Claude Debussy was born in St Germain-en-Laye and was encouraged to take up music at an early age. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten, and quickly learned to play a considerable repertoire of very difficult piano works. However, he abandoned his planned career as a virtuoso pianist when he joined the Conservatoire's composition class in 1880 and won the coveted Prix de Rome competition twice. He
traveled extensively in these early years, visiting Italy, Vienna and Russia. He also spent two unhappy years studying in Rome. He was known as a moody, unsociable youth who found it difficult to endure the company of Strangers even temporarily.
Debussy returned from Rome in 1887, and in 1888 and 1889 followed the wellworn path to Bayreuth in order to sample Wagner's genius. He also attended the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889 where, like Ravel, he was enthralled by the Javanese gamelan music. During this time he set up house with a girlfriend, Gabrielle Dupont, with whom he would live in poverty for six years.
In 1892 he began one of his bestknown orchestral works, Prelude `a 1'aprismidi d'unfaune. At the first performance it was enthusiastically received and accorded an immediate encore, and the work is now recognized as breaking new musical ground with its unconventional and 'impressionistic' harmonies. Based on a poem by Stephane Mallarrne, which describes the dreams and desires of a faun basking in the afternoon heat, the music consists of a beautiful and sensual mosaic of sound graphically depicting the erotic content of the poem.
In 1893 Debussy began work on his only completed opera, Pelleas et Melisande. It took the composer almost ten years to finish and was premiered at the Opera-Comique in 1902. The music turns away from the drama and thunderous passion of Wagnerian opera, remaining for the most part subdued and always allowing the words to be clearly audible. The
trancelike quality of the score almost hypnotizes the listener with a new and beautiful world of sound. For many
Pelleas et Melisande is Debussy's finest creation.
The years 1904 and 1905'were especially fertile for Debussy. He completed the first book of Images for piano and the popular orchestral work
La Mer (The Sea) which makes full use of the impressionistic techniques developed in previous works. At the same time Debussy's personal life was in tumult. In 1904 he left his wife, Lily, whom he had married barely five years before, to move in with a wealthy lady, Emma Bardac, who was later to become his second wife. Distraught, his first wife shot herself; she was badly wounded and taken to a nursing home. An enormous scandal ensued, fuelled by comments from the press. Many of the composer's friends held him to blame and broke with him in disgust. During this time he was also plagued by a series of lawsuits, a result of debts, which continued to plague him until his death.
Debussy was now well established and his music increasingly performed, although controversy attended nearly every new work at its first performance. A second
book of Images for piano was followed in 1908 by the delightful collection of piano pieces
Children's Corner, dedicated to his daughter. From this set the Colliwogg's Cakewalk is especially well known, featuring a playful skit on the opening of Wagner's opera
Tristan und Isolde. Two sets of Preludes were completed in 1910 and 1913 and a
book of Etudes in 1915 - also for the piano.
Debussy's last major orchestral work, the ballet score Jeux, has been described as 'a beautiful nightmare'. Commissioned by Diaghilev, it was premiered in 1912. In 1909 Debussy had been diagnosed as having cancer, which by 1915 was so serious that he had to undergo surgery. He died in 1918, internationally recognized as the foremost French composer of his time. The use of exotic and unconventional harmonies, together with the delicate colouring which characterizes his work, have revealed Debussy as an innovator who has inspired generations of subsequent
composers, and have ensured him a position among the greatest of twentieth-century composers.
La Mer
Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune
Images
Jeux
String Quartet
Preludes, Book I
Suite bergamasque - Clair de lune
Children's Corner
Pelleas et Melisande
