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. The academic and journalist Stephen Walsh calls Pelléas et Mélisande (begun 1893, staged 1902) “a key work for the 20th century”. The composer Olivier Messiaen was fascinated by its “extraordinary harmonic qualities and … transparent instrumental texture”. The opera is composed in what Alan Blyth describes as a sustained and heightened recitative style, with “sensuous, intimate” vocal lines. In October 1905 La mer, Debussy’s most substantial orchestral work, was premiered in Paris by the Orchestre Lamoureux under the direction of Camille Chevillard; the reception was mixed. 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.
Early Years: The Paris Conservatoire and the Prix de Rome
- He travelled to Maeterlinck’s home in Ghent in November to secure his consent to an operatic adaptation.
- 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.
- Estampes for piano (1903) gives impressions of exotic locations, with further echoes of the gamelan in its pentatonic structures.
- The course included music history and theory studies with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, but it is not certain that Debussy, who was apt to skip classes, actually attended these.
- 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.
- Less individual, for good reasons, are the cantatas he wrote as set pieces for the Prix de Rome.
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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). 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.
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- 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.
- He criticized Realism and programmatic writing, instead envisioning a style that would be to music what Manet, Renoir, and Cezanne were to painting and Stéphane Mallarmé to poetry.
- Claude Debussy, along with other notable composers such as Igor Stravinsky, sought to explore new and innovative ways to expand harmonic language and in so doing move away from the Germanic influence of the previous two centuries.
- 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.
- 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”.
- He wrote his own poems for the Proses lyriques (1892–1893) but, in the view of the musical scholar Robert Orledge, “his literary talents were not on a par with his musical imagination”.
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Legacy
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. He aimed to design a new style that would not emulate those of the acclaimed composers, yet his music also reflects that of Wagner, whose operas he heard on visits to Bayreuth, Germany in 1888 and 1889. Based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, it caught the attention of the younger French composers, including Maurice Ravel. Its understatement and deceptively simple declamation also brought an entirely new tone to opera — but an unrepeatable one. He criticized Realism and programmatic writing, instead envisioning a style that would be to music what Manet, Renoir, and Cezanne were to painting and Stéphane Mallarmé to poetry.
What was Claude Debussy’s early life like?
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).
Debussy Sonata for Violin and Piano
He wrote his own poems for the Proses lyriques (1892–1893) but, in the view of the musical scholar Robert Orledge, “his literary talents were not on a par with his musical imagination”. 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. Debussy’s last orchestral work, the ballet Jeux, 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.
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- String Quartet in G Minor and the orchestral prelude “L’Apres midi d’un faune,” composed between 1893 and 1894, were the first masterpieces of the new style.
- He made his music very different from the Romantic style, which other composers used at the time.
- 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 Rimsky-Korsakov which was becoming known in Paris at this time.
- Like Stravinsky, he looked for inspiration in non-European harmonies, which he incorporated in his music, without rendering it “heathenish,” in the sense of undermining its synchronization with the physics of sound.
- 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.
- 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.
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Debussy: Quartet in G minor for Strings, Op. 10
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 Casinojoy casino 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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Music for Solo Instruments and Orchestra
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According to Pierre Louÿs, 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”. In 1889, Debussy held conversations with his former teacher Guiraud, which included exploration of harmonic possibilities at the piano. 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 Rimsky-Korsakov which was becoming known in Paris at this time. 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 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.