IE browsers should be in Compatibility View for this web page to look right

Claude Debussy Register    Login
Claude Debussy

 

 

Claude Debussy Turns 150 In August 2012
 
Biography
by Allen Schrott

Claude Debussy (born Achille-Claude Debussy) was among the most influential composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth 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 twentieth 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.

  
Sorted By:   Then Sorted By:
Page 1 of 8First   Previous   [1]  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  Next   Last   
 12 Selected Piano Works /Ed. Banowitz (Bk & Cd)  Product Information
Burtcode ALF35314
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Alfred
Price Your Price: $13.49
Discounted 10%
  
 14 Pieces For Piano, The Best Of Claude Debussy  Product Information
Burtcode LEN50564780
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Durand
Price Your Price: $15.26
Discounted 10%
  
 30 Children's Pieces  Product Information
Burtcode HANH897
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Hansen House
Price Your Price: $7.16
Discounted 10%
  
 6 Epigraphes Antiques  Product Information
Burtcode LEN51480402
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Henle
Price Your Price: $18.00
Discounted 5%
  
 6 Epigraphes Antiques  Product Information
Burtcode LEN51480408
Instrument Piano Duet
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Henle
Price Your Price: $17.05
Discounted 5%
  
 6 Epigraphes Antiques  Product Information
Burtcode MASM1885
Instrument Piano Duet
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Masters
Price Your Price: $8.50
Discounted 5%
  
 6 Epigraphes Antiques  Product Information
Burtcode PETEp7276
Instrument Piano Duet
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Peters
Price Your Price: $25.16
Discounted 10%
  
 6 Epigraphes Antiques  Product Information
Burtcode LEN50561264
Instrument Piano Duet
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Durand
Price Your Price: $17.06
Discounted 10%
  
 6 Morceaux De Jeunesse /Ed. Howat  Product Information
Burtcode LEN50564799
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Durand
Price Your Price: $13.46
Discounted 10%
  
 6 Pieces  Product Information
Burtcode MASM1197
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Masters
Price Your Price: $9.45
Discounted 5%
  
 Album  Product Information
Burtcode ALFK03389
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Kalmus
Price Your Price: $8.96
Discounted 10%
  
 Album /Ed. Lehrer & Sheftel  Product Information
Burtcode PREPl117
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Carl Fischer
Price Your Price: $8.96
Discounted 10%
  
 Album For Piano Vol. 1 (Emb Album Series) ()  Product Information
Burtcode ALFM080075258
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Musica Budapest
Price Your Price: $14.73
Discounted 5%
  
 Arabesque No 1  Product Information
Burtcode LEN50289100
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Sheet
Composer Debussy
Publisher Schirmer
Price Your Price: $3.56
Discounted 10%
  
 Arabesque No 1  Product Information
Burtcode LEN50561986
Instrument Piano Duet
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Durand
Price Your Price: $17.06
Discounted 10%
  
 Arabesque No 1 (Ed0 9759)  Product Information
Burtcode LEN49009265
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Sheet
Composer Debussy
Publisher Schott
Price Your Price: $5.36
Discounted 10%
  
 Arabesque No 1 /Arr. Aaronson, Simply Classics  Product Information
Burtcode ALF14347
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Sheet
Composer Debussy
Publisher Alfred
Level 4-5
Price Your Price: $2.84
Discounted 5%
  
 Arabesque No 1 /Ed. Howat  Product Information
Burtcode LEN50564628
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Durand
Price Your Price: $7.16
Discounted 10%
  
 Arabesque No 1 /Ed. Mclean  Product Information
Burtcode FJHPs1024
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Sheet
Composer Debussy
Publisher F J H
Price Your Price: $2.66
Discounted 10%
  
 Arabesque No 1 For 2 Pianos  Product Information
Burtcode LEN50562541
Instrument Piano Duo (2p/4h)
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Durand
Price Your Price: $11.66
Discounted 10%
  
 Arabesque No 2  Product Information
Burtcode LEN50289110
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Sheet
Composer Debussy
Publisher Schirmer
Price Your Price: $2.37
Discounted 40%
  
 Arabesque No 2  Product Information
Burtcode PETEp7260b
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Peters
Price Your Price: $6.26
Discounted 10%
  
 At The Piano With . . . (Hinson)  Product Information
Burtcode ALF2596
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Alfred
Price Your Price: $8.05
Discounted 10%
  
 Ballade  Product Information
Burtcode PRE51001285
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Jobert
Price Your Price: $9.86
Discounted 10%
  
 Ballade  Product Information
Burtcode PETEp7281
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Peters
Price Your Price: $11.66
Discounted 10%
  
 Ballade For Piano  Product Information
Burtcode LEN51480403
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Henle
Price Your Price: $8.50
Discounted 5%
  
 Beau Soir  Product Information
Burtcode PRE16000037
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Sheet
Composer Debussy
Publisher Presser
Price Your Price: $3.15
Discounted 10%
  
 Berceuse Heroique  Product Information
Burtcode MASM2028
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Masters
Price Your Price: $4.70
Discounted 5%
  
 Berceuse Heroique  Product Information
Burtcode LEN50560374
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Durand
Price Your Price: $7.16
Discounted 10%
  
 Berceuse Heroique (Swarsenski)  Product Information
Burtcode PETEp7288
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Sheet
Composer Debussy
Publisher Peters
Price Your Price: $7.16
Discounted 10%
  
 Bruyeres, From Preludes Book 2  Product Information
Burtcode LEN50564740
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Durand
Price Your Price: $7.16
Discounted 10%
  
 Cathedrale Engloutie " Sunken Cathedral  Product Information
Burtcode LEN50564998
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Durand
Price Your Price: $9.86
Discounted 10%
  
 Celebrate Debussy Vol 1 /Ed. Hisey  Product Information
Burtcode HARCc03
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Harris
Price Your Price: $20.66
Discounted 5%
  
 Children's Corner  Product Information
Burtcode PREUt50082
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Vienna Urtext
Price Your Price: $11.66
Discounted 10%
  
 Children's Corner  Product Information
Burtcode LEN50564790
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Durand
Price Your Price: $10.76
Discounted 10%
  
 Children's Corner & Individual Pieces  Product Information
Burtcode EMBK125
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Konemann
Price Your Price: $27.54
Discounted 5%
  
 Childrens Corner ( Petite Suite )  Product Information
Burtcode RICBA132145
Instrument Piano Solo
Composer Debussy Claude
Publisher Ricordi
Price Your Price: $20.25
  
 Children's Corner (Swarsenski)  Product Information
Burtcode PETEp7252
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Peters
Price Your Price: $43.16
Discounted 10%
  
 Children's Corner (Urtext)  Product Information
Burtcode ALFMk598
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Carisch
Price Your Price: $6.60
Discounted 5%
  
 Children's Corner /Ed. Hinson  Product Information
Burtcode ALF667
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Alfred
Price Your Price: $7.19
Discounted 10%
  
 Children's Corner /Ed. Hinson (Book & Cd)  Product Information
Burtcode ALF28058
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Alfred
Price Your Price: $9.86
Discounted 10%
  
 Children's Corner /Ed. Ohmen (Ed09859)  Product Information
Burtcode LEN49017851
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Schott
Price Your Price: $8.09
Discounted 10%
  
 Children's Corner Suite  Product Information
Burtcode LEN51480382
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Henle
Price Your Price: $14.20
Discounted 5%
  
 Children's Corner Suite  Product Information
Burtcode PRE46000084
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Elkan Vogel
Price Your Price: $5.36
Discounted 10%
  
 Children's Corner Suite (Klemm)  Product Information
Burtcode PETEp9159c
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Peters
Price Your Price: $13.05
Discounted 10%
  
 Children's Corner, Bk & Cd (Schirmer Performance Edition)  Product Information
Burtcode LEN00296711
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Schirmer
Price Your Price: $9.89
Discounted 10%
  
 Children's Corner, Urtext  Product Information
Burtcode BAMBa8767
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Barenreiter
Level T6
Price Your Price: $14.20
Discounted 5%
  
 Chill With Debussy, Bk & Cd  Product Information
Burtcode ALF0571524370
Instrument Piano Solo
Format Book
Composer Debussy
Publisher Faber Music
Price Your Price: $8.10
Discounted 40%
  
Page 1 of 8First   Previous   [1]  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  Next   Last   
    
 

Burt & Company Discount Music Supply  •  Post Office Box 1145  •  Marlton NJ  08053  USA
Phone 1-800-548-2878 (1-856-983-6004)  •  Fax 1-888-830-2525 (1-856-983-6157)
Office Hours Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. until 5 p.m eastern (GMT-5)
orders@burtnco.com

  
Copyright ©2010 Burt & Company Discount Music Supply   |  Privacy Statement  |  Terms Of Use