Claude Debussy

I

Introduction

Claude Debussy (1862-1918), French composer, whose harmonic innovations helped pave the way for the musical upheavals of the 20th century. Achille Claude Debussy was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and studied at the Paris Conservatoire, which he entered at the age of 10. In 1879, as private musician to Nadezhda von Meck, the patron of Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Debussy traveled to Florence, Italy; Venice, Italy; Vienna, Austria; and Moscow. While in Russia Debussy became acquainted with the works of such Russian composers as Tchaikovsky, Aleksandr Borodin, Mily Balakirev, and Modest Mussorgsky and with Russian folk and Romani (Gypsy) music. Debussy won the coveted Grand Prix de Rome in 1884 for his cantata L'enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Son). He then studied in Rome for two years, as required by the terms of the award, submitting new compositions regularly but unsuccessfully to the Grand Prix committee. Among these were the symphonic suite Printemps and a cantata, La demoiselle élue, based on the poem “The Blessed Damozel” by British writer Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

II

Early Works

During the 1890s Debussy's works were performed with increasing frequency, and despite their controversial nature, he began to gain some recognition as a composer. Outstanding pieces from this period are the String Quartet in G Minor (1893) and the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, 1894), his first mature orchestral work, derived from a poem by French symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé.

Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, based on the play of the same name by Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck, was produced in 1902. It earned Debussy widespread fame for the extent to which his score retained and enhanced the abstract, dreamlike quality of Maeterlinck's play and for his treatment of the melody, which virtually duplicates the rhythm of natural speech. Regarded by some critics as a perfectly wedded fusion of music and drama, Pelléas et Mélisande has had frequent revivals.

From 1902 to 1910 Debussy wrote chiefly for the piano, rejecting the traditional percussive approach to the instrument and emphasizing instead its capabilities for delicate expressiveness. His most important works of this period include Estampes (Engravings, 1903), L'île joyeuse (The Isle of Joy, 1904), Images (two series, 1905 and 1907), and several preludes.

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In 1909 Debussy learned that he was afflicted with cancer. Most of his late works are chamber music, including three extraordinary sonatas, for cello; for violin; and for flute, viola, and harp. Among Debussy's numerous other important works are the ballet score Jeux (Games, 1912), the orchestral poem La mer (The Sea, 1905), and the songs in Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire (Five Poems of Baudelaire, 1889; see Baudelaire, Charles Pierre).

III

Forerunner of Modern Style

The music of Debussy's mature style was the forerunner of much modern music and made him one of the most important composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His innovations were chiefly harmonic. Although he did not devise the whole-tone scale, he was the first composer to exploit it successfully. His treatment of chords was radical for its time: Taking advantage of their individual colors and effects, he arranged them so as to weaken, rather than support, the illusion of any specified key. The lack of fixed tonality in Debussy's music gives it a dreamy quality that some critics of his time referred to as musical impressionism, after the resemblance they saw to the pictorial effect achieved by artists of the impressionist school (see Impressionism). The term impressionism is still used to describe Debussy's work. Debussy himself did not create a school of composition, but he liberated music from the limitations of traditional harmony. Moreover, the high quality of his output proved to later composers the validity of experimenting with new ideas and techniques.

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