eugène Ysaÿe Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe (; 16 July 185812 May 1931) was a Belgian virtuoso violinist, composer, and conductor. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tsar". Legend of the Ysaÿe violin Eugène Ysa� ...

in 1894 describing the orchestral ''Nocturnes'' as "an experiment in the different combinations that can be obtained from one colour – what a study in grey would be in painting." Debussy strongly objected to the use of the word "Impressionism" for his (or anybody else's) music,{{refn, 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 .M.W.

, the finest creator of mysterious effects in all the world of art.", group= n but it has continually been attached to him since the assessors at the Conservatoire first applied it, opprobriously, to his early work ''Printemps''. Langham Smith comments that Debussy wrote many piano pieces with titles evocative of nature – "Reflets dans l'eau" (1905), "Les Sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir" (1910) and "Brouillards" (1913){{refn, Respectively, Reflections in the Water, Sounds and Perfumes Swirl in the Evening Air, and Mists., group= n – and suggests that the Impressionist painters' use of brush-strokes and dots is paralleled in the music of Debussy. Although Debussy said that anyone using the term (whether about painting or music) was an imbecile, some Debussy scholars have taken a less absolutist line. Lockspeiser calls ''La mer'' "the greatest example of an orchestral Impressionist work", and more recently in ''The Cambridge Companion to Debussy'' Nigel Simeone comments, "It does not seem unduly far-fetched to see a parallel in Monet's seascapes".Simeone (2007), p. 109{{refn,

Roy Howat Roy Howat (born 1951, Ayrshire, Scotland) is a Scottish pianist and musicologist, who specializes in French music. Howat has been Keyboard Research Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music in London since 2003, and Research Fellow at the Royal Con ...

writes that Debussy, like Fauré "often juxtaposes the same basic material in different modes or with a strategically shifted bass" which, Howat suggests, is "arguably his most literal approach to true Impressionist technique, the equivalent of Monet's fixed object (be it cathedral or haystack) illuminated from different angles"., group= n In this context may be placed Debussy's

pantheistic Pantheism is the belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos are identical with divinity and a supreme supernatural being or entity, pointing to the universe as being an immanent creator deity still expanding and creating, which has ...

eulogy to Nature, in a 1911 interview with

Henry Malherbe Henri Émile Hermand Malherbe, also known as Henry Malherbe or Henry Croisilles (4 February 1886 – 17 March 1958) was a French writer.

: {{blockquote, I have made mysterious Nature my religion ... When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvellous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul. Around me are the trees stretching up their branches to the skies, the perfumed flowers gladdening the meadow, the gentle grass-carpeted earth, ... and my hands unconsciously assume an attitude of adoration.} In contrast to the "impressionistic" characterisation of Debussy's music, several writers have suggested that he structured at least some of his music on rigorous mathematical lines. In 1983 the pianist and scholar

published a book contending that certain of Debussy's works are proportioned using mathematical models, even while using an apparent classical structure such as

sonata form Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th c ...

. Howat suggests that some of Debussy's pieces can be divided into sections that reflect the

golden ratio In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities a and b with a > b > 0, where the Greek letter phi ( ...

, which is approximated by ratios of consecutive numbers in the

Fibonacci sequence In mathematics, the Fibonacci numbers, commonly denoted , form a sequence, the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones. The sequence commonly starts from 0 and 1, although some authors start the sequence from ...

. Simon Trezise, in his 1994 book ''Debussy: La Mer'', finds the intrinsic evidence "remarkable", with the caveat that no written or reported evidence suggests that Debussy deliberately sought such proportions. Lesure takes a similar view, endorsing Howat's conclusions while not taking a view on Debussy's conscious intentions.

Musical idiom

Debussy wrote "We must agree that the beauty of a work of art will always remain a mystery ..we can never be absolutely sure 'how it's made.' We must at all costs preserve this magic which is peculiar to music and to which music, by its nature, is of all the arts the most receptive."Nichols (1980), p. 310 Nevertheless, there are many indicators of the sources and elements of Debussy's idiom. Writing in 1958, the critic

Rudolph Reti Rudolph Reti, also Réti ( srp, Рудолф Рети, translit=Rudolf Reti; November 27, 1885 – February 7, 1957), was a musical analyst, composer and pianist. He was the older brother of the chess master Richard Réti, but unlike his brother, ...

summarised six features of Debussy's music, which he asserted "established a new concept of tonality in European music": the frequent use of lengthy

pedal point In music, a pedal point (also pedal note, organ point, pedal tone, or pedal) is a sustained tone, typically in the bass, during which at least one foreign (i.e. dissonant) harmony is sounded in the other parts. A pedal point sometimes function ...

s – "not merely bass pedals in the actual sense of the term, but sustained 'pedals' in any voice"; 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", described by some writers as non-functional harmonies; bitonality, or at least

bitonal Polytonality (also polyharmony) is the musical use of more than one key simultaneously. Bitonality is the use of only two different keys at the same time. Polyvalence or polyvalency is the use of more than one harmonic function, from the same key, ...

chords; use of the

and

pentatonic scale A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic scale, which has seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale). Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many an ...

s; and

unprepared modulation In music, modulation is the change from one tonality ( tonic, or tonal center) to another. This may or may not be accompanied by a change in key signature (a key change). Modulations articulate or create the structure or form of many pieces, as ...

s, "without any harmonic bridge". Reti concludes that Debussy's achievement was the synthesis of monophonic based "melodic tonality" with harmonies, albeit different from those of "harmonic tonality". In 1889, Debussy held conversations with his former teacher Guiraud, which included exploration of harmonic possibilities at the piano. The discussion, and Debussy's chordal keyboard improvisations, were noted by a younger pupil of Guiraud, Maurice Emmanuel. The chord sequences played by Debussy include some of the elements identified by Reti. They may also indicate the influence on Debussy of

Satie Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, Paris Conse ...

's 1887 '' Trois Sarabandes''. A further improvisation by Debussy during this conversation included a sequence of whole tone harmonies which may have been inspired by the music of Glinka or

which was becoming known in Paris at this time. During the conversation, Debussy told Guiraud, "There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law!" – although he also conceded, "I feel free because I have been through the mill, and I don't write in the fugal style because I know it."Nichols (1980), p. 307

Influences

Musical

{{Quote box , bgcolor=#FFFFF0 , salign=quote ="Chabrier, Moussorgsky, Palestrina, voilà ce que j'aime" – they are what I love. , source = Debussy in 1893, align= width=20% Among French predecessors, Chabrier was an important influence on Debussy (as he was on Ravel and Poulenc); Howat has written that Chabrier's piano music such as "Sous-bois" and "Mauresque" in the ''

Pièces pittoresques ''Pièces pittoresques'' (''Picturesque pieces'') are a set of ten pieces for piano by Emmanuel Chabrier. Four of the set were later orchestrated by the composer to make his ''Suite pastorale''. Background In 1880, while on a convalescent holida ...

'' explored new sound-worlds of which Debussy made effective use 30 years later. Lesure finds traces of

Gounod Charles-François Gounod (; ; 17 June 181818 October 1893), usually known as Charles Gounod, was a French composer. He wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been ''Faust (opera), Faust'' (1859); his ''Roméo et Juliette'' (18 ...

and

Massenet Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are ''Manon'' (1884) ...

in some of Debussy's early songs, and remarks that it may have been from the Russians –

, Balakirev,

Borodin Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin ( rus, link=no, Александр Порфирьевич Бородин, Aleksandr Porfir’yevich Borodin , p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr pɐrˈfʲi rʲjɪvʲɪtɕ bərɐˈdʲin, a=RU-Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin.ogg, ...

and

Mussorgsky Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky ( rus, link=no, Модест Петрович Мусоргский, Modest Petrovich Musorgsky , mɐˈdɛst pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈmusərkskʲɪj, Ru-Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky version.ogg; – ) was a Russian compo ...

– that Debussy acquired his taste for "ancient and oriental modes and for vivid colorations, and a certain disdain for academic rules". Lesure also considers that Mussorgsky's opera '' Boris Godunov'' directly influenced Debussy's ''Pelléas et Mélisande''. In the music of

, Debussy found what he called "a perfect whiteness", and he felt that although Palestrina's musical forms had a "strict manner", they were more to his taste than the rigid rules prevailing among 19th-century French composers and teachers.Jensen, p. 146 He drew inspiration from what he called Palestrina's "harmony created by melody", finding an

arabesque The arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, often combined with other elements. Another definition is "Foli ...

-like quality in the melodic lines. Debussy opined that Chopin was "the greatest of them all, for through the piano he discovered everything"; he professed his "respectful gratitude" for Chopin's piano music.Wheeldon (2001), p. 261 He was torn between dedicating his own Études to Chopin or to François Couperin, whom he also admired as a model of form, seeing himself as heir to their mastery of the genre. Howat cautions against the assumption that Debussy's Ballade (1891) and Nocturne (1892) are influenced by Chopin – in Howat's view they owe more to Debussy's early Russian models – but Chopin's influence is found in other early works such as the ''Two arabesques'' (1889–1891). In 1914 the publisher A. Durand & fils began publishing scholarly new editions of the works of major composers, and Debussy undertook the supervision of the editing of Chopin's music.{{refn, Debussy examined some existing editions, and chose to base his on that of

Ignaz Friedman Ignaz Friedman (also spelled ''Ignace'' or ''Ignacy''; full name ''Solomon (Salomon) Isaac Freudman(n)'', yi, שְׁלֹמֹה יִצְחָק פֿרײדמאַן; February 13, 1882January 26, 1948) was a Polish pianist and composer. Critics (e.g ...

. He wrote to Durand: "In Friedmann's 'sic''preface (Breitkopf Edition, which is quite superior to the Peters), Chopin's influence on Wagner is indicated for the first time"., group=n Although Debussy was in no doubt of Wagner's stature, he was only briefly influenced by him in his compositions, after ''La damoiselle élue'' and the ''Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire'' (both begun in 1887). According to

Pierre Louÿs Pierre Louÿs (; 10 December 1870 – 4 June 1925) was a French poet and writer, most renowned for lesbian and classical themes in some of his writings. He is known as a writer who sought to "express pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection". ...

, Debussy "did not see 'what anyone can do beyond Tristan'," although he admitted that it was sometimes difficult to avoid "the ghost of old Klingsor, alias Richard Wagner, appearing at the turning of a bar". After Debussy's short Wagnerian phase, he started to become interested in non-Western music and its unfamiliar approaches to composition. The piano piece '' Golliwogg's Cakewalk'', from the 1908 suite ''

'', contains a parody of music from the introduction to ''Tristan'', in which, in the opinion of the musicologist Lawrence Kramer, Debussy escapes the shadow of the older composer and "smilingly relativizes Wagner into insignificance". A contemporary influence was Erik Satie, according to Nichols Debussy's "most faithful friend" amongst French musicians. Debussy's orchestration in 1896 of Satie's ''

Gymnopédies The ''Gymnopédies'' (), or ''Trois Gymnopédies'', are three piano compositions written by French composer and pianist Erik Satie. He completed the whole set by 2 April 1888, but they were at first published individually: the first and the thir ...

'' (which had been written in 1887) "put their composer on the map" according to the musicologist

Richard Taruskin Richard Filler Taruskin (April 2, 1945 – July 1, 2022) was an American musicologist and music critic who was among the leading and most prominent music historians of his generation. The breadth of his scrutiny into source material as well as ...

, and the Sarabande from Debussy's ''Pour le piano'' (1901) "shows that ebussyknew Satie's '' Trois Sarabandes'' at a time when only a personal friend of the composer could have known them." (They were not published until 1911). Debussy's interest in the popular music of his time is evidenced not only by the ''Golliwogg's Cakewalk'' and other piano pieces featuring

rag-time Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...

, such as ''

The Little Nigar ''The Little Nigar'' (CD 122, L. 114) is the original title by composer Claude Debussy for a short piece for piano, composed in 1909 for a piano method and published the same year. It was later also published as a single piece, entitled ''The ...

'' (Debussy's spelling) (1909), but by the slow

waltz The waltz ( ), meaning "to roll or revolve") is a ballroom and folk dance, normally in triple ( time), performed primarily in closed position. History There are many references to a sliding or gliding dance that would evolve into the w ...

La plus que lente ''La plus que lente'', List of compositions by Claude Debussy by Lesure Numbers, L. 121 (, "The more than slow"), is a waltz for solo piano written by Claude Debussy in 1910, shortly after his publication of the Préludes (Debussy), Préludes, B ...

'' (''The more than slow''), based on the style of the gipsy violinist at a Paris hotel (to whom he gave the manuscript of the piece). In addition to the composers who influenced his own compositions, Debussy held strong views about several others. He was for the most part enthusiastic about Richard Strauss and Stravinsky, respectful of Mozart and was in awe of

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wor ...

, whom he called the "good God of music" ({{Lang, fr, le Bon Dieu de la musique).Wheeldon (2017), p. 173{{refn, He remarked to a colleague that if Wagner, Mozart and Beethoven could come to his door and ask him to play ''Pelléas'' to them, he would gladly do so, but if it were Bach, he would be too in awe to dare., group= n His relationship to Beethoven was complex; he was said to refer to him as {{Lang, fr, le vieux sourd ('the old deaf one') and asked one young pupil not to play Beethoven's music for "it is like somebody dancing on my grave;" but he believed that Beethoven had profound things to say, yet did not know how to say them, "because he was imprisoned in a web of incessant restatement and of German aggressiveness." He was not in sympathy with

Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wor ...

Schumann Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...

Brahms Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with ...

and

Mendelssohn Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include sym ...

, the latter being described as a "facile and elegant notary". With the advent of the First World War, Debussy became ardently patriotic in his musical opinions. Writing to Stravinsky, he asked "How could we not have foreseen that these men were plotting the destruction of our art, just as they had planned the destruction of our country?" In 1915 he complained that "since

Rameau Jean-Philippe Rameau (; – ) was a French composer and music theorist. Regarded as one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century, he replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and ...

we have had no purely French tradition ..We tolerated overblown orchestras, tortuous forms ..we were about to give the seal of approval to even more suspect naturalizations when the sound of gunfire put a sudden stop to it all." Taruskin writes that some have seen this as a reference to the composers Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg, both born Jewish. In 1912 Debussy had remarked to his publisher of the opera '' Ariane et Barbe-bleue'' by the (also Jewish) composer

, "You're right, tis a masterpiece – but it's not a masterpiece of French music."

Literary

Despite his lack of formal schooling, Debussy read widely and found inspiration in literature. Lesure writes, "The development of

free verse Free verse is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French '' vers libre'' form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. Defi ...

in poetry and the disappearance of the subject or model in painting influenced him to think about issues of musical form." Debussy was influenced by the Symbolist poets. These writers, who included Verlaine, Mallarmé, Maeterlinck and

Rimbaud Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he start ...

, reacted against the realism, naturalism, objectivity and formal conservatism that prevailed in the 1870s. They favoured poetry using suggestion rather than direct statement; the literary scholar Chris Baldrick writes that they evoked "subjective moods through the use of private symbols, while avoiding the description of external reality or the expression of opinion". Debussy was much in sympathy with the Symbolists' desire to bring poetry closer to music, became friendly with several leading exponents, and set many Symbolist works throughout his career. Debussy's literary inspirations were mostly French, but he did not overlook foreign writers. As well as Maeterlinck for ''Pelléas et Mélisande'', he drew on

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

and

Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...

for two of his Préludes for piano – ''La Danse de Puck'' (Book 1, 1910) and '' Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq. P.P.M.P.C.'' (Book 2, 1913). He set

Dante Gabriel Rossetti Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (), was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhoo ...

's ''

The Blessed Damozel "The Blessed Damozel" is perhaps the best known poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as well as the title of his painting (and its replica) illustrating the subject. The poem was first published in 1850 in the Pre-Raphaelite journal '' The Germ''. Ro ...

'' in his early cantata, ''La Damoiselle élue'' (1888). He wrote incidental music for ''

King Lear ''King Lear'' is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between two of his daughters. He becomes destitute and insane ...

'' and planned an opera based on '' As You Like It'', but abandoned that once he turned his attention to setting Maeterlinck's play. In 1890 he began work on an orchestral piece inspired by

Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wid ...

's ''

The Fall of the House of Usher "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in ''Burton's Gentleman's Magazine'', then included in the collection ''Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque'' in 1840. The short story ...

'' and later sketched the libretto for an opera, '' La chute de la maison Usher''. Another project inspired by Poe – an operatic version of '' The Devil in the Belfry'' did not progress beyond sketches. French writers whose words he set include

Paul Bourget Paul Charles Joseph Bourget (; 2 September 185225 December 1935) was a French poet, novelist and critic. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. Life Paul Bourget was born in Amiens in the Somme ''département'' of Picar ...

, Alfred de Musset,

Théodore de Banville Théodore Faullain de Banville (14 March 1823 – 13 March 1891) was a French poet and writer. His work was influential on the Symbolist movement in French literature in the late 19th century. Biography Banville was born in Moulins in Allier, A ...

, Leconte de Lisle,

Théophile Gautier Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier ( , ; 30 August 1811 – 23 October 1872) was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic. While an ardent defender of Romanticism, Gautier's work is difficult to classify and rema ...

François Villon François Villon ( Modern French: , ; – after 1463) is the best known French poet of the Late Middle Ages. He was involved in criminal behavior and had multiple encounters with law enforcement authorities. Villon wrote about some of these ...

, and Mallarmé – the last of whom also provided Debussy with the inspiration for one of his most popular orchestral pieces, ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune''.

Influence on later composers

Debussy is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. Kennedy, Michael, and Joyce Bourne Kennedy
"Debussy, Achille‐Claude"
''The Oxford Dictionary of Music'', ed. Tim Rutherford-Johnson, Oxford University Press, 2012, retrieved 17 May 2018 {{subscription Roger Nichols writes that "if one omits Schoenberg ..a list of 20th-century composers influenced by Debussy is practically a list of 20th-century composers '' tout court''." 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 Leoš Janáček (, baptised Leo Eugen Janáček; 3 July 1854 – 12 August 1928) was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist, and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and other Slavic musics, including Eastern European f ...

while he was writing his 1921 opera ''

Káťa Kabanová ''Káťa Kabanová'' (also known in various spellings including ''Katia'', ''Katja'', ''Katya'', and ''Kabanowa'') is an opera in three acts, with music by Leoš Janáček to a libretto by the composer based on '' The Storm'', a play by Alexander ...

''. Stravinsky was more ambivalent about Debussy's music (he thought ''Pelléas'' "a terrible bore ... in spite of many wonderful pages") but the two composers knew each other and Stravinsky's '' Symphonies of Wind Instruments'' (1920) was written as a memorial for Debussy. In the aftermath of the First World War, the young French composers of

Les Six "Les Six" () is a name given to a group of six composers, five of them French and one Swiss, who lived and worked in Montparnasse. The name, inspired by Mily Balakirev's '' The Five'', originates in two 1920 articles by critic Henri Collet in ' ...

reacted against what they saw as the poetic, mystical quality of Debussy's music in favour of something more hard-edged. Their sympathiser and self-appointed spokesman

Jean Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the s ...

wrote in 1918: "Enough of ''nuages'', waves, aquariums, ''ondines'' and nocturnal perfumes," pointedly alluding to the titles of pieces by Debussy. Later generations of French composers had a much more positive relationship with his music.

Messiaen Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonicall ...

was given a score of ''Pelléas et Mélisande'' as a boy and said that it was "a revelation, love at first sight" and "probably the most decisive influence I have been subject to".

Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Mon ...

also discovered Debussy's music at a young age and said that it gave him his first sense of what modernity in music could mean. Among contemporary composers George Benjamin has described ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' as "the definition of perfection"; he has conducted ''Pelléas et Mélisande'' and the critic Rupert Christiansen detects the influence of the work in Benjamin's opera ''Written on Skin'' (2012). Others have made orchestrations of some of the piano and vocal works, including John Adams (composer), John Adams's version of four of the Baudelaire songs (''Le Livre de Baudelaire'', 1994), Robin Holloway's of ''En blanc et noir'' (2002), and Colin Matthews's of both books of ''Préludes'' (2001–2006). The pianist Stephen Hough believes that Debussy's influence also extends to jazz and suggests that ''Reflets dans l'eau'' can be heard in the harmonies of Bill Evans.{{refn, In addition to Bill Evans, other jazz musicians influenced by Debussy include Herbie Hancock, and McCoy Tyner, according to an article in ''Jazz Education in Research and Practice''., group=n

Recordings

In 1904, Debussy played the piano accompaniment for Mary Garden in recordings for the Compagnie française du Gramophone of four of his songs: three ''mélodies'' from the Verlaine cycle ''Ariettes oubliées'' – "Il pleure dans mon coeur", "L'ombre des arbres" and "Green" – and "Mes longs cheveux", from Act III of ''Pelléas et Mélisande''. He made a set of piano rolls for the Welte-Mignon company in 1913. They contain fourteen of his pieces: "D'un cahier d'esquisses", "La plus que lente", "La soirée dans Grenade", all six movements of ''Children's Corner'', and five of the ''Preludes'': "Danseuses de Delphes", "Le vent dans la plaine", "La cathédrale engloutie", "La danse de Puck" and "Minstrels". The 1904 and 1913 sets have been transferred to compact disc. Contemporaries of Debussy who made recordings of his music included the pianists

(in "Poissons d'or" from ''Images'' and "La soirée dans Grenade" from ''Estampes''); Alfred Cortot (numerous solo pieces as well as the Violin Sonata with Jacques Thibaud and the ''Chansons de Bilitis'' with Maggie Teyte); and Marguerite Long ("Jardins sous la pluie" and "Arabesques"). Singers in Debussy's mélodies or excerpts from ''Pelléas et Mélisande'' included Jane Bathori, Claire Croiza, Charles Panzéra and Ninon Vallin; and among the conductors in the major orchestral works were Ernest Ansermet, Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht, Pierre Monteux and Arturo Toscanini, and in the ''Petite Suite (Debussy), Petite Suite'', Henri Büsser, who had prepared the orchestration for Debussy. Many of these early recordings have been reissued on CD. In more recent times Debussy's output has been extensively recorded. In 2018, to mark the centenary of the composer's death, Warner Classics, with contributions from other companies, issued a 33-CD set that is claimed to include all the music Debussy wrote.Clements, Andrew
" Debussy: The Complete Works review – a comprehensive and invaluable survey"
{{webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180522041632/https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jan/03/debussy-the-complete-works-review-a-comprehensive-and-invaluable-survey , date=22 May 2018 , ''The Guardian'', 3 January 2018

Notes, references and sources

Notes

{{Reflist, group=n, colwidth=24em

References

{{Reflist, colwidth=25em

Sources

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636471036 * {{cite book , last = Timbrell , first = Charles , chapter = Debussy in Performance , title = The Cambridge Companion to Debussy , editor-first = Simon , editor-last = Trezise , year = 2003 , publication-place = Cambridge , publisher = Cambridge University Press , isbn = 978-0-521-65478-4 , url = https://archive.org/details/cambridgecompani00trez_0 * {{cite book , last = Trezise , first = Simon , title = Debussy: La mer , year = 1994 , publisher = Cambridge University Press , publication-place = Cambridge , isbn = 978-0-521-44656-3 * {{cite book , last = Trezise , first = Simon , chapter = Introduction & Debussy's 'rhythmicised time' , title = The Cambridge Companion to Debussy , editor-first = Simon , editor-last = Trezise , year = 2003 , publication-place = Cambridge , publisher = Cambridge University Press , isbn = 978-0-521-65478-4 , url = https://archive.org/details/cambridgecompani00trez_0 * {{cite book , last = Vallas , first = Léon , author-link = Léon Vallas , translator1-last = O'Brien , translator1-first = Maire , translator2-last = O'Brien , translator2-first = Grace , title = Claude Debussy: His Life and Works , url = https://archive.org/details/claudedebussyhis0000vall , url-access = registration , year = 1933 , publication-place = Oxford , publisher = Oxford University Press , oclc = 458329645 * {{cite book , last = Walsh , first = Stephen , chapter = Claude Debussy , title = The Penguin Opera Guide , editor-first = Amanda , editor-last = Holden , year = 1997 , publication-place = London , publisher = Penguin , isbn = 978-0-14-051385-1 , url = https://archive.org/details/operaguidepengui00nich * {{cite book , last = Walsh , first = Stephen , title = Debussy: A Painter in Sound , publication-place = London , publisher = Faber & Faber , year = 2018 , isbn = 978-0-571-33016-4 * {{cite book , last = Weintraub , first = Stanley , author-link = Stanley Weintraub , title = Whistler: A Biography , year = 2001 , publication-place = New York , publisher = Da Capo Press , isbn = 978-0-306-80971-2 * {{cite book , last = Wenk , first = Arthur , title = Claude Debussy and the Poets , year = 1976 , publication-place = Berkeley , publisher = University of California Press , isbn = 978-0-520-02827-2 * {{cite book , last = Wheeldon , first = Marianne , title = Debussy's Late Style , year = 2009 , publication-place = Bloomington , publisher = Indiana University Press , isbn = 978-0-253-35239-2 * {{cite book , last = Wheeldon , first = Marianne , chapter = Tombeau de Claude Debussy , title = Rethinking Debussy , year = 2011 , editor1-first = Elliott , editor1-last = Antokoletz , editor2-first = Marianne , editor2-last = Wheeldon , publication-place = New York , publisher = Oxford University Press , isbn = 978-0-19-975563-9 * {{cite book , last = Wheeldon , first = Marianne , title = Debussy's Legacy and the Construction of Reputation , year = 2017 , publication-place = New York , publisher = Oxford University Press , isbn = 978-0-19-063122-2 {{refend

External links

* {{IMSLP, id=Debussy, Claude * {{ChoralWiki, Claude Debussy * {{BBC composer page, debussy, Debussy * {{Cite EB1911, wstitle= Debussy, Claude Achille , volume= 7 , last= Legge , first= Robin Humphrey , author-link= Robin Legge , pages = 906–907 , short= 1
Website of Debussy museum, St. Germain-en-Laye
{{Claude Debussy, state=uncollapsed {{Impressionist music {{Modernism {{Subject bar, Classical music, Opera, Biography, Music, d=y, auto=1 {{Authority control {{DEFAULTSORT:Debussy, Claude 1862 births 1918 deaths 19th-century classical composers 19th-century French composers 19th-century French male classical pianists 20th-century classical composers 20th-century French composers 20th-century French male musicians Ballets Russes composers Burials at Passy Cemetery Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur Composers for piano Conservatoire de Paris alumni Deaths from cancer in France Deaths from colorectal cancer French ballet composers French male classical composers French opera composers Impressionist composers Male opera composers People from Saint-Germain-en-Laye Prix de Rome for composition Pupils of Antoine François Marmontel Pupils of Ernest Guiraud Claude Debussy,