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. Although they did not make any Casinojoy casino great impact with the public they were well reviewed by musicians including Paul Dukas, Alfred Bruneau and Pierre de Bréville. In May 1898 he made his first contacts with André Messager and Albert Carré, respectively the musical director and general manager of the Opéra-Comique, Paris, about presenting the opera.
Music
It is clear that he was torn by influences from many directions; these stormy years, however, contributed to the sensitivity of his early style. Lesure writes, “The development of free verse 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. 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. Estampes for piano (1903) gives impressions of exotic locations, with further echoes of the gamelan in its pentatonic structures. The central “Jeux de vagues” section has the function of a symphonic development section 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. In 1903 there was public recognition of Debussy’s stature when he was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur, but his social standing suffered a great blow when another turn in his private life caused a scandal the following year.
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- It is clear that he was torn by influences from many directions; these stormy years, however, contributed to the sensitivity of his early style.
- He wrote for orchestra–Fêtes galantes and a work called La Mer (The Sea)–which he wrote while he lived in Brighton, England.
- This enabled him to convey nebulous and haunting melodies, whose textures, sensations, images, and nuances in sound were unprecedented in his time.
- His works have strongly influenced a wide range of composers including Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, George Gershwin, Olivier Messiaen, George Benjamin, and the jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans.
- His early mélodies, inspired by Marie Vasnier, are more virtuosic in character than his later works in the genre, with extensive wordless vocalise; from the Ariettes oubliées (1885–1887) onwards he developed a more restrained style.
- The composer’s greatest works are built on a classical structure, such as a sonata, but they also appear to have been structured around mathematical models, as Howat observed.
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Late Period: Sonatas and Études
Another major influence on his style was the Javanese gamelan, an orchestra comprising bells, gongs, and percussions, which he became familiar with in 1889 thanks to his artistic contacts in Paris. He was the only composer to use the whole-tone scale, made up entirely of whole tones and the octave divided into six equal parts, to such an extent and with such artistry. This enabled him to convey nebulous and haunting melodies, whose textures, sensations, images, and nuances in sound were unprecedented in his time. The composer’s greatest works are built on a classical structure, such as a sonata, but they also appear to have been structured around mathematical models, as Howat observed.
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- In addition to the composers who influenced his own compositions, Debussy held strong views about several others.
- Yet he had no real desire to spend three years in Rome, writing more music to please the Conservatoire moguls while unable to visit his mistress.
- Nevertheless, Debussy protested his label as “Father of Impressionism in music,” and academic circles too believe that the term might be a misnomer.
- At the 1889 Exposition Universelle, he heard gamelan music from Java and the sometimes violent music of the Annamite Theatre of Vietnam.
- He wrote to his wife on 11 August from Dieppe, telling her that their marriage was over, but still making no mention of Bardac.
- Not only Debussy’s use of whole-tone scales, but also his style of word-setting in Pelléas et Mélisande, were the subject of study by Leoš Janáček while he was writing his 1921 opera Káťa Kabanová.
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He suggests that some of Debussy’s pieces can be divided into sections that reflect the golden ratio, frequently by using the numbers of the standard Fibonacci sequence. At times these divisions seem to follow the standard divisions of the overall structure; elsewhere they appear to mark out other significant features of the music. In this, he was a profound influence on composers as diverse as Bartok, Webern, Arnold Schoenberg, and Varese. The sonatas, written during the war, seem to outline a new, more concise, almost elliptical style, perhaps due to a new vision, or just because he was in pain when he wrote them.
Late works, 1906–1917
Claude-Emma, affectionately known as “Chouchou”, was a musical inspiration to the composer (she was the dedicatee of his Children’s Corner suite). 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. Some of it is difficult to play like the Études and pieces such as L’isle joyeuse (The Happy Island). He wrote for orchestra–Fêtes galantes and a work called La Mer (The Sea)–which he wrote while he lived in Brighton, England.
It was in this spirit that Debussy wrote the symphonic poem Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894). His single completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande (first performed in 1902), demonstrates how the Wagnerian technique could be adapted to portray subjects like the dreamy nightmarish figures of this opera who were doomed to self-destruction. In his work, as in his personal life, he was anxious to gather experience from every region that the imaginative mind could explore. In the music of Palestrina, 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. Debussy’s orchestral works include Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894), Nocturnes (1897–1899) and Images (1905–1912).
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In 1890 he began work on an orchestral piece inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher 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. With the advent of the First World War, Debussy became ardently patriotic in his musical opinions. A contemporary influence was Erik Satie, according to Nichols Debussy’s “most faithful friend” amongst French musicians. In May 1893 Debussy attended a theatrical event that was of key importance to his later career – the premiere of Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande, which he immediately determined to turn into an opera. He travelled to Maeterlinck’s home in Ghent in November to secure his consent to an operatic adaptation.
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Best classical music
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- Claude-Emma, affectionately known as “Chouchou”, was a musical inspiration to the composer (she was the dedicatee of his Children’s Corner suite).
- Lesure writes, “The development of free verse 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.
- Some praised the work, but Pierre Lalo, critic of Le Temps, hitherto an admirer of Debussy, wrote, “I do not hear, I do not see, I do not smell the sea”.[n 12] In the same month the composer’s only child was born at their home.
- Since his death, France has celebrated him as one of the most distinguished ambassadors of its culture, and his music is repeatedly heard in film and television.
- 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.
- Another project inspired by Poe – an operatic version of The Devil in the Belfry did not progress beyond sketches.
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His music was to a considerable extent a reaction against Wagner and the German musical tradition. In his final years, he focused on chamber music, completing three of six planned sonatas for different combinations of instruments. Claude Debussy (born August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France—died March 25, 1918, Paris) was a French composer whose works were a seminal force in the music of the 20th century. He developed a highly original system of harmony and musical structure that expressed in many respects the ideals to which the Impressionist and Symbolist painters and writers of his time aspired. As well as Maeterlinck for Pelléas et Mélisande, he drew on Shakespeare and Dickens 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 wrote incidental music for King Lear and planned an opera based on As You Like It, but abandoned that once he turned his attention to setting Maeterlinck’s play.
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Ravel once remarked that upon hearing Debussy’s music, he first understood what real music was.. He did find Debussy displeasing, though, not only for his philosophy when it came to human relationships but also because of Debussy’s recognition as the composer who developed Avant-Garde music, which Ravel maintained was plagiarism of his own Habanera. Nevertheless, Debussy protested his label as “Father of Impressionism in music,” and academic circles too believe that the term might be a misnomer. He dedicated Children’s Corner for piano to his daughter, whose sweetness and love would quell his depressions. Since his death, France has celebrated him as one of the most distinguished ambassadors of its culture, and his music is repeatedly heard in film and television. At the 1889 Exposition Universelle, he heard gamelan music from Java and the sometimes violent music of the Annamite Theatre of Vietnam.