Achille Claude Debussy[n 1] (French pronunciation:[aʃilkloddəbysi]; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the firstImpressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Born to a family of modest means and little cultural involvement, Debussy showed enough musical talent to be admitted at the age of ten to France's leading music college, theConservatoire de Paris. 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.
Debussy's orchestral works includePrélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894),Nocturnes (1897–1899) andImages (1905–1912). His music was to a considerable extent a reaction againstWagner and the German musical tradition. He regarded the classicalsymphony as obsolete and sought an alternative in his "symphonic sketches",La mer (1903–1905). His piano works include sets of 24Préludes and 12Études. Throughout his career he wrotemélodies based on a wide variety of poetry, including his own. He was greatly influenced by theSymbolist poetic movement of the later 19th century. A small number of works, including the earlyLa Damoiselle élue and the lateLe Martyre de saint Sébastien have important parts for chorus. In his final years, he focused on chamber music, completing three ofsix planned sonatas for different combinations of instruments.
With early influences including Russian and Far Eastern music and works byChopin, Debussy developed his own style of harmony and orchestral colouring, derided – and unsuccessfully resisted – by much of the musical establishment of the day. His works have strongly influenced a wide range of composers includingBéla Bartók,Igor Stravinsky,George Gershwin,Olivier Messiaen,George Benjamin, and thejazz pianist and composerBill Evans. Debussy died fromcancer at his home in Paris at the age of 55 after a composing career of a little more than 30 years.
Debussy was born on 22 August 1862 inSaint-Germain-en-Laye,Seine-et-Oise, on the north-west fringes of Paris.[7][n 2] He was the eldest of the five children of Manuel-Achille Debussy and his wife, Victorine,née Manoury. Debussy senior ran a china shop and his wife was a seamstress.[2][9] The shop was unsuccessful, and closed in 1864; the family moved to Paris, first living with Victorine's mother, inClichy, and, from 1868, in their own apartment in theRue Saint-Honoré. Manuel worked in a printing factory.[10]
In 1870, to escape thesiege of Paris during theFranco-Prussian War, Debussy's pregnant mother took him and his sister Adèle to their paternal aunt's home inCannes, where they remained until the following year. During his stay in Cannes, the seven-year-old Debussy had his first piano lessons; his aunt paid for him to study with an Italian musician, Jean Cerutti.[2] Manuel Debussy remained in Paris and joined the forces of theCommune; after its defeat by French government troops in 1871 he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, of which he only served one year. His fellow Communard prisoners included his friend Charles de Sivry, a musician.[11] Sivry's mother, Antoinette Mauté de Fleurville, gave piano lessons, and at his instigation the young Debussy became one of her pupils.[12][n 3]
At the Conservatoire, Debussy initially made good progress. Marmontel said of him, "A charming child, a truly artistic temperament; much can be expected of him".[17] Another teacher was less impressed: Émile Durand wrote in a report, "Debussy would be an excellent pupil if he were less sketchy and less cavalier." A year later he described Debussy as "desperately careless".[18] In July 1874 Debussy received the award ofdeuxième accessit[n 4] for his performance as soloist in the first movement ofChopin's Second Piano Concerto at the Conservatoire's annual competition. He was a fine pianist and an outstandingsight reader, who could have had a professional career had he wished,[20] but he was only intermittently diligent in his studies.[21] He advanced topremier accessit in 1875 and second prize in 1877, but failed at the competitions in 1878 and 1879. These failures made him ineligible to continue in the Conservatoire's piano classes, but he remained a student for harmony, solfège and, later, composition.[10]
With Marmontel's help Debussy secured a summer vacation job in 1879 as resident pianist at theChâteau de Chenonceau, where he rapidly acquired a taste for luxury that was to remain with him all his life.[10][22] His first compositions date from this period, two settings of poems byAlfred de Musset: "Ballade à la lune" and "Madrid, princesse des Espagnes".[10] The following year he secured a job as pianist in the household ofNadezhda von Meck, the patroness ofTchaikovsky.[23] He travelled with her family for the summers of 1880 to 1882, staying at various places in France, Switzerland and Italy, as well as at her home in Moscow.[24] He composed hisPiano Trio in G major for von Meck's ensemble, and made a transcription for piano duet of three dances from Tchaikovsky'sSwan Lake.[10][n 5]
At the end of 1880 Debussy, while continuing his studies at the Conservatoire, was engaged as accompanist for Marie Moreau-Sainti's singing class; he took this role for four years.[26] Among the members of the class was Marie Vasnier; Debussy was greatly taken with her, and she inspired him to compose: he wrote 27 songs dedicated to her during their seven-year relationship.[27] She was the wife of Henri Vasnier, a prominent civil servant, and much younger than her husband. She soon became Debussy's lover as well as his muse. Whether Vasnier was content to tolerate his wife's affair with the young student or was simply unaware of it is not clear, but he and Debussy remained on excellent terms, and he continued to encourage the composer in his career.[28]
At the Conservatoire, Debussy incurred the disapproval of the faculty, particularly his composition teacher, Guiraud, for his failure to follow the orthodox rules of composition then prevailing.[29][n 6] Nevertheless, in 1884 Debussy won France's most prestigious musical award, thePrix de Rome,[31] with hiscantataL'enfant prodigue. The Prix carried with it a residence at theVilla Medici, theFrench Academy in Rome, to further the winner's studies. Debussy was there from January 1885 to March 1887, with three or possibly four absences of several weeks when he returned to France, chiefly to see Marie Vasnier.[6]
Initially Debussy found the artistic atmosphere of the Villa Medici stifling, the company boorish, the food bad, and the accommodation "abominable".[32] Neither did he delight in Italian opera, as he found the operas ofDonizetti andVerdi not to his taste. He was much more impressed by the music of the 16th-century composersPalestrina andLassus, which he heard atSanta Maria dell'Anima: "The only church music I will accept".[6] He was often depressed and unable to compose, but he was inspired byFranz Liszt, who visited the students and played for them.[6] In June 1885, Debussy wrote of his desire to follow his own way, saying, "I am sure the Institute would not approve, for, naturally it regards the path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamoured of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas!"[33]
Debussy finally composed four pieces that were submitted to the Academy: the symphonic odeZuleima (based on a text byHeinrich Heine); the orchestral piecePrintemps; the cantataLa Damoiselle élue (1887–1888), the first piece in which the stylistic features of his later music began to emerge; and theFantaisie for piano and orchestra, which was heavily based on Franck's music and was eventually withdrawn by Debussy. The Academy chided him for writing music that was "bizarre, incomprehensible and unperformable".[34] Although Debussy's works showed the influence ofJules Massenet, the latter concluded, "He is an enigma".[35] During his years in Rome Debussy composed – not for the Academy – most of hisVerlaine cycle,Ariettes oubliées, which made little impact at the time but was successfully republished in 1903 after the composer had become well known.[36]
A week after his return to Paris in 1887, Debussy heard the first act of Wagner'sTristan und Isolde at theConcerts Lamoureux, and judged it "decidedly the finest thing I know".[6] In 1888 and 1889 he went to the annual festivals of Wagner's operas atBayreuth. He responded positively to Wagner's sensuousness, mastery of form, and striking harmonies,[2] and was briefly influenced by them,[37] but, unlike some other French composers of his generation, he concluded that there was no future in attempting to adopt and develop Wagner's style.[38] He commented in 1903 that Wagner was "a beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn".[39]
In 1889, at theParis Exposition Universelle, Debussy first heardJavanesegamelan music. The gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, and ensemble textures appealed to him, and echoes of them are heard in "Pagodes" in his piano suiteEstampes.[40] He also attended two concerts ofRimsky-Korsakov's music, conducted by the composer.[41] This too made an impression on him, and its harmonic freedom and non-Teutonic tone colours influenced his own developing musical style.[42][n 7]
Marie Vasnier ended her liaison with Debussy soon after his final return from Rome, although they remained on good enough terms for him to dedicate to her one more song, "Mandoline", in 1890.[44] Later in 1890 Debussy metErik Satie, who proved a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to composition. Both werebohemians, enjoying the same café society and struggling to survive financially.[45] In the same year Debussy began a relationship with Gabrielle (Gaby) Dupont, a tailor's daughter fromLisieux; in July 1893 they began living together.[41]
Debussy continued to compose songs, piano pieces and other works, some of which were publicly performed, but his music made only a modest impact, although his fellow composers recognised his potential by electing him to the committee of theSociété Nationale de Musique in 1893.[41] HisString Quartet was premiered by theYsaÿe string quartet at the Société Nationale in the same year. In May 1893 Debussy attended a theatrical event that was of key importance to his later career – the premiere ofMaurice Maeterlinck's playPelléas et Mélisande, which he immediately determined to turn into an opera.[41] He travelled to Maeterlinck's home inGhent in November to secure his consent to an operatic adaptation.[41]
In February 1894 Debussy completed the first draft of Act I of hisoperatic version ofPelléas et Mélisande, and for most of the year worked to complete the work.[46] While still living with Dupont, he had an affair with the singer Thérèse Roger, and in 1894 he announced their engagement. His behaviour was widely condemned; anonymous letters circulated denouncing his treatment of both women, as well as his financial irresponsibility and debts.[46] The engagement was broken off, and several of Debussy's friends and supporters disowned him, includingErnest Chausson, hitherto one of his strongest supporters.[47]
In terms of musical recognition, Debussy made a step forward in December 1894, when thesymphonic poemPrélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, based onStéphane Mallarmé's poem, was premiered at a concert of the Société Nationale.[46] The following year he completed the first draft ofPelléas and began efforts to get it staged. In May 1898 he made his first contacts withAndré Messager andAlbert Carré, respectively the musical director and general manager of theOpéra-Comique, Paris, about presenting the opera.[46]
Debussy abandoned Dupont for her friend Marie-Rosalie Texier, known as "Lilly", whom he married in October 1899, after threatening suicide if she refused him.[48] She was affectionate, practical, straightforward, and well liked by Debussy's friends and associates,[49] but he became increasingly irritated by her intellectual limitations and lack of musical sensitivity.[50] The marriage lasted barely five years.[51]
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. They called themselvesLes Apaches – roughly "The Hooligans" – to represent their status as "artistic outcasts".[52] The membership was fluid, but at various times includedMaurice Ravel,Ricardo Viñes,Igor Stravinsky andManuel de Falla.[n 8] In the same year the first two of Debussy's three orchestralNocturnes were first performed. Although they did not make any great impact with the public they were well reviewed by musicians includingPaul Dukas,Alfred Bruneau andPierre de Bréville.[55] The complete set was given the following year.[46]
Like many other composers of the time, Debussy supplemented his income by teaching and writing.[n 9] For most of 1901 he had a sideline as music critic ofLa Revue Blanche, adopting the pen name "Monsieur Croche". He expressed trenchant views on composers ("I hate sentimentality – his name isCamille Saint-Saëns"), institutions (on the Paris Opéra: "A stranger would take it for a railway station, and, once inside, would mistake it for a Turkish bath"), conductors ("Nikisch is a unique virtuoso, so much so that his virtuosity seems to make him forget the claims of good taste"), musical politics ("The English actually think that a musician can manage an opera house successfully!"), and audiences ("their almost drugged expression of boredom, indifference and even stupidity").[59] He later collected his criticisms with a view to their publication as a book; it was published posthumously asMonsieur Croche, Antidilettante.[60]
In January 1902 rehearsals began at the Opéra-Comique for the opening ofPelléas et Mélisande. For three months, Debussy attended rehearsals practically every day. In February there was conflict between Maeterlinck on the one hand and Debussy, Messager and Carré on the other about the casting of Mélisande. Maeterlinck wanted his mistress,Georgette Leblanc, to sing the role, and was incensed when she was passed over in favour of the Scottish sopranoMary Garden.[61][n 10] The opera opened on 30 April 1902, and although the first-night audience was divided between admirers and sceptics, the work quickly became a success.[61] It made Debussy a well-known name in France and abroad;The Times commented that the opera had "provoked more discussion than any work of modern times, excepting, of course, those ofRichard Strauss".[63] The Apaches, led by Ravel (who attended every one of the 14 performances in the first run), were loud in their support; the conservative faculty of the Conservatoire tried in vain to stop its students from seeing the opera.[64] The vocal score was published in early May, and the full orchestral score in 1904.[51]
In 1903 there was public recognition of Debussy's stature when he was appointed a Chevalier of theLégion d'honneur,[51] but his social standing suffered a great blow when another turn in his private life caused a scandal the following year. One of his pupils wasRaoul Bardac, son ofEmma and her husband, Parisian banker Sigismond Bardac. Raoul introduced his teacher to his mother, to whom Debussy quickly became greatly attracted. She was sophisticated, a brilliant conversationalist, an accomplished singer, and relaxed about marital fidelity, having been the mistress and muse ofGabriel Fauré a few years earlier.[65] After despatching Lilly to her parental home at Bichain inVilleneuve-la-Guyard on 15 July 1904, Debussy took Emma away, staying incognito inJersey and then atPourville in Normandy.[51] He wrote to his wife on 11 August fromDieppe, telling her that their marriage was over, but still making no mention of Bardac. When he returned to Paris he set up home on his own, taking a flat in a differentarrondissement.[51] On 14 October, five days before their fifth wedding anniversary, Lilly Debussy attempted suicide, shooting herself in the chest with a revolver;[51][n 11] she survived, although the bullet remained lodged in hervertebrae for the rest of her life.[70] The ensuing scandal caused Bardac's family to disown her, and Debussy lost many good friends including Dukas and Messager.[71] His relations with Ravel, never close, were exacerbated when the latter joined other former friends of Debussy in contributing to a fund to support the deserted Lilly.[72]
The Bardacs divorced in May 1905.[51] Finding the hostility in Paris intolerable, Debussy and Emma (now pregnant) went to England. They stayed at theGrand Hotel, Eastbourne in July and August, where Debussy corrected the proofs of his symphonic sketchesLa mer, celebrating his divorce on 2 August.[51] After a brief visit to London, the couple returned to Paris in September, buying a house in a courtyard development off the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne (nowAvenue Foch), Debussy's home for the rest of his life.[51]
Debussy's last home
In October 1905La mer, Debussy's most substantial orchestral work, was premiered in Paris by theOrchestre Lamoureux under the direction ofCamille Chevillard;[2] the reception was mixed. Some praised the work, butPierre Lalo, critic ofLe Temps, hitherto an admirer of Debussy, wrote, "I do not hear, I do not see, I do not smell the sea".[73][n 12] In the same month the composer's only child was born at their home.[51] Claude-Emma, affectionately known as "Chouchou", was a musical inspiration to the composer (she was the dedicatee of hisChildren's Corner suite). She outlived her father by scarcely a year, succumbing to thediphtheria epidemic of 1919.[75] Mary Garden said, "I honestly don't know if Debussy ever loved anybody really. He loved his music – and perhaps himself. I think he was wrapped up in his genius",[76] but biographers are agreed that whatever his relations with lovers and friends, Debussy was devoted to his daughter.[77][78][79]
Debussy and Emma Bardac eventually married in 1908, their troubled union enduring for the rest of his life. The following year began well, when at Fauré's invitation, Debussy became a member of the governing council of the Conservatoire.[51] His success in London was consolidated in April 1909, when he conductedPrélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and theNocturnes at theQueen's Hall;[80] in May he was present at the first London production ofPelléas et Mélisande, atCovent Garden. In the same year, Debussy was diagnosed withcolorectal cancer, from which he was to die nine years later.[51]
Debussy's works began to feature increasingly in concert programmes at home and overseas. In 1910Gustav Mahler conducted theNocturnes andPrélude à l'après-midi d'un faune in New York in successive months.[81] In the same year, visiting Budapest, Debussy commented that his works were better known there than in Paris.[2] In 1912Sergei Diaghilev commissioned a new ballet score,Jeux. That, and the threeImages, premiered the following year, were the composer's last orchestral works.[81]Jeux was unfortunate in its timing: two weeks after the premiere, in March 1913, Diaghilev presented the first performance of Stravinsky'sThe Rite of Spring, a sensational event that monopolised discussion in musical circles, and effectively sidelinedJeux along with Fauré'sPénélope, which had opened a week before.[82]
Debussy in 1908
In 1915 Debussy underwent one of the earliestcolostomy operations. It achieved only a temporary respite, and occasioned him considerable frustration ("There are mornings when the effort of dressing seems like one of the twelve labours of Hercules").[83] He also had a fierce enemy at this period in the form ofCamille Saint-Saëns, who in a letter to Fauré condemned Debussy'sEn blanc et noir: "It's incredible, and the door of theInstitut [de France] must at all costs be barred against a man capable of such atrocities". Saint-Saëns had been a member of the Institut since 1881: Debussy never became one.[84] His health continued to decline; he gave his final concert on 14 September 1917 and became bedridden in early 1918.[75]
Debussy died of colon cancer on 25 March 1918 at his home, aged 55. TheFirst World War was still raging and Paris was under Germanaerial and artillery bombardment. The military situation did not permit the honour of a public funeral with ceremonious graveside orations. The funeral procession made its way through deserted streets to a temporary grave atPère Lachaise Cemetery as theGerman guns bombarded the city. Debussy's body was reinterred the following year in the smallPassy Cemetery sequestered behind theTrocadéro, fulfilling his wish to rest "among the trees and the birds"; his wife and daughter are buried with him.[85]
In a survey of Debussy's oeuvre shortly after the composer's death, the criticErnest Newman wrote, "It would be hardly too much to say that Debussy spent a third of his life in the discovery of himself, a third in the free and happy realisation of himself, and the final third in the partial, painful loss of himself".[86] 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.[2]
The analyst David Cox wrote in 1974 that Debussy, admiring Wagner's attempts to combine all the creative arts, "created a new, instinctive, dreamlike world of music, lyrical and pantheistic, contemplative and objective – a kind of art, in fact, which seemed to reach out into all aspects of experience".[87] In 1988 the composer and scholarWilfrid Mellers wrote of Debussy:
Because of, rather than in spite of, his preoccupation with chords in themselves, he deprived music of the sense of harmonic progression, broke down three centuries' dominance of harmonic tonality, and showed how the melodic conceptions of tonality typical of primitive folk-music and of medieval music might be relevant to the twentieth century[88]
Debussy did not give his worksopus numbers, apart from hisString Quartet, Op. 10 in G minor (also the only work where the composer's title included akey).[89] His works were catalogued and indexed by the musicologistFrançois Lesure in 1977 (revised in 2003)[90] and theirLesure number ("L" followed by a number) is sometimes used as a suffix to their title in concert programmes and recordings.
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 friendGeorges Jean-Aubry commented that Debussy "admirably imitated Massenet's melodic turns of phrase" in the cantataL'enfant prodigue (1884) which won him the Prix de Rome.[91] A more characteristically Debussian work from his early years isLa Damoiselle élue, recasting the traditional form fororatorios and cantatas, using a chamber orchestra and a small body of choral tone and using new or long-neglected scales and harmonies.[91] His earlymélodies, inspired by Marie Vasnier, are more virtuosic in character than his later works in the genre, with extensive wordlessvocalise; from theAriettes oubliées (1885–1887) onwards he developed a more restrained style. He wrote his own poems for theProses lyriques (1892–1893) but, in the view of the musical scholarRobert Orledge, "his literary talents were not on a par with his musical imagination".[92]
The musicologistJacques-Gabriel Prod'homme wrote that, together withLa Demoiselle élue, theAriettes oubliées and theCinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire (1889) show "the new, strange way which the young musician will hereafter follow".[15] Newman concurred: "There is a good deal of Wagner, especially ofTristan, in the idiom. But the work as a whole is distinctive, and the first in which we get a hint of the Debussy we were to know later – the lover of vague outlines, of half-lights, of mysteriousconsonances and dissonances of colour, the apostle of languor, the exclusivist in thought and in style."[86] During the next few years Debussy developed his personal style, without, at this stage, breaking sharply away from French musical traditions. Much of his music from this period is on a small scale, such as theTwo Arabesques,Valse romantique,Suite bergamasque, and the first set ofFêtes galantes.[86] Newman remarked that, likeChopin, the Debussy of this period appears as a liberator from Germanic styles of composition – offering instead "an exquisite, pellucid style" capable of conveying "not only gaiety and whimsicality but emotion of a deeper sort".[86] In a 2004 study, Mark DeVoto comments that Debussy's early works are harmonically no more adventurous than existing music by Fauré;[93] in a 2007 book about the piano works, Margery Halford observes thatTwo Arabesques (1888–1891) and "Rêverie" (1890) have "the fluidity and warmth of Debussy's later style" but are not harmonically innovative. Halford cites the popular"Clair de Lune" (1890), the third of the four movements ofSuite Bergamasque, as a transitional work pointing towards the composer's mature style.[94]
Musicians from Debussy's time onwards have regardedPrélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894) as his first orchestral masterpiece.[2][86][95] Newman considered it "completely original in idea, absolutely personal in style, and logical and coherent from first to last, without a superfluous bar or even a superfluous note";[86]Pierre Boulez observed, "Modern music was awakened byPrélude à l'après-midi d'un faune".[96] Most of the major works for which Debussy is best known were written between the mid-1890s and the mid-1900s.[86] They include the String Quartet (1893),Pelléas et Mélisande (1893–1902), theNocturnes for Orchestra (1899) andLa mer (1903–1905).[2] The suitePour le piano (1894–1901) is, in Halford's view, one of the first examples of the mature Debussy as a composer for the piano: "a major landmark ... and an enlargement of the use of piano sonorities".[94]
In the String Quartet (1893), the gamelan sonorities Debussy had heard four years earlier are recalled in thepizzicatos andcross-rhythms of thescherzo.[92] Debussy's biographerEdward Lockspeiser comments that this movement shows the composer's rejection of "the traditional dictum that string instruments should be predominantly lyrical".[97] The work influenced Ravel, whose ownString Quartet, written ten years later, has noticeably Debussian features.[98] The academic and journalist Stephen Walsh callsPelléas et Mélisande (begun 1893, staged 1902) "a key work for the 20th century".[99] The composerOlivier Messiaen was fascinated by its "extraordinary harmonic qualities and ... transparent instrumental texture".[99] The opera is composed in whatAlan Blyth describes as a sustained and heightenedrecitative style, with "sensuous, intimate" vocal lines.[100] It influenced composers as different asStravinsky andPuccini.[99]
Orledge describes theNocturnes as exceptionally varied in texture, "ranging from the Musorgskian start of 'Nuages', through the approaching brass band procession in 'Fêtes', to the wordless female chorus in 'Sirènes'". Orledge considers the last a pre-echo of the marine textures ofLa mer.Estampes for piano (1903) gives impressions of exotic locations, with further echoes of the gamelan in itspentatonic structures.[2] Debussy believed that sinceBeethoven, the traditional symphonic form had become formulaic, repetitive and obsolete.[101][n 13] The three-part, cyclicsymphony by César Franck (1888) was more to his liking, and its influence can be found inLa mer (1905); this uses a quasi-symphonic form, its three sections making up a giantsonata-form movement with, as Orledge observes, a cyclic theme, in the manner of Franck.[92] The central "Jeux de vagues" section has the function of a symphonicdevelopment 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.[92] The reviews were sharply divided. Some critics thought the treatment less subtle and less mysterious than his previous works, and even a step backward; others praised its "power and charm", its "extraordinary verve and brilliant fantasy", and its strong colours and definite lines.[102]
Of the later orchestral works,Images (1905–1912) is better known thanJeux (1913).[103] The former follows the tripartite form established in theNocturnes andLa mer, but differs in employing traditional British and French folk tunes, and in making the central movement, "Ibéria", far longer than the outer ones, and subdividing it into three parts, all inspired by scenes from Spanish life. Although consideringImages "the pinnacle of Debussy's achievement as a composer for orchestra", Trezise notes a contrary view that the accolade belongs to the ballet scoreJeux.[104] The latter failed as a ballet because of what Jann Pasler describes as a banal scenario, and the score was neglected for some years. 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.[103][105] In this piece, Debussy abandoned thewhole-tone scale he had often favoured previously in favour of theoctatonic scale with what the Debussy scholarFrançois Lesure describes as its tonal ambiguities.[2]
Among the late piano works are two books ofPréludes (1909–10, 1911–13), short pieces that depict a wide range of subjects. Lesure comments that they range from the frolics of minstrels at Eastbourne in 1905 and the American acrobat "General Lavine" "to dead leaves and the sounds and scents of the evening air".[2]En blanc et noir (In white and black, 1915), a three-movement work for two pianos, is a predominantly sombre piece, reflecting the war and national danger.[106] TheÉtudes (1915) for piano have divided opinion. Writing soon after Debussy's death, Newman found them laboured – "a strange last chapter in a great artist's life";[86] Lesure, writing eighty years later, rates them among Debussy's greatest late works: "Behind a pedagogic exterior, these 12 pieces explore abstract intervals, or – in the last five – the sonorities and timbres peculiar to the piano."[2] In 1914 Debussy started work on a planned set ofsix sonatas for various instruments. His fatal illness prevented him from completing the set, but thosefor cello and piano (1915), flute, viola and harp (1915), and violin and piano (1917 – his last completed work) are all concise, three-movement pieces, morediatonic in nature than some of his other late works.[2]
Le Martyre de saint Sébastien (1911), originally a five-act musical play to a text byGabriele D'Annunzio that took nearly five hours in performance, was not a success, and the music is now more often heard in a concert (or studio) adaptation with narrator, or as an orchestral suite of "Fragments symphoniques". Debussy enlisted the help ofAndré Caplet in orchestrating and arranging the score.[107] Two late stage works, the balletsKhamma (1912) andLa boîte à joujoux (1913), were left with the orchestration incomplete, and were completed byCharles Koechlin and Caplet, respectively.[2]
The application of the term "Impressionist" to Debussy and the music he influenced has been much debated, both during his lifetime and since. The analystRichard Langham Smith writes that Impressionism was originally a term coined to describe astyle of late 19th-century French painting, typically scenes suffused with reflected light in which the emphasis is on the overall impression rather than outline or clarity of detail, as in works byMonet,Pissarro,Renoir and others.[108] Langham Smith writes that the term became transferred to the compositions of Debussy and others which were "concerned with the representation of landscape or natural phenomena, particularly the water and light imagery dear to Impressionists, through subtle textures suffused with instrumental colour".[108]
Among painters, Debussy particularly admiredTurner, but also drew inspiration fromWhistler. With the latter in mind the composer wrote to the violinistEugène Ysaÿe in 1894 describing the orchestralNocturnes as "an experiment in the different combinations that can be obtained from one colour – what a study in grey would be in painting."[109]
Debussy strongly objected to the use of the word "Impressionism" for his (or anybody else's) music,[n 14] but it has continually been attached to him since the assessors at the Conservatoire first applied it, opprobriously, to his early workPrintemps.[111] Langham Smith comments that Debussy wrote many piano pieces with titles evocative of nature – "Reflets dans l'eau" (1905), "Les Sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir" (1910) and "Brouillards" (1913)[n 15] – and suggests that the Impressionist painters' use of brush-strokes and dots is paralleled in the music of Debussy.[108] Although Debussy said that anyone using the term (whether about painting or music) was an imbecile,[112] some Debussy scholars have taken a less absolutist line. Lockspeiser callsLa mer "the greatest example of an orchestral Impressionist work",[113] and more recently inThe Cambridge Companion to Debussy Nigel Simeone comments, "It does not seem unduly far-fetched to see a parallel in Monet's seascapes".[113][n 16]
In this context may be placed Debussy'spantheistic eulogy to Nature, in a 1911 interview withHenry Malherbe:
I have made mysterious Nature my religion ... When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvellous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul. Around me are the trees stretching up their branches to the skies, the perfumed flowers gladdening the meadow, the gentle grass-carpeted earth, ... and my hands unconsciously assume an attitude of adoration.[114]
In contrast to the "impressionistic" characterisation of Debussy's music, several writers have suggested that he structured at least some of his music on rigorous mathematical lines.[115] In 1983 the pianist and scholarRoy Howat published a book contending that certain of Debussy's works are proportioned using mathematical models, even while using an apparent classical structure such assonata form. Howat suggests that some of Debussy's pieces can be divided into sections that reflect thegolden ratio, which is approximated by ratios of consecutive numbers in theFibonacci sequence.[116] Simon Trezise, in his 1994 bookDebussy: La Mer, finds the intrinsic evidence "remarkable", with the caveat that no written or reported evidence suggests that Debussy deliberately sought such proportions.[117] Lesure takes a similar view, endorsing Howat's conclusions while not taking a view on Debussy's conscious intentions.[2]
Improvised chord sequences played by Debussy for Guiraud[118]Chords from dialogue with Ernest Guiraud
Debussy wrote "We must agree that the beauty of a work of art will always remain a mystery [...] we can never be absolutely sure 'how it's made.' We must at all costs preserve this magic which is peculiar to music and to which music, by its nature, is of all the arts the most receptive."[119]
Nevertheless, there are many indicators of the sources and elements of Debussy's idiom. Writing in 1958, the criticRudolph Reti summarised six features of Debussy's music, which he asserted "established a new concept of tonality in European music": the frequent use of lengthypedal points – "not merely bass pedals in the actual sense of the term, but sustained 'pedals' in any voice"; glittering passages and webs of figurations which distract from occasional absence of tonality; frequent use ofparallel chords which are "in essence not harmonies at all, but rather 'chordal melodies', enriched unisons", described by some writers as non-functional harmonies; bitonality, or at leastbitonal chords; use of thewhole-tone andpentatonic scales; andunprepared modulations, "without any harmonic bridge". Reti concludes that Debussy's achievement was the synthesis of monophonic based "melodic tonality" with harmonies, albeit different from those of "harmonic tonality".[120]
In 1889, Debussy held conversations with his former teacher Guiraud, which included exploration of harmonic possibilities at the piano. The discussion, and Debussy's chordal keyboard improvisations, were noted by a younger pupil of Guiraud, Maurice Emmanuel.[121] The chord sequences played by Debussy include some of the elements identified by Reti. They may also indicate the influence on Debussy ofSatie's 1887Trois Sarabandes.[122] A further improvisation by Debussy during this conversation included a sequence of whole tone harmonies which may have been inspired by the music ofGlinka orRimsky-Korsakov which was becoming known in Paris at this time.[123] During the conversation, Debussy told Guiraud, "There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law!" – although he also conceded, "I feel free because I have been through the mill, and I don't write in thefugal style because I know it."[121]
Among French predecessors,Chabrier was an important influence on Debussy (as he was on Ravel andPoulenc);[125] Howat has written that Chabrier's piano music such as "Sous-bois" and "Mauresque" in thePièces pittoresques explored new sound-worlds of which Debussy made effective use 30 years later.[126] Lesure finds traces ofGounod andMassenet in some of Debussy's early songs, and remarks that it may have been from the Russians –Tchaikovsky,Balakirev,Rimsky-Korsakov,Borodin andMussorgsky – that Debussy acquired his taste for "ancient and oriental modes and for vivid colorations, and a certain disdain for academic rules".[2] Lesure also considers that Mussorgsky's operaBoris Godunov directly influenced Debussy'sPelléas et Mélisande.[2] In the music ofPalestrina, 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.[127] He drew inspiration from what he called Palestrina's "harmony created by melody", finding anarabesque-like quality in the melodic lines.[128]
Debussy opined thatChopin was "the greatest of them all, for through the piano he discovered everything";[129] he professed his "respectful gratitude" for Chopin's piano music.[130] He was torn between dedicating his own Études to Chopin or toFrançois Couperin, whom he also admired as a model of form, seeing himself as heir to their mastery of the genre.[130] Howat cautions against the assumption that Debussy's Ballade (1891) and Nocturne (1892) are influenced by Chopin – in Howat's view they owe more to Debussy's early Russian models[131] – but Chopin's influence is found in other early works such as theTwo arabesques (1889–1891).[132] In 1914 the publisherA. Durand & fils began publishing scholarly new editions of the works of major composers, and Debussy undertook the supervision of the editing of Chopin's music.[81][n 17]
Although Debussy was in no doubt of Wagner's stature, he was only briefly influenced by him in his compositions, afterLa damoiselle élue and theCinq poèmes de Baudelaire (both begun in 1887). According toPierre Louÿs, Debussy "did not see 'what anyone can do beyond Tristan'," although he admitted that it was sometimes difficult to avoid "the ghost of oldKlingsor, alias Richard Wagner, appearing at the turning of a bar".[2] After Debussy's short Wagnerian phase, he started to become interested in non-Western music and its unfamiliar approaches to composition.[2] The piano piece "Golliwogg's Cakewalk", from the 1908 suiteChildren's Corner, contains a parody of music from the introduction toTristan, in which, in the opinion of the musicologistLawrence Kramer, Debussy escapes the shadow of the older composer and "smilingly relativizes Wagner into insignificance".[134]
A contemporary influence was Erik Satie, according to Nichols Debussy's "most faithful friend" amongst French musicians.[135] Debussy's orchestration in 1896 of Satie'sGymnopédies (which had been written in 1887) "put their composer on the map" according to the musicologistRichard Taruskin, and the Sarabande from Debussy'sPour le piano (1901) "shows that [Debussy] knew Satie'sTrois Sarabandes at a time when only a personal friend of the composer could have known them." (They were not published until 1911).[136] Debussy's interest in the popular music of his time is evidenced not only by theGolliwogg's Cakewalk and other piano pieces featuringrag-time, such asThe Little Nigar (Debussy's spelling) (1909), but by the slowwaltzLa plus que lente (The more than slow), based on the style of the gipsy violinist at a Paris hotel (to whom he gave the manuscript of the piece).[25]
In addition to the composers who influenced his own compositions, Debussy held strong views about several others. He was for the most part enthusiastic aboutRichard Strauss[137] and Stravinsky, respectful ofMozart and was in awe ofBach, whom he called the "good God of music" (le Bon Dieu de la musique).[138][n 18] His relationship to Beethoven was complex; he was said to refer to him asle vieux sourd ('the old deaf one')[139] and asked one young pupil not to play Beethoven's music for "it is like somebody dancing on my grave;"[140] but he believed that Beethoven had profound things to say, yet did not know how to say them, "because he was imprisoned in a web of incessant restatement and of German aggressiveness."[141] He was not in sympathy withSchubert,Schumann,Brahms andMendelssohn, the latter being described as a "facile and elegant notary".[142]
With the advent of the First World War, Debussy became ardently patriotic in his musical opinions. Writing to Stravinsky, he asked "How could we not have foreseen that these men were plotting the destruction of our art, just as they had planned the destruction of our country?"[143] In 1915 he complained that "sinceRameau we have had no purely French tradition [...] We tolerated overblown orchestras, tortuous forms [...] we were about to give the seal of approval to even more suspect naturalizations when the sound of gunfire put a sudden stop to it all." Taruskin writes that some have seen this as a reference to the composersGustav Mahler andArnold Schoenberg, both born Jewish. In 1912 Debussy had remarked to his publisher of the operaAriane et Barbe-bleue by the (also Jewish) composerPaul Dukas, "You're right, [it] is a masterpiece – but it's not a masterpiece of French music."[144] On the other hand,Charles Rosen argued in a review of Taruskin's work that Debussy was instead implying "that [Dukas's] opera was too Wagnerian, too German, to fit his ideal of French style", citing Georges Liébert, one of the editors of Debussy's collected correspondence, as an authority, saying that Debussy was not antisemitic.[145]
Despite his lack of formal schooling, Debussy read widely and found inspiration in literature. Lesure writes, "The development offree verse in poetry and the disappearance of the subject or model in painting influenced him to think about issues of musical form."[2] Debussy was influenced by theSymbolist poets. These writers, who included Verlaine, Mallarmé, Maeterlinck andRimbaud, reacted against the realism, naturalism, objectivity and formal conservatism that prevailed in the 1870s. They favoured poetry using suggestion rather than direct statement; the literary scholar Chris Baldrick writes that they evoked "subjective moods through the use of private symbols, while avoiding the description of external reality or the expression of opinion".[146] 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.[147]
Debussy with Igor Stravinsky: photograph by Erik Satie, June 1910, taken at Debussy's home in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne
Debussy is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century.[2][149][150][151]Roger Nichols writes that "if one omits Schoenberg [...] a list of 20th-century composers influenced by Debussy is practically a list of 20th-century composerstout court."[119]
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".[152] Not only Debussy's use of whole-tone scales, but also his style of word-setting inPelléas et Mélisande, were the subject of study byLeoš Janáček while he was writing his 1921 operaKáťa Kabanová.[153]Stravinsky was more ambivalent about Debussy's music (he thoughtPelléas "a terrible bore ... in spite of many wonderful pages")[154] but the two composers knew each other and Stravinsky'sSymphonies of Wind Instruments (1920) was written as a memorial for Debussy.[155]
In the aftermath of the First World War, the young French composers ofLes Six reacted against what they saw as the poetic, mystical quality of Debussy's music in favour of something more hard-edged. Their sympathiser and self-appointed spokesmanJean Cocteau wrote in 1918: "Enough ofnuages, waves, aquariums,ondines and nocturnal perfumes," pointedly alluding to the titles of pieces by Debussy.[156] Later generations of French composers had a much more positive relationship with his music.Messiaen was given a score ofPelléas et Mélisande as a boy and said that it was "a revelation, love at first sight" and "probably the most decisive influence I have been subject to".[157]Boulez also discovered Debussy's music at a young age and said that it gave him his first sense of what modernity in music could mean.[158]
Among contemporary composersGeorge Benjamin has describedPrélude à l'après-midi d'un faune as "the definition of perfection";[159] he has conductedPelléas et Mélisande[160] and the critic Rupert Christiansen detects the influence of the work in Benjamin's operaWritten on Skin (2012).[161] Others have made orchestrations of some of the piano and vocal works, includingJohn Adams's version of four of the Baudelaire songs (Le Livre de Baudelaire, 1994),Robin Holloway's ofEn blanc et noir (2002), andColin Matthews's of both books ofPréludes (2001–2006).[162]
In 1904, Debussy played the piano accompaniment for Mary Garden in recordings for the Compagnie française du Gramophone of four of his songs: threemélodies from the Verlaine cycleAriettes oubliées – "Il pleure dans mon coeur", "L'ombre des arbres" and "Green" – and "Mes longs cheveux", from Act III ofPelléas et Mélisande.[165] He made a set ofpiano rolls for theWelte-Mignon company in 1913. They contain fourteen of his pieces: "D'un cahier d'esquisses", "La plus que lente", "La soirée dans Grenade", all six movements ofChildren's Corner, and five of thePreludes: "Danseuses de Delphes", "Le vent dans la plaine", "La cathédrale engloutie", "La danse de Puck" and "Minstrels". The 1904 and 1913 sets have been transferred to compact disc.[166]
In more recent times Debussy's output has been extensively recorded. In 2018, to mark the centenary of the composer's death,Warner Classics, with contributions from other companies, issued a 33-CD set that is claimed to include all the music Debussy wrote.[168]
^Debussy was addressed by various permutations of his names during the course of his life. His name was officially registered at themairie on the day of his birth as "Achille Claude".[1] Many authorities hyphenate "Achille-Claude".[2][3] As a little boy he was addressed as "Claude"; his baptismal certificate (he was not baptised until July 1864) is in the name of "Claude-Achille";[4] as a youth he was known as "Achille"; at the beginning of his career he sought to make his name more impressive by calling himself "Claude-Achille" (and sometimes rendering his surname as "de Bussy").[5] He signed himself as "Claude-Achille" between December 1889 and 4 June 1892, after which he permanently adopted the shorter "Claude".[6]
^Debussy's birthplace is now a museum dedicated to him. In addition to displays depicting his life and work, the building contains a small auditorium in which an annual season of concerts is given.[8]
^Biographers of Debussy, including Edward Lockspeiser, Stephen Walsh and Eric Frederick Jensen, comment that although Antoinette Mauté de Fleurville was a woman of some affectations, with the assumed manner of a grande dame, she was a fine teacher. She claimed to have studied withChopin, and although many of Debussy's biographers have been sceptical about this, her artistic prowess was vouched for not only by Debussy, but by her son-in-law,Paul Verlaine.[13]
^That is, fourth prize, after thepremier accessit, the runner-up (second prix) and the winner (premier prix).[19]
^In September 1880 von Meck sent the manuscript of Debussy'sDanse bohémienne for Tchaikovsky's perusal; a month later Tchaikovsky wrote back, mildly complimenting the work but remarking on its slightness and brevity. Debussy did not publish it, and the manuscript remained in the von Meck family and was not published until 1932.[25]
^The director of the Conservatoire,Ambroise Thomas, was a deeply conservative musician, as were most of his faculty. It was not untilGabriel Fauré became director in 1905 that modern music such as Debussy's or even Wagner's was accepted within the Conservatoire.[30]
^Debussy's regard for Rimsky-Korsakov's music was not reciprocated. After hearingEstampes a decade later, Rimsky wrote in his diary, "Poor and skimpy to the nth degree; there is no technique; even less imagination. The impudent decadent – he ignores all music that has gone before him, and ... thinks he has discovered America."[43]
^Saint-Saëns, Franck, Massenet, Fauré and Ravel were all known as teachers,[15][56] and Fauré, Messager and Dukas were regular music critics for Parisian journals.[57][58]
^Mary Garden was Messager's mistress at the time, but as far as is known she was chosen for wholly musical and dramatic reasons. She is described in theGrove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a supreme singing-actress, with uncommonly vivid powers of characterization ... and a rare subtlety of colour and phrasing."[62]
^A fictionalised and melodramatic dramatisation of the affair,La femme nue, played in Paris in 1908.[66] A myth grew up that Lilly Debussy shot herself in the Place de la Concorde, rather than at home. That version of events is not corroborated by Debussy scholars such as Marcel Dietschy,Roger Nichols,Robert Orledge and Nigel Simeone;[67] and no mention of the Place de la Concorde appeared in even the most sensational press coverage at the time.[68][69] Another inaccurate report of the case, inLe Figaro in early January 1905, stated that Lilly had made a second attempt at suicide.[68]
^Lalo objected to what he felt was the artificiality of the piece: "a reproduction of nature; a wonderfully refined, ingenious and carefully composed reproduction, but a reproduction none the less".[73] Another Parisian critic, Louis Schneider, wrote, "The audience seemed rather disappointed: they expected the ocean, something big, something colossal, but they were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer."[74]
^He described the symphonies of Schumann and Mendelssohn as "respectful repetition"[101]
^In a letter of 1908 he wrote: "I am trying to do 'something different' – an effect of reality ... what the imbeciles call 'impressionism', a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by the critics, since they do not hesitate to apply it to [J.M.W.]Turner, the finest creator of mysterious effects in all the world of art."[110]
^Respectively, Reflections in the Water, Sounds and Perfumes Swirl in the Evening Air, and Mists.[108]
^Roy Howat writes that Debussy, like Fauré "often juxtaposes the same basic material in different modes or with a strategically shifted bass" which, Howat suggests, is "arguably his most literal approach to true Impressionist technique, the equivalent of Monet's fixed object (be it cathedral or haystack) illuminated from different angles".[2]
^Debussy examined some existing editions, and chose to base his on that ofIgnaz Friedman. He wrote to Durand: "In Friedmann's [sic] preface (Breitkopf Edition, which is quite superior to the Peters), Chopin's influence on Wagner is indicated for the first time".[133]
^He remarked to a colleague that if Wagner, Mozart and Beethoven could come to his door and ask him to playPelléas to them, he would gladly do so, but if it were Bach, he would be too in awe to dare.[138]
^In addition toBill Evans, other jazz musicians influenced by Debussy includeHerbie Hancock, andMcCoy Tyner, according to an article inJazz Education in Research and Practice.[164]
^Nadeau, Roland."Debussy and the Crisis of Tonality",Music Educators Journal, September 1979, p. 71(subscription required); and Lockspeiser, Appendix B
^"Debussy, Claude",The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed Dinah Birch, Oxford University Press, 2009 retrieved 7 May. 2018(subscription required)
^Kennedy, Michael, and Joyce Bourne Kennedy."Debussy, Achille‐Claude",The Oxford Dictionary of Music, ed. Tim Rutherford-Johnson, Oxford University Press, 2012, retrieved 17 May 2018(subscription required)
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