Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy, photo by Félix Nadar, ca. 1908.

Achille-Claude Debussy (French pronunciation: [aʃil klod dəbysi]) (August 22, 1862 – March 25, 1918) was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he is considered one of the most prominent figures working within the field of Impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions.^[1] Debussy is not only among the most important of all French composers; he was also a central figure in European music at the turn of the twentieth century.

His music is noted for its sensory component and how it is not often formed around one key or pitch. Often Debussy's work reflected the activities or turbulence in his own life. His music virtually defines the transition from late-Romantic music to twentieth century modernist music. In French literary circles, the style of this period was known as Symbolism, a movement that directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant.

Biography

Early life and studies

Debussy at the Villa Médici in Rome, 1885, at centre in the white jacket

Claude Debussy was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France in 1862, the eldest of five children. His father Manuel-Achille Debussy owned a china shop and was a salesman and his mother Victorine Manoury Debussy was a seamstress. Debussy began piano lessons when he was four years old with an elderly Italian named Cerutti; his lessons were paid for by his aunt. In 1871, the young Debussy gained the attention of Marie Mauté de Fleurville,^[2] who claimed to have been a pupil of Frédéric Chopin, and Debussy always believed her, although there is no independent evidence that she was.^[3] His talents soon became evident, and in 1872, at age ten, Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he spent eleven years. During his time there he studied composition with Ernest Guiraud, music history/theory with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, harmony with Émile Durand, piano with Antoine-François Marmontel, organ with César Franck, and solfège with Albert Lavignac, as well as other significant figures of the era.

From the start, though clearly talented, Debussy was also argumentative and experimental, and he challenged the rigid teaching of the Academy, favoring instead dissonances and intervals which were frowned upon at the time. Like Georges Bizet, Debussy was a brilliant pianist and an outstanding sight reader, who could have had a professional career had he so wished.^[4] The pieces he played in public at this time included sonata movements by Beethoven, Schumann and Weber; and Chopin - the Ballade No. 2, a movement from the Piano Concerto No. 1, and the Allegro de Concert, a relatively little-known piece that demands an even higher degree of virtuosity than either of the concertos.^[5]

From 1880 to 1882, he lived in Russia as music teacher to the children of Nadezhda von Meck, the patroness of Tchaikovsky.^[6] Despite von Meck's closeness with Tchaikovsky, the Russian master appears to have had little or no effect on Debussy. In September 1880 she sent Debussy's Danse bohémienne for Tchaikovsky's perusal. A month later Tchaikovsky wrote back to her, "It is a very pretty piece, but it is much too short. Not a single idea is expressed fully, the form is terribly shriveled, and it lacks unity". Debussy did not publish the piece; the manuscript remained in the von Meck family, and it was sold to B. Schott's Sohne in Mainz, and published by them in 1932.^[7] More influential was Debussy's close friendship with Madame Vasnier, a singer he met when he began working as an accompanist to earn some money. She gave Debussy emotional and professional support and influenced his first songs, settings of poems by Paul Verlaine, his former teacher Mme. Mauté de Fleurville's son-in-law.

As the winner of the Prix de Rome with his composition L'Enfant prodigue, he received a scholarship to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which included a four-year residence at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome, to further his studies (1885-1887). According to letters to Madame Vasnier, perhaps in part designed to gain her sympathy, he found the artistic atmosphere stifling, the company boorish, the food bad, and the monastic quarters "abominable".^[8] Neither did he delight in the pleasures of the "Eternal City", finding the Italian opera of Donizetti and Verdi not to his taste. Debussy was often depressed and unable to compose, but he was inspired by Franz Liszt, whose command of the keyboard he found admirable.

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

Debussy finally composed four pieces that were sent to the Academy: the symphonic ode Zuleima, based on a text by Heinrich Heine; the orchestral piece Printemps; the cantata La damoiselle élue (1887-1888), which was criticized by the Academy as "bizarre"; and the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra. The third piece was the first in which stylistic features of Debussy's later style emerged. The fourth piece was heavily based on César Franck's music and withdrawn by Debussy himself. Overall, the Academy chided him for "courting the unusual" and hoped for something better from the gifted student. Even though Debussy showed touches of Jules Massenet in his efforts, Massenet himself concluded, "He is an enigma."^[10]

In his visits to Bayreuth in 1888-9, Debussy was exposed to Wagnerian opera, which had a lasting impact on his work. Richard Wagner had died in 1883 and the cult of Wagnerism was still in full swing. Debussy, like many young musicians of the time, responded positively to Wagner's sensuousness, mastery of form, and striking harmonies, but ultimately Wagner's extroverted emotionalism was not to be Debussy's way either. Wagner's influence is evident in La damoiselle élue and the 1889 piece Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire. Other songs of the period, notably the settings of Verlaine—Ariettes oubliées, Trois mélodies, and Fêtes galantes are all in a more capricious style. Around this time, Debussy met Erik Satie who proved a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to composition and to naming his pieces. During this period, both musicians were bohemians enjoying the same cafe society and struggling to stay afloat financially.

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

Early works

Debussy at the piano, in front of the composer Ernest Chausson, 1893

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

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

Middle works

The three Nocturnes (1899), include characteristic studies in veiled harmony and texture as demonstrated in Nuages; exuberance in Fêtes; and whole-tones in Sirènes. Contrasting sharply with Wagnerian opera, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande premiered in 1902, after ten years of work. It would be his only complete opera. Based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, the opera proved to be an immediate success and immensely influential to younger French composers, including Maurice Ravel. These works brought a fluidity of rhythm and colour quite new to Western music.

La Mer (1903-1905) essays a more symphonic form, with a finale that works themes from the first movement, although the middle movement, Jeux de vagues, proceeds much less directly and with more variety of colour. Again, the reviews were sharply divided. Some critics thought the treatment to be less subtle and less mysterious than his previous works and even a step backward. Pierre Lalo complained "I neither hear, nor see, nor feel the sea". Others extolled its "power and charm", its "extraordinary verve and brilliant fantasy", and its strong colors and definite lines.^[11]

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

The evocative Estampes for piano (1903) give impressions of exotic locations. Debussy came into contact with Javanese gamelan music during the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. Pagodes is the directly inspired result, aiming for an evocation of the pentatonic structures employed by the Javanese music.^[12] Debussy wrote his famous Children's Corner Suite (1908) for his beloved daughter, Claude-Emma, whom he nicknamed Chouchou. The suite recalls classicism—the opening piece Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum refers to Muzio Clementi's collection of instructional piano compositions Gradus ad Parnassum, as well as a new wave of American cakewalk music. In the popular final piece of the suite, Golliwog's Cakewalk, Debussy also pokes fun at Richard Wagner by mimicking the opening bars of Wagner's prelude to Tristan and Isolde.

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

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

During this period, as Debussy gained more popularity, he was engaged as a conductor throughout Europe, most often performing Pelléas, La Mer, and Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. He was also an occasional music critic to supplement his conducting fees and piano lessons. Debussy avoided analytical dissection and attempts to force images from music, "Let us at all costs preserve this magic peculiar to music, since of all the arts it is most susceptible to magic." He could be caustic and witty, sometimes sloppy and ill-informed. Debussy was for the most part enthusiastic about Richard Strauss and Igor Stravinsky, worshipful of Chopin, Johann Sebastian Bach and Mozart, and found both Liszt and Beethoven geniuses who sometimes lacked "taste". Schubert and Mendelssohn fared much worse, the latter he described as a "facile and elegant notary".^[13] He also admired the works of Charles-Valentin Alkan.

Late works

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

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

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

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

The second set of Preludes for piano (1913) features Debussy at his most avant-garde, sometimes utilising dissonant harmonies to evoke moods and images, especially in the mysterious Canope; the title refers to a burial urn which stood on Debussy's working desk and evokes a distant past. The pianist Claudio Arrau considered the piece to be one of Debussy's greatest preludes: "It's miraculous that he created, in so few notes, this kind of depth."^[14]

Although Pelléas was Debussy's only completed opera, he began several opera projects which remained unfinished, his fading concentration, increasing procrastination, and failing health perhaps the reasons. He had finished some partial musical sketches and some unpublished libretti for operas based on Poe's The Devil in the Belfry (Le diable dans le beffroi, 1902-?1912) and The Fall of the House of Usher (La chute de la maison Usher, 1908-1917) as well as considered projects for operas based on Shakespeare's As You Like It and Joseph Bedier's La Legende de Tristan.

Further plans, such as an American tour, more ballet scores, and revisions of Chopin and Bach works for re-publication, were all cut short by the outbreak of World War I and the onset of colorectal cancer, which required morphine injections to relieve the pain. Debussy underwent one of the first colostomy operations ever performed in 1916, but this achieved only a temporary respite and occasioned him considerable frustration; he was to liken dressing in the morning to "all the labours of Hercules in one".

Private life

Debussy's private life was often turbulent. At the age of 18 he began an eight year affair with Madame Blanche Vasnier, wife of a wealthy Parisian lawyer. The relationship eventually faltered following his winning of the Prix de Rome and obligatory incarceration in the eponymous city. On his permanent return to Paris in 1889, he began a tempestuous nine-year relationship with Gabrielle ('Gaby') Dupont, a tailor's daughter from Lisieux, with whom he cohabited in Paris on the Rue Gustave Doré. During this time he also had an affair with the singer Thérèse Roger, to whom he was briefly engaged. He left Dupont for her friend Rosalie ('Lily') Texier, a fashion model whom he married. Although Texier was affectionate, practical, straightforward, and well-liked by Debussy's friends and associates, he became increasingly irritated by her intellectual limitations and lack of musical sensitivity. As a result he abandoned Texier in 1904 for Emma Bardac, the wife of a Parisian banker and the mother of one of his students. In contrast to Texier, Bardac was a sophisticate, a brilliant conversationalist, and an accomplished singer. The distraught Texier, like Dupont before her, attempted suicide, shooting herself in the chest while standing in the middle of the Place de la Concorde. She survived, although the bullet remained lodged in her vertebrae for the rest of her life. The scandal obliged Debussy and Bardac (already carrying his child) to flee to England, eventually settling in Eastbourne, where he completed his symphonic suite La Mer, until the hysteria subsided and the legal entanglements resolved. The couple were eventually married in 1908, their troubled union enduring until Debussy's death in 1918. Their child, a daughter (and the composer's only child), was named Claude-Emma, more affectionately known as Chouchou, the dedicatee of Debussy's Children's Corner suite. Claude-Emma outlived her father by scarcely a year, succumbing to the diphtheria epidemic of 1919.

Death

Debussy's grave at Cim. de Passy

Claude Debussy died of rectal cancer in Paris on March 25, 1918, in the midst of the aerial and artillery bombardment of the city during the Spring Offensive of World War I. At this time, the military situation in France was desperate, and circumstances did not permit his being paid the honour of a public funeral or ceremonious graveside orations. The funeral procession made its way through deserted streets to Père Lachaise cemetery as shells from the German guns ripped into his beloved city. It was just eight months before France would celebrate victory. His body was reinterred shortly afterwards in the small Cimetière de Passy sequestered behind the Trocadéro; his wife and daughter are buried with him. French culture has ever since celebrated Debussy as one of its most distinguished representatives.

Recordings

Debussy participated in a handful of recordings, made in 1904 with soprano Mary Garden. He also made some piano rolls for Welte Mignon in 1913.^[15]

Musical style

Chords, featuring chromatically altered sevenths and ninths and progressing unconventionally, explored by Debussy in a, "celebrated conversation at the piano with his teacher Ernest Guiraud".^[16]

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

1. Glittering passages and webs of figurations which distract from occasional absence of tonality;
2. Frequent use of parallel chords which are "in essence not harmonies at all, but rather 'chordal melodies', enriched unisons";
3. Bitonality, or at least bitonal chords;
4. Use of the whole-tone and pentatonic scale;
5. Unprepared modulations, "without any harmonic bridge."

He concludes that Debussy's achievement was the synthesis of monophonic based "melodic tonality" with harmonies, albeit different from those of "harmonic tonality".^{[17][page needed]}

The application of the term "impressionist" to Debussy and the music he influenced is a matter of intense debate within academic circles. One side argues that the term is a misnomer, an inappropriate label which Debussy himself opposed. In a letter of 1908, he wrote "I am trying to do 'something different'--an effect of reality...what the imbeciles call 'impressionism', a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by the critics, since they do not hesitate to apply it to Turner, the finest creator of mysterious effects in all the world of art."^[18] The opposing side argues that Debussy may have been reacting to unfavorable criticism at the time, and the negativity that critics associated with impressionism. It can be argued that he would have been pleased with application of the current definition of impressionism to his music.

Mathematical structuring

Given that Debussy's music is apparently so concerned with mood and colour, it is somewhat unexpected to discover that, according to one author, many of his greatest works appear to have been structured around mathematical models even while using an apparent classical structure such as sonata form. Howat suggests that some of Debussy's pieces can be divided into sections that reflect the golden ratio, frequently by using the numbers of the standard Fibonacci sequence.^[19] Sometimes these divisions seem to follow the standard divisions of the overall structure. In other pieces they appear to mark out other significant features of the music. The 55 bar-long introduction to 'Dialogue du vent et la mer' in La Mer, for example, breaks down into 5 sections of 21, 8, 8, 5 and 13 bars in length. The golden mean point of bar 34 in this structure is signalled by the introduction of the trombones, with the use of the main motif from all three movements used in the central section around that point.^{[19][page needed]}

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

Influence on later composers

Claude Debussy is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. His harmonies, considered radical in his day, were influential to almost every major composer of the 20th century, especially the music of Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen, Béla Bartók, Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, and the minimalist music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass as well as the influential Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. He also influenced many important figures in Jazz, most notably George Gershwin, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Jimmy Giuffre and Brad Mehldau. Furthermore, he had a massive impact on contemporary soundtrack composers such as John Williams because Debussy's colorful and suggesting style translated easily into an emotional language for use in motion picture scores.

List of works

• List of compositions by Claude Debussy by category.
• List of compositions by Claude Debussy by Lesure Numbers

Eponym

• Asteroid 4492 Debussy, discovered in 1988, is named for Claude Debussy.

Media

Clair de lune from Suite Bergamasque Performed by Robin Alciatore. Courtesy of Musopen Mazurka ("Mazurka") Quand j'ai ouy le tambourin (2.4 Mb) Dieu qu'il la fait bon regarder (1.5 Mb) Dieu qu'il la fait bon regarder (1.9 Mb) Quand j'ai ouy le tabourin sonner (1.9 Mb)

Yver vous n'estes qu'un vilain (1.6 Mb) Beau Soir La Plus que Lente Arranged by J. Kowalewski, performed by the Advent Chamber Orchestra Le Petit Negre Arranged by Anne DeBlois, performed by the Advent Chamber Orchestra Syrinx Performed by Sarah Bassingthwaite Problems listening to the files? See media help.

References

Sources

• Barraqué, Jean (1977). Debussy (Solfèges). Paris: Editions du Seuil. ISBN 2020002426. 

Further reading

• Fulcher, Jane (ed.) (2001). Debussy and His World (The Bard Music Festival). Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691090424. 
• Trezise, Simon (ed.) (2003). The Cambridge Companion to Debussy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521654785. 
• Roberts, Paul (ed.) (2001). Images: The Piano Music of Claude Debussy. Amadeus Press. ISBN 1574670689. 
• Lücke, Hendrik (2005): Mallarmé - Debussy. Eine vergleichende Studie zur Kunstanschauung am Beispiel von „L'Après-midi d'un Faune“. (= Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, Bd. 4). Dr. Kovac, ISBN 3-8300-1685-9.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Claude Debussy

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Claude Debussy

• Claude Debussy at Allmusic
• Claude Debussy discography at MusicBrainz
• Claude Debussy Catalogue chronologique (French)
• Documentary film about Claude Debussy

Recordings and MIDI files

• Performance of Arabesque at 1st piano
• Performance of Claire de Lune at 1st piano
• Performance of La fille aux cheveux de Lin at 1st piano
• Kunst der Fuge: Claude Debussy performances (German)
• Performances of works by Claude Debussy in MIDI format at Logos Virtual Library
• Piano Rolls (The Reproducing Piano Roll Foundation)

Music scores

• Free scores by Claude Debussy in the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Claude Debussy in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Free scores by Claude Debussy in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• 1re arabesque pour piano (transcription for violon & piano by Gaston Choisnel) From Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection
• Clair de lune; extrait de la Suite bergamasque (transcription pour piano à quatre mains par H. Woollett) From Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection
• 12 pièces pour orgue; transcriptions From Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection