Achille-Claude Debussy (IPA /aʃil klod dəby'si/) (August 22, 1862 –
March 25, 1918) was a French
composer. Along with Maurice Ravel he is considered the
most prominent figure working within the style commonly referred to as Impressionist
music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions. Debussy was not only among the most
important of all French composers but also a central figure in all European music at the turn of the twentieth century. 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 St. Germain-en-Laye in 1862, the eldest of five
children. His father owned a china shop and his mother was a seamstress. Debussy began piano lessons when he was seven years old
with an elderly Italian named Cerutti, paid for by his aunt. In 1871, the shy awkward boy gained the attention of Mme. de
Fleurville, the mother-in-law of the poet Paul Verlaine, who had been a pupil of
Chopin. His talents soon became evident, and, at age eleven, Debussy entered the
Paris Conservatoire. During Debussy's twelve years at the Paris Conservatoire,
beginning in 1872, he studied composition with Ernest Guiraud, harmony with Emile Durand, piano with Antoine-Francois Marmontel, organ with
César Franck, and solfeggio with Albert Lavignac, as well as other significant figures of the era.
From the start, though clearly talented, Debussy was also argumentative and experimental, and he challenged the rigid teaching
of the Academy, favoring instead frowned upon dissonances and intervals. From 1880 to 1882, he was employed by the patron of
Tchaikovsky, Nadezhda von Meck,
giving music lessons to her children.[1] Despite his
patron's closeness with Tchaikovsky, the Russian master appears to have had little or no effect on Debussy. More influential was
Debussy's close friendship with Madame Vasnier, a singer he met when he began working as an accompanist to earn some money. She
gave Debussy emotional and professional support and influenced his first songs, settings of poems by Verlaine.
As the winner of the Prix de Rome with his composition L'Enfant
prodigue, he received a scholarship to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which included a four-year residence at the
Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome,
to further his studies (1885-1887). According to letters to Madame Vasnier, perhaps in part designed to gain her sympathy, he
found the artistic atmosphere stifling, the company boorish, the food bad, and the monastic quarters "abominable". [2] Nor did he delight in the pleasures of the "Eternal City",
finding the Italian opera of Donizetti and Verdi not to his taste. Debussy often was depressed and unable to compose, but he also met
Franz Liszt, whose command of the keyboard he found inspiring.
In June 1885, Debussy wrote of his desire to follow his own way, "I am sure the Institut would not approve, for, naturally it
regards the path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamored of my freedom, too fond
of my own ideas." [3] Debussy finally composed four pieces
that were sent to the Academy: the symphonic ode Zuleima, after Heinrich Heine;
the orchestral piece Printemps; the cantata La damoiselle élue (1887-1888), which
was criticized by the Academy as "bizarre"; and the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra. The third piece was the first in
which stylistic features of Debussy's later style emerged. The fourth piece was heavily based on César Franck's music and
withdrawn by Debussy himself. Overall, the Academy chided him for "courting the unusual" and hoped for something better from the
gifted student. Even though Debussy showed touches of Massenet in his efforts, Jules
Massenet himself concluded, "He is an enigma."[4]
In his visits to Bayreuth in 1888-9, Debussy was exposed to Wagnerian opera, which had a lasting impact on his work. Richard
Wagner had died in 1883 and the cult of Wagnerism was in full swing. Debussy, like many of
the young musicians of the time, responded to Wagner's sensuousness, mastery of form, and striking harmonies, but ultimately
Wagner's extroverted emotionalism was not to be Debussy's way either. Wagner's influence is evident in La damoiselle élue
and the 1889 piece Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire. Other songs of the period,
notably the settings of Verlaine—Ariettes oubliées, Trois mélodies,
and Fêtes galantesare all in a more capricious style. Around this time, Debussy met Erik
Satie who proved a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to composition and to naming his pieces. During this
period, both musicians were bohemians enjoying the same cafe society and struggling to stay afloat financially.
During 1889, at the Exposition
Universelle in Paris, Debussy heard Javanese gamelan
music. Although direct citations of gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, or ensemble textures have not been located in any of
Debussy's own compositions, the equal-tempered pentatonic scale appears in his music of this time and afterward.
Early works
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 Symbolist gatherings, where Wagnerism dominated the discussion. In contrast to the
enormous works of Wagner and other late-romantic composers, however, around this time Debussy chose to write in smaller, more
accessible forms. The Suite bergamasque (1890) recalls rococo decorousness with a modern cynicism and puzzlement. This suite contains one of Debussy's most popular
pieces, Clair de Lune. Debussy's String
Quartet in G minor (1893) paved the way for his later, more daring harmonic exploration. In this work he utilized the
Phrygian mode as well as less standard scales, such
as the whole-tone, which creates a sense of floating, ethereal harmony. Debussy was
beginning to employ a single, continuous theme and break away from the traditional A-B-A form, with its restatements and
amplifications, which had been a mainstay of classical music since Haydn.
Influenced by Mallarmé, Debussy wrote one of his most famous works, the revolutionary Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, truly original in form and execution. In
contrast to the large orchestras so favoured by late-romanticism, Debussy wrote this piece for a smaller ensemble, emphasizing
instrumental colour and timbre. Despite Mallarmé himself, and colleague and friend Paul Dukas
having been impressed by the piece, it was controversial at its premiere. Prélude subsequently placed Debussy into the
spotlight as one of the leading composers of the era.
Middle works
The three Nocturnes (1899), include characteristic studies in veiled harmony and
texture as demonstrated in Nuages; exuberance in Fêtes; and whole-tones in Sirènes. Contrasting sharply with
Wagnerian opera, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande premiered in 1901,
after ten years of work. It would be his only complete opera. Based on the play by Maurice
Maeterlinck, the opera proved to be an immediate success and immensely influential to younger French composers, including
Maurice Ravel. These works brought a fluidity of rhythm and colour quite new to Western
music.
La Mer (1903-1905) essays a more symphonic form, with a finale that works
themes from the first movement, although the middle movement, Jeux de vagues, which proceeds much less directly and with
more variety of colour. Again, the reviews were sharply divided. Some critics thought the treatment less subtle and less
mysterious than previous works and a step backward. Pierre Lalo complained "I neither hear, nor see, nor feel the sea". Others
extolled its "power and charm", its "extraordinary verve and brilliant fantasy", and its strong colors and definite
lines.[5]
During this period Debussy wrote much for the piano. The set of pieces entitled Pour le piano (1901) utilises rich
harmonies and textures which would later prove important in jazz music. His first volume of
Images pour piano (1904–1905) combine harmonic innovation with poetic suggestion: Reflets dans l'eau is a musical
description of rippling water; Hommage à Rameau, the second piece, is slow and yearningly nostalgic. It takes as its
inspiration a melody of Jean-Philippe Rameau's, Castor et Pollux.
The evocative Estampes for piano (1903) give impressions of exotic locations. Debussy
came into contact with Javanese gamelan music during the 1889
Paris Exposition Universelle. Pagodes is the directly
inspired result, aiming for an evocation of the pentatonic structures employed by the Javanese music.[6] Debussy wrote his famous Children's
Corner Suite (1909) for his beloved daughter, Claude-Emma, whom he nicknamed Chou-chou. The suite recalls
classicism—the opening piece Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum refers to Muzio Clementi's
collection of instructional piano compositions Gradus ad Parnassum, as well as a new wave
of American cakewalk music. In the popular final piece of the suite, Golliwog's Cakewalk, Debussy also pokes fun at
Richard Wagner by mimicking the opening bars of Wagner's prelude to Tristan and Isolde.
The first book of Preludes (1910), twelve in total, proved to be his most
successful work for piano. The Preludes are frequently compared to those of Chopin.
Debussy's preludes are replete with rich, unusual and daring harmonies. They include the popular La Fille aux Cheveux de
Lin (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair) and La Cathédrale Engloutie (The Submerged Cathedral). Debussy wanted people to
respond intuitively to these pieces and so he placed the titles at the end of each one in the hope that listeners would not make
stereotype images as they listened.
Larger scaled works included his orchestral piece Iberia (1907), began as a work for two pianos, a triptych medley of Spanish allusions and fleeting impressions and also the music for Gabriele d'Annunzio's mystery play Le martyre de St. Sébastien (1911). A lush and dramatic
work, written in only two months, it is remarkable in sustaining a late antique
modal atmosphere that otherwise was touched only in relatively short piano pieces.
During this period, as Debussy gained more popularity, he was engaged as a conductor throughout Europe, most often performing
Pelléas, La Mer, Iberia, and Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. He was also an occasional music
critic to supplement his conducting fees and piano lessons. Debussy avoided analytical dissection and attempts to force images
from music, "Let us at all costs preserve this magic peculiar to music, since of all the arts it is most susceptible to magic."
He could be caustic and witty, sometimes sloppy and ill-informed. Debussy was for the most part enthusiastic about
Richard Strauss and Igor Stravinsky, worshipful
of Chopin, Johann Sebastian Bach and
Mozart, and found both Lizst and
Beethoven geniuses who sometimes lacked "taste". Schubert and Mendelssohn fared much worse, the latter he described
as a "facile and elegant notary".[7]
Late works
Debussy's harmonies and chord progressions
frequently exploit dissonances without any formal resolution. Unlike in his
earlier work, he no longer hides discords in lush harmonies. The forms are far more irregular and fragmented. These chords who
seemingly had no resolution were described by Debussy himself as "floating chords", and were used to set tone and mood in many of
his works. The whole tone scale dominates much of Debussy's late music.
His two last volumes of works for the piano, the Études (1915) interprets similar
varieties of style and texture purely as pianistic exercises and includes pieces that develop irregular form to an extreme as
well as others influenced by the young Igor Stravinsky (a presence too in the suite
En blanc et noir for two pianos, 1915). The rarefaction of these works is a feature of the last set of songs, the Trois
poèmes de Mallarmé (1913), and of the Sonata for flute, viola and harp (1915), though the sonata
and its companions also recapture the inquisitive Verlainian classicism.
With the sonatas of 1915–1917, there is a sudden shift in the style. These works recall Debussy's earlier music, in part, but
also look forward, with leaner, simpler structures. Despite the thinner textures of the violin
sonata (1917) there remains an undeniable richness in the chords themselves. This shift parallels the movement commonly
known as neo-classicism which became popular after Debussy's death. Debussy
planned a set of six sonatas, but this plan was cut short by his death in 1918 so that he only completed three (cello,
flute-viola-harp and violin sonatas).
The last orchestral work by Debussy, the ballet Jeux (1912) written for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, contains some of his
strangest harmonies and textures in a form that moves freely over its own field of motivic connection. At first Jeux was
overshadowed by Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of
Spring, composed in the same year as Jeux and premiered only two weeks later by the same ballet company. Decades
later, composers such as Pierre Boulez and Jean
Barraqué pointed out parallels to Anton Webern's serialism in this work. Other late stage works, including the ballets Khamma (1912) and La boîte à joujoux (1913) were left with the orchestration incomplete, and were later completed by
Charles Koechlin and André Caplet, who also
helped Debussy with the orchestration of Gigues (from Images pour orchestre) and Le martyre de St.
Sébastien.
The second set of Preludes for piano (1913)
features Debussy at his most avant-garde, sometimes utilising dissonant harmonies to evoke
moods and images, especially in the mysterious Canope; the title refers to a burial urn which stood on Debussy's working
desk and evokes a distant past. The pianist Claudio Arrau considered the piece to be one
of Debussy's greatest preludes: "It's miraculous that he created, in so few notes, this kind of depth."[8]
Although Pelléas was Debussy's only completed opera, he began several opera projects which reminded unfinished, his fading
concentration, increasing procrastination, and failing health perhaps the reasons. He had finished some partial musical sketches
and some unpublished libretti for operas based on Shakespeare's As You Like It,
Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, and Joseph Bedier's La
Legende de Tristan.
Further plans, such as an American tour, more ballet scores, and revisions of Chopin and Bach works for re-publication, were
all cut short by the onset of World War I and a serious turn in his health, which required morphine injections for pain. An
operation in 1915 only temporarily checked the condition.
Private life
Debussy's private life was turbulent. He cohabited in Paris with Gabrielle Dupont for nine years before marrying her friend
Rosalie Texier, a fashion model, in 1899. Although Texier was affectionate, practical,
straightforward, and well-liked by Debussy's friends and associates, he became increasingly irritated by her intellectual
limitations and lack of musical sensitivity. As a result he left Texier in 1904 for Emma
Bardac, the wife of a Parisian banker and the mother of one of his students. In contrast to Texier, Bardac was a
sophisticate, a brilliant conversationalist, and an accomplished singer. The distraught Texier, like Dupont before her, attempted
suicide with a pistol. The scandal obliged Debussy and Bardac (already carrying his child) to flee to Eastbourne, England, (where he was to complete his symphonic
suite La Mer) until the hysteria subsided and the legal entanglements resolved. The
couple were eventually married in 1908. The child, a daughter (and the composer's only child), was named Claude-Emma, more
affectionately known as Chou-Chou, the dedicatee of Debussy's Children's Corner suite.
Claude-Emma outlived her father by scarcely a year, succumbing to the diphtheria epidemic of
1919.
Death
Debussy's grave at Cim. de Passy
Claude Debussy died in Paris on March 25, 1918 from
colorectal cancer (he had survived one of the first colostomy operations ever
performed two years earlier). He died in the midst of the German aerial and artillery
bombardment of Paris during the Spring Offensive of World
War I. At this time, the military situation in France was desperate, and circumstances did not permit his being paid the
honour of a public funeral or ceremonious graveside orations. The funeral procession made its way through deserted streets as
shells from the German guns ripped into his beloved city. It was just eight months before France would celebrate victory. He was
interred in the Cimetière de Passy, and French culture has ever since celebrated Debussy
as one of its most distinguished representatives. His wife and daughter are buried with him.
Musical style
Rudolph Réti points out these features of Debussy's music, which "established a new
concept of tonality in European music":
- Glittering passages and webs of figurations which distract from occasional absence of tonality;
- Frequent use of parallel chords which are "in essence not harmonies at all, but
rather 'chordal melodies', enriched unisons";
- Bitonality, or at least bitonal chords;
- Use of the whole-tone and pentatonic
scale;
- Unprepared modulations, "without any harmonic bridge."
He concludes that Debussy's achievement was the synthesis of monophonic based "melodic tonality" with harmonies, albeit
different from those of "harmonic tonality" (Reti, 1958).
The application of the term "impressionist" to Debussy and the music he influenced is a matter of intense debate within
academic circles. One side argues that the term is a misnomer, an inappropriate label which Debussy himself opposed. In a letter
of 1908, he wrote "I am trying to do 'something different'--an effect of reality...what the imbeciles call 'impressionism', a
term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by the critics, since they do not hesitate to apply it to Turner, the
finest creator of mysterious effects in all the world of art."[9] The opposing side argues that Debussy may have been reacting to unfavorable criticism at the time,
and the negativity that critics associated with impressionism. It can be argued that he would have been pleased with application
of the current definition of impressionism to his music.
Mathematical structuring
Given that Debussy's music is apparently so concerned with mood and colour, it is somewhat unexpected to discover that,
according to one author, many of his greatest works appear to have been structured around mathematical models even while using an
apparent classical structure such as sonata form. Howat (1983) suggests that some of
Debussy's pieces can be divided into sections that reflect the golden ratio, frequently by
using the numbers of the standard Fibonacci sequence. Sometimes these divisions seem to
follow the standard divisions of the overall structure. In other pieces they appear to mark out other significant features of the
music. The 55 bar-long introduction to 'Dialogue du vent et la mer' in La Mer, for example, breaks down into 5 sections of
21, 8, 8, 5 and 13 bars in length. The golden mean point of bar 34 in this structure is signalled by the introduction of the
trombones, with the use of the main motif from all three movements used in the central section around that point (Howat,
1983).
The only evidence that Howat introduces to support his claim appears in changes Debussy made between finished manuscripts and
the printed edition, with the changes invariably creating a Golden Mean proportion where previously none existed. Perhaps the
starkest example of this comes with La cathédrale engloutie. Published editions lack the instruction to play bars 7-12 and
22-83 at twice the speed of the remainder, exactly as Debussy himself did on a piano-roll recording. When analysed with this
alteration, the piece follows Golden Section proportions. At the same time, Howat admits that in many of Debussy's works, he has
been unable to find evidence of the Golden Section (notably in the late works) and that no extant manuscripts or sketches contain
any evidence of calculations related to it.
Influence on later composers
Claude Debussy is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. His harmonies, considered
radical in his day, were influential to almost every major composer of the 20th century, especially the music of Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen, Bela Bartok, Pierre Boulez, Henri
Dutilleux, and the minimalist music of Steve
Reich and Philip Glass as well as the influential Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. He also influenced many important figures in Jazz, most
notably Bill Evans,Thelonious Monk,Duke Ellington, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Jimmy Giuffre and Brad Mehldau.
Debussy in film and pop culture
Debussy's music has been used many times in film and television.
It was first used legally in 1948 in the David O. Selznick film Portrait of
Jennie in which various compositions ("Reverie," "Arabesque" the "Nocturnes" and "La fille aux cheveux de lin" inter
alii) can be heard. His music has featured in numerous films, plays, and television programs ever since. The film director
Ken Russell made a visually stunning film about Debussy for the famous BBC arts programme
Monitor in the late 1960s. It featured a particularly evocative staging of Fetes (from Nocturnes) showing a crowd of revellers
with torches coming out of the night onto a beach.
Clair de lune is especially popular, having appeared in George Stevens's Giant (1956) when played on the organ in
the mansion featured in the film, Casino Royale (1967),
The Right Stuff (1983), Seven Years in Tibet (1997), Ocean's Eleven (2001), Ocean's Thirteen
(2007), Man on Fire (2004) and 'Dog Soldiers (2002), to name a few. Terrence McNally's
play Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune uses the
work as remedy to a wounded relationship, and the British Granada TV drama series Jewel
in the Crown (1984) invokes Walter Gieseking's recording of this piece played on
a Victrola during Daphne Manners' date with Ronald Merrick.
Arabesque No 1 was featured in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) --
played by the Tippi Hedren character -- and in A Good
Year (2006), and used as the theme to the TV programme Star
Gazer. It is frequently referenced by characters in Shunji Iwai's film
All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001). Rêverie was adapted by American
bandleader Larry Clinton into a popular song, "My Reverie", which was recorded on several
occasions in the late 1930s and '40s by musicians Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Mildred Bailey, and others.
La Cathédrale Engloutie, from 'Preludes', takes an electronic rendition in John
Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981) as underscore for a
futuristic Manhattan.
Des pas sur la neige was used as incidental music in the BBC's 1978 adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca starring Joanna David and Anna Massey.
The Seduction of Claude Debussy (1999) by the
Art of Noise is a concept album depicting the
life and works of Debussy. Featuring narration from the actor John Hurt and guest vocal
performances from Rakim and Donna Lewis, this ambitious
concept album blends excerpts of Debussy's music with a diverse range of 20th century musical influences such as drum and bass, opera, hip-hop and
jazz.
The Pet Shop Boys produced a song called "Left to My Own Devices" in which
Neil Tennant sings, "Che Guevara and Debussy to a
disco beat." In the late 1980s, when the duo toured Great Britain, a dancer dressed as Debussy when this song was performed.
Walt Disney prepared a short movie based on Debussy's Clair de Lune to add to the famous movie Fantasia (1940). However, due to the excessive length of the film, that segment was edited out. In the
latest DVD release of the movie, the piece has been restored as special feature.
In 1976 The Alan Parsons Project featured Debussy's unfinished "Le Projet",
inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall
of the House of Usher", on their album Tales of Mystery and
Imagination dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe. This being the first album of the duo Parson-Woolfson, Debussy's operatic
work may have inspired the name of the group itself.
In 2002, the Norwegian artist Biosphere produced the album Shenzhou, on which every track (with the exception of the last two tracks) is based on elongated,
pitch-shifted samples from Debussy's orchestral work "La Mer".
List of works
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