Claude Debussy (1862–1918,) fully Achille-Claude Debussy, was a French composer whose works were a seminal force in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is celebrated for carrying the ideas of impressionist art and symbolist poetry into music using melodies based on the whole-tone scale and delicate harmonies exploiting overtones.
Born in St Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, Debussy was educated at the Paris Conservatoire (1873–84,) where he studied the piano and composition. In 1884, he won the Prix de Rome with his cantata L’enfant prodigue. His early work was influenced by Richard Wagner, for whom he had a great admiration. Still, he developed a more experimental and individual vein in his first mature work, the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem, which first won him fame.
Debussy further added to his reputation with his admired operatic setting of composer Maurice Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande, begun in 1892 but not performed until 1902, and some outstanding piano pieces, Images and Preludes, in which he moved further from traditional formulae and experimented with novel techniques and effects, producing the pictures in sound which led to his work being described as ‘musical Impressionism.’
Debussy extended this new idiom to orchestral music in La Mer (1905,) the orchestrated Images, and other pieces. Later, he elaborated his piano style, as in the scintillating Feux d’artifice and the atmospheric La cathédrale engloutie. He composed much chamber music in his later period, including pieces for the flute and the harp, two instruments peculiarly suited to his type of music.
Debussy’s intensely original compositions explored new and original avenues of musical expression. They profoundly affected French music in general and piano music, particularly at the turn of the century.
English music scholar Roger Nichols wrote Debussy (1973) and Debussy Remembered (1992.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Claude Debussy
Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part.
—Claude Debussy
Topics: Enjoyment
Music is the space between the notes.
—Claude Debussy
Topics: Music
Do not allow the accents in the brass to produce space between the notes.
—Claude Debussy
Topics: Music
How much has to be explored and discarded before reaching the naked flesh of feeling.
—Claude Debussy
Topics: Emotions
Collect impressions. Don’t be in a hurry to write them down. Because that’s something music can do better than painting: it can centralise variations of colour and light within a single picture—a truth generally ignored, obvious as it is.
—Claude Debussy
Topics: Music
There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law. I love music passionately. And because l love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth, an open-air art boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art.
—Claude Debussy
Topics: Music
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Hector Berlioz French Composer
John Cage American Composer
Igor Stravinsky Russian-born American Composer
Stephen Sondheim American Musician
Jean Sibelius Finnish Composer
Gian Carlo Menotti Italian-born American Composer
Ludwig van Beethoven German Composer
Frank Zappa American Rock Guitarist, Singer, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach German Composer
Arthur Rubinstein American Pianist