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Claude Debussy

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Claude Debussy

Achille-Claude Debussy (/ˌdɛ.buː.ˈsiː/) (August 22, 1862 – March 25, 1918) was a composer of European classical music. He developed the style commonly referred to as impressionist music, a term which he dismissed. Debussy was not only one of the most important French composers but was also one of the most important figures in music at the turn of the last century; his music represents the transition from late-romantic music to 20th century modernist music.

Life and Work

Early life and studies

Debussy at the Villa Médici in Rome, 1885. The composer is in the centre, wearing a white jacket

Debussy began music instruction when he was nine years old, but his talents soon became evident and at age ten Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire. Debussy studied with Ernest Guiraud, Cesar Franck and others at the Paris Conservatoire (1872-84). As the winner of the Prix de Rome, he received a scholarship by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which included a four-year residence at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome to further his studies (1885-7). According to letters from this period, Debussy often was depressed and unable to compose, but he also met Franz Liszt, and finally composed four pieces, which were sent to the Academy; the symphonic ode Zuleima (after a text by Heinrich Heine), the orchestral piece Printemps, and the cantata La damoiselle élue (1887-88), which was criticized by the Academy as "bizarre" and in which some stylistic features of Debussy's later style emerged for the first time. The fourth piece was the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra, which was still indebted to Cesar Franck's music and withdrawn by the composer himself.

With his visits to Bayreuth (1888, 1889) Debussy was exposed to Wagnerian opera, which was to have a lasting impact on his work. Later, in Paris, during the Exposition Universelle (1889) Debussy heard Javanese music. Wagner's influence is evident in the La damoiselle élue and the Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire (1889) but other songs of the period, notably the settings of Verlaine (Ariettes oubliées, Trois mélodies, Fêtes galantes, set 1) are in a more capricious style.

The first masterpieces

Debussy at the piano, behind him is the composer Ernest Chausson, 1893

Beginning in the 1890s, Debussy developed his own musical language largely independent of Wagner's style and heavy emotionalism. In reaction to the enormous works of Wagner and other late-romantic composers, Debussy chose to write in smaller, more accessible forms. 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 modes, such as the whole-tone scale, which creates a sense of floating, ethereal harmony.

Influenced by the contemporary symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé Debussy wrote one of his most famous works, the revolutionary Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. In contrast to the large late-romantic orchestra, Debussy wrote this piece for a smaller ensemble, emphasizing orchestral colours and timbres of the instruments. Even if Mallarmé himself and Debussy's colleague and friend Paul Dukas were impressed by this piece, the work caused controversy at its premiere; the composer Camille Saint-Saëns for example thought it "pretty" but lacking any "style". It subsequently launched Debussy into the spotlight as one of the leading composers of the era.

Pelléas et Mélisande

In reaction to Wagner and his overblown late-romantic operas, Debussy wrote the mellow, symbolist opera Pelléas et Mélisande, which would be his only finished opera. Based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, the opera proved to be immensely influential to younger French composers, including Maurice Ravel. Pelléas, with its rule of understatement and deceptively simple declamation, also brought an entirely new tone to opera — but an unrepeatable one. These works brought a fluidity of rhythm and colour quite new to Western music.

Orchestral music: Les nocturnes, La Mer, Images

Among Debussy's major orchestral works are the three Nocturnes (1899), characteristic studies in veiled harmony and texture ('Nuages'), exuberant ('Fêtes'), and whole-tone ('Sirènes'). 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.

The three Images (1905-1911) are more loosely linked, and the largest, Ibéria is itself a triptych, a medley of Spanish allusions and fleeting impressions.

Music for piano

During this period Debussy wrote much piano music. The Suite bergamasque (1890) recalls, in Verlainian fashion, rococo decorousness with a modern cynicism and puzzlement. This suite contains Debussy's most popular piece Clair de Lune. The set of pieces entitled Pour le piano, (1901) utilises rich harmonies and textures which would prove influential to 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 a slow, mysterious court dance, but only remotely in the manner of Jean-Philippe Rameau.

In his evocative Estampes for piano (1903), Debussy gives impressions of exotic locations, such as an Asian landscape in the pentatonic Pagodes, and of Spain in La soirée dans Grenade. Debussy wrote his famous Children's Corner Suite (1909) for his beloved daughter whom he nicknamed Chou-chou. These beautiful and poetic pieces recall classicism as well as a new wave of rag-time music. Debussy also pokes fun at Richard Wagner in the popular piece Golliwogg's Cake-walk.

The first set of Preludes, twelve in total, proved to be his most successful set of pieces for piano, frequently compared to Chopin's famous set of preludes. These masterpieces of subtlety and description are filled with rich, unusual and daring harmonies. These pieces include the popular La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin, La Cathédrale Engloutie.

During this period and up until his death, Debussy worked on other opera projects and left substantial sketches for two pieces after tales by Edgar Allan Poe (Le diable dans le beffroi and La chute de la maison Usher), but neither was completed.

Le martyre de St. Sébastien, Jeux, and a second volume of Preludes

The harmonies and chord progressions frequently exploit dissonances without any formal resolution. Unlike in his earlier work, Debussy no longer hides discords in lush harmonies. The forms are far more irregular and fragmented. The whole tone scale dominates much of his late music.

The music for Gabriele d'Annunzio's mystery play Le martyre de St. Sébastien (1911) a lush and dramatic work and written in only two months, is remarkable in sustaining a late antique modal atmosphere that otherwise was touched only in relatively short piano pieces.

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 working desk and evokes a distant past. The pianist Claudio Arrau considered the piece as one of Debussy's greatest preludes: "It's miraculous that he created, in so few notes, this kind of depth." [1]

Late music: En blanc et noir, the Etudes and the three Sonatas

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 was to become popular after Debussy's death. Debussy planned a set of six sonatas, but this plan was cut short by his death in 1918.

Claude Debussy died in Paris on March 25, 1918 from rectal cancer, during the bombardment of Paris by airships and long-distance guns during the last German offensive of World War I. This was a time when the military situation of France was considered desperate by many, and these 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 victory was celebrated in France. He was interred there in the Cimetière de Passy, and French culture has ever since celebrated Debussy as one of its most distinguished representatives.

Musical style

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, including the music of Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez and the minimalist music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. He also influenced many important figures in Jazz.

It is essential to note that the term "impressionist", widely applied to Debussy and the music he influenced, is a matter of intense debate within academic circles. It is widely held 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'-in a way realities-what the imbeciles call 'impressionism' is a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by art critics."

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

  1. Frequent use of long pedal points
  2. Glittering passages and webs of figurations which distract from occasional absence of tonality
  3. Frequent use of parallel chords which are "in essence not harmonies at all, but rather 'chordal melodies', enriched unisons."
  4. Bitonality, or at least bitonal chords
  5. "Use of the whole-tone scale."
  6. 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)

Debussy in film and pop culture

Debussy's music has been used countless times in film and television.

  • Clair de lune is especially popular. It appears to be a great favorite with the character Uncle Bally in George Stevens' Giant. The piece was used in The Right Stuff, Philip Kaufman's film about a NASA space program. Recently it featured in the movie Man on Fire and in the final minutes of Ocean's Eleven, accompanying the fountains in front of the Bellagio hotel and casino. The British horror movie Dog Soldiers used Clair de lune for comical effect; in the film the light of the moon ('clair de lune' in French) is to be feared because it will awaken werewolves. Terrance McNally's play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune features two characters who make love, then enter a long, heated argument, which is only resolved after hearing Clair de lune, referred to as the "most beautiful song in the world." The tune is also played by the music box, given to Heinrich Harrer by the Dalai Lama in the film Seven Years in Tibet.
  • Arabesque No 1 can be heard during the dinner scene in The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock. The theme song to Jack Horkheimer's syndicated weekly TV series, Star Gazer (previously called Star Hustler) is a synthesized version of the same piece, performed by Isao Tomita. It is also listened to and frequently referenced by the characters in Shunji Iwai's film All About Lily Chou-Chou.

Notable compositions

Piano

including Clair de Lune
  • Rêverie (1890)
  • Pour Le Piano (1899)
  • Estampes (1903)
  • L'Isle Joyeuse (1904)
  • Images, sets one and two (1905, 1907)
a very notable piece being Reflets dans l'eau
including La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin, La Cathédrale Engloutie and Canope
  • Etudes, book one and two (1915)

Two pianos or piano, four hands

  • Six épigraphes antiques for piano, four hands (1914, from the music for Chansons de Bilitis)
  • En blanc et noir for two pianos (1915)

Opera

Cantatas

  • L'enfant prodigue for soprano, baritone, and tenor and orchestra (1884)
  • La demoiselle élue for two soloists, female choir, and orchestra (1887-1888, text by Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
  • Ode à la France for soprano, mixed choir, and orchestra (1916-1917, completion by Marius Francois Gaillard)

Orchestral

  • Le printemps for choir of four voices and orchestra (1884)
  • Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, (tone poem) for orchestra (1894)
  • Nocturnes for orchestra and chorus (1899)
  • Dances Sacrée et Profane for harp and orchestra (1903)
  • Music for Le roi Lear, two pieces for orchestra (1904)
  • La Mer, esquisses symphoniques (Symphonic Sketches) for orchestra (1905)
  • Images for orchestra (1905-1911)
  • Le martyre de St. Sébastien, fragments symphoniques for orchestra (from the music for the play by d'Annunzio, 1911)
  • Khamma, ballet (1911-1912, orchestrated by Charles Koechlin)
  • Jeux, ballet (1913)
  • La boîte à joujoux, ballet (1913, orchestrated by André Caplet)

Music for solo instruments and orchestra

  • Fantaisie for piano and orchestra (1889-1890)
  • Rhapsody for clarinet and orchestra (or piano) (1909-1910)
  • Petite pièce for clarinet and orchestra (or piano) (1910)
  • Rhapsody for alto saxophone and orchestra (or piano) (1901-1911)

Chamber music

  • String Quartet in G minor (1893)
  • Music for Chansons de Bilitis for two flutes, two harps, and celesta (1901, text by Pierre Louys)
  • Syrinx for flute (1913)
  • Sonata for cello and piano (1915)
  • Sonata for flute, viola and harp (1915)
  • Sonata for violin and piano (1917)

See also: List of compositions by Claude Debussy

Media

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References

  • Reti, Rudolph (1958). Tonality, Atonality, Pantonality: A study of some trends in twentieth century music. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313204780.
  • Jean Barraqué, Debussy (Solfèges), Editions du Seuil, 1977. ISBN 2020002426

Further Reading

Simon Trezise (Editor), The Cambridge Companion to Debussy, Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0521654785 Jane Fulcher (Editor), Debussy and His World (The Bard Music Festival), Princeton University Press, 2001. ISBN 0691090424

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