Debussy

2009-03-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

I have recently absolutely fallen in love with the music of Claude Debussy. I have always liked classical music, but never really listened if you know what I mean. To tell you the truth it is a bit "embarrassing" to admit how I stumbled across my new found obsession, you see, I was reading the Twilight books and that is where I saw the name Claude Debussy and Clair de Lune (Yes, I have read the Twilight books). Now of course I had heard of Debussy before, I was even planning on writing an essay on him a long time ago, but the project was cancelled and so I never thought any more of it. And so one day I had nothing to do, I did a google search on Debussy, read a bit about him and then went on Spotify to listen a bit to his work. My Ipod has never been the same again;)

I can't explain how amazing his music is and how it makes me feel. It feels like it is speaking to my soul, and I swear my heart starts beating to the rhythm of the music. I especially love Clair de Lune and Reverie, they are so soothing and peaceful that the moment I hear the first notes I can feel the stress of everyday life disappear.

Born: August 22, 1862
St-Germain-en-Laye, France
Died: March 25, 1918
Paris, France

French composer

The French composer (writer and arranger of music) Claude Debussy developed a strongly individual style and went against the methods of classical composing by using uncommon arrangements that created a new language of sound.

Early life

Achille Claude Debussy was born on August 22, 1862, in St-Germain-en-Laye, France. He was the oldest of five children. His father, Manuel-Achille Debussy, ran a china shop and had a hard time making ends meet. Debussy began taking piano lessons at age seven and entered the Paris Conservatory (school of fine arts) in Paris, France, at the age of ten. His instructors and fellow students recognized that he had talent, but they thought some of his attempts to create new sounds were odd. In 1880 Nadezhda von Meck, who had helped support Russian composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), hired Debussy to teach her children piano. He traveled to Italy and Austria with her and her family and spent parts of the next two years at her estate in Russia.

Different musical influences

In 1884 Debussy won the Prix de Rome, a competition for composers, for his cantata (a poem set to music) The Prodigal Son. While in Rome, Italy, the following year, he wrote that one of the few things that made him forget how much he missed Paris was the study of German composer Richard Wagner's (1813–1883) opera Tristan und Isolde. (Debussy returned to Paris in 1887.) Not many years later Debussy strongly criticized Wagner, but this had more to do with Wagner's drama than his music. Although Debussy scorned the characters in Wagner's Parsifal, he openly praised the music. Throughout his life Debussy was fascinated by the richness of Wagner's style, although he generally preferred opera that was less flashy.

Debussy was also strongly affected by the Javanese gamelan, which he saw performed at the Paris World Exposition of 1889. This orchestra, with its variety of bells, gongs, and xylophones (instruments made up of a series of wooden bars that sound different notes when struck with two small hammers), produced a series of soft effects and rhythms that Debussy loved. The years between 1890 and 1900 brought the elements of the gamelan into play with others already present in Debussy's style and produced a new kind of sound. The completion of this process around 1900 can serve as a line dividing the masterpieces of the earlier years—Ariettes oubliées (1888), Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1892; Afternoon of a Faun), and the String Quartet (1893)—from those composed during Debussy's mature period.

Mature period

Debussy's first large-scale piece of his mature period, the Nocturnes for orchestra (1893–99), was produced while he was working on his only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande (1894–1902), based on a play by Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949). The publicity surrounding the first performance of Pelléas in 1902 made Debussy the most controversial (causing disputes) musical figure in France; people either loved his music or hated it. Pelléas is the key work of Debussy's creative life; the words and actions of the opera pass as if in a dream, but the dream is filled with a strong feeling of dread. Debussy adds to this feeling with music that is largely quiet, with outbursts thrown in that reveal the underlying terror.

In 1904 Debussy left his wife of five years, Rosalie Texier, to live with Emma Bardac, a woman who had a decent amount of money and whom he would eventually marry. Debussy became more productive after he no longer had to worry about how he was going to earn money. During these years he wrote some of his most lasting works: La Mer (1905) and Ibéria (1908), both for orchestra; Images (1905), Children's Corner Suite (1908), and two books of Préludes (1910–12), all for piano solo.

Later years

Debussy's pieces of the following years show certain changes in style. They have less immediate appeal and are more difficult to approach. The emergence of other composers also led to declining interest in his works. His ballet Jeux, his last and most complicated orchestral score, first performed on May 15, 1913, was all but forgotten after Igor Stravinsky's (1882–1971) ballet Rite of Spring came out on May 29. Debussy may have resented the younger composer's arrival on the scene, but he admired Stravinsky's work and even used certain Stravinsky-like elements in En blanc et noir (1915) and the Études (1915).

When Debussy composed these works, he was already suffering from terminal cancer. He completed only three of a planned group of six pieces "for various instruments" (1915–17) before dying in Paris on March 25, 1918.

For More Information

Dietschy, Marcel. A Portrait of Claude Debussy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Lockspeiser, Edward. Debussy: His Life and Mind. 2 vols. London: Cassell, 1962. Reprint, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Nichols, Roger. Debussy Remembered. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1992.

Nichols, Roger. The Life of Debussy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Goya's Ghost

2009-03-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

(Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, Cappella Sistina)

Welcome to my world of art, music, literature and basically anything else I feel suits the theme of this blog.

The reason I created this was mainly for my own sake, to really surround myself in my great passion for art, history of art, classical music and literature. I wish to go in depth and really study these great masterpieces and the geniuses behind them. It is something I feel I have not given myself the time to do and thus this blog to remind me to follow my passions. Art to me is more than just a canvas with colors or a pretty song, it is my life, it speaks to me in a way that cannot be described only experienced. I believe art is just that; an experience, a feeling or perhaps sometimes even a provocation. It moves something inside you, changes you, gives you something to think about and time to reflect. Whenever I am traveling around in the world, especially Europe I always go on a frenzy tour of museums, churches and art galleries particularly when I am in Italy. I can't think of a time I felt as happy as when I went to the vatican museums and was surrounded by these amazing works of art, or when I went to the Palazzo Pitti in Florence just to name some incredible places.

So please enjoy the ride with me into the world of art!