Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy (born Achille-Claude Debussy) was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His mature compositions, distinctive and appealing, combined modernism and sensuality so successfully that their sheer beauty often obscures their technical innovation. Debussy is considered the founder and leading exponent of musical Impressionism (although he resisted the label), and his adoption of non-traditional scales and tonal structures was paradigmatic for many composers who followed.
The son of a shopkeeper and a seamstress, Debussy began piano studies at the Paris Conservatory at the age of 11. While a student there, he encountered the wealthy Nadezhda von Meck (most famous as Tchaikovsky's patroness), who employed him as a music teacher to her children; through travel, concerts and acquaintances, she provided him with a wealth of musical experience. Most importantly, she exposed the young Debussy to the works of Russian composers, such as Borodin and Mussorgsky, who would remain important influences on his music.
Debussy began composition studies in 1880, and in 1884 he won the prestigious Prix de Rome with his cantata L'enfant prodigue. This prize financed two years of further study in Rome -- years that proved to be creatively frustrating. However, the period immediately following was fertile for the young composer; trips to Bayreuth and the Paris World Exhibition (1889) established, respectively, his determination to move away from the influence of Richard Wagner, and his interest in the music of Eastern cultures.
After a relatively bohemian period, during which Debussy formed friendships with many leading Parisian writers and musicians (not least of which were Mallarmé, Satie, and Chausson), the year 1894 saw the enormously successful premiere of his Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) -- a truly revolutionary work that brought his mature compositional voice into focus. His seminal opera Pelléas et Mélisande, completed the next year, would become a sensation at its first performance in 1902. The impact of those two works earned Debussy widespread recognition (as well as frequent attacks from critics, who failed to appreciate his forward-looking style), and over the first decade of the 20th century he established himself as the leading figure in French music -- so much so that the term "Debussysme" ("Debussyism"), used both positively and pejoratively, became fashionable in Paris. Debussy spent his remaining healthy years immersed in French musical society, writing as a critic, composing, and performing his own works internationally. He succumbed to colon cancer in 1918, having also suffered a deep depression brought on by the onset of World War I.
Debussy's personal life was punctuated by unfortunate incidents, most famously the attempted suicide of his first wife, Lilly Texier, whom he abandoned for the singer Emma Bardac. However, his subsequent marriage to Bardac, and their daughter Claude-Emma, whom they called "Chouchou" and who became the dedicatee of the composer's Children's Corner piano suite, provided the middle-aged Debussy with great personal joys.
Debussy wrote successfully in most every genre, adapting his distinctive compositional language to the demands of each. His orchestral works, of which Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and La mer (The Sea, 1905) are most familiar, established him as a master of instrumental color and texture. It is this attention to tone color -- his layering of sound upon sound so that they blend to form a greater, evocative whole -- that linked Debussy in the public mind to the Impressionist painters.
His works for solo piano, particularly his collections of Préludes and Etudes, which have remained staples of the repertoire since their composition, bring into relief his assimilation of elements from both Eastern cultures and antiquity -- especially pentatonicism (the use of five-note scales), modality (the use of scales from ancient Greece and the medieval church), parallelism (the parallel movement of chords and lines), and the whole-tone scale (formed by dividing the octave into six equal intervals).
Pelléas et Mélisande and his collections of songs for solo voice establish the strength of his connection to French literature and poetry, especially the symbolist writers, and stand as some of the most understatedly expressive works in the repertory. The writings of Mallarmé, Maeterlinck, Baudelaire, and his childhood friend Paul Verlaine appear prominently among his chosen texts and joined symbiotically with the composer's own unique moods and forms of expression.
© Allen Schrott /TiVo
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Toccata (Pour le Piano, Claude Debussy)
Classical - Released by Ars Classica on 24 Mar 2023
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Classically Curious - Hidden Gem Recordings, part 2
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 26 Jan 2024
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Debussy for reading
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 18 Sep 2020
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Classical Music for the Background: Debussy
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 14 Sep 2022
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Claude Debussy : Mélodies
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Hartmut Höll
Classical - Released by Claves Records on 1 Jan 1989
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Relaxed Holidays with Debussy
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 12 Dec 2020
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Debussy - Obras para piano
Classical - Released by ClassicalPirosDigital on 28 Jun 2015
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A Piano Dreamscape
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 15 Dec 2023
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Ligeti: 6 Bagatelles: Janácek: Mládí, Concertino
Classical - Released by harmonia mundi on 24 Dec 2009
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Brahms, Debussy & more - Masters of the Piano, Vol II
Pyotr Illitch Tchaïkovski, Claude Debussy, Johannes Brahms
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 17 Jul 2023
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Gilels Plays Debussy and Ravel
Classical - Released by Pipeline Music on 29 Nov 2006
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Debussy: The Composer as Pianist (1904, 1913)
Classical - Released by Pierian Recording Society on 1 Aug 2000
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The Girl with the Flaxen Hair , Das Mädchen Mit Den Blonden Haaren , Le Fille Aux Chevaux De Lin (feat. Roger Roman)
Classical - Released by CP Projects - Solo Piano on 4 Apr 2013
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Mélodies françaises: Debussy, Fauré, Duparc, Chausson
Classical - Released by ISIS on 22 Jun 2016
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French Trios
Chamber Music - Released by Claves Records on 1 Jan 2004
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Debussy Preludes I & II
Classical - Released by Onyx Classics on 1 Jun 2005
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Debussy - Time
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 11 Jul 2020
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French Melodies
Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Gabriel Fauré
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 11 Apr 2024
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Dino Ciani plays Debussy
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on 8 Aug 2020
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Voyage au Pays du Tendre et de l'Effroi (Debussy, Caplet...)
Classical - Released by Passacaille on 27 Dec 2005
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Claude Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande (1941), Volume 1
Opera - Released by Classical Moments on 19 Mar 2013
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