homeClaude-Achille Debussy (1862 - 1918) French Composer.
He was a leading figure in the Impressionist Music movement in France, although he detested his music being labeled as such. In 1870 he and his mother sought refuge from the Franco-Prussina war with an aunt in Cannes where, at the age of 7, he began taking piano lessons. At the age of 10, Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire where he was a student for 11 years.
He received a scholarship to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1884 which included a four-year residence at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome. He found the ambiance stifling and the monastic quarters horrendous. He elected to go 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."
He was greatly influenced by Litzst, Wagner, and Stravinsky among many others.
He wrote only one opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, whose debut in1902 was an instant success.
His Préludes in 1910 are often compared to Chopin's.
He was very much into literature and visual art, whose mediums were a great influence in his own musical style. He was heavily influenced by the French symbolist movement; an art movement in 1885 that influenced poetry, visual art, and theater in an esoteric, indefinite rejection of naturalism and realism. “The development of free verse in poetry and the disappearance of the subject or model in painting influenced Debussy to think about issues of musical form.”
Bien sur, his private life was a bit of a mess. At the age of 18, he commenced and 8-year affair with the wife of a wealthy Parisian lawyer. In 1889, he entered into a fiery 9-year relationship with a tailor's daughter, they actually lived together. But during that relationship, he had an affair with and became engaged to a singer. Then he left the tailor's daughter for a fashion model whom he actually married in 1899. He was soon irritated by her intellectual limitations and lack of musical sensitivity.
In 1904, he met the wife of a Parisian banker, Emma Bardac, a complete contrast to his wife. Debussy abandoned his wife who shot herself in the chest while standing in the middle of the Place de la Concorde in Paris. She survived this suicide attempt, living with the bullet lodged in her vertebrae.
Debussy and Bardac eloped to England; shortly after, Bardac gave birth to Debussy's only child, a daughter named Claude-Emma or "Chouchou" as her father called her. He adored his daughter. Sadly she passed away one year after her father from diphtheria.
Claude Debussy died of rectal cancer in 1918. His funeral procession took place in the midst of WWI arial and artillery bombing. He is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery.
His music is brilliant and beautiful.
Voila, Claire de Lune, breathtaking, reposing, beautiful, inspirational ...
(Yes, yes, it was in Oceans Eleven! That Steven Soderbergh knows his music, nest ce pas?)
Please listen to it in its entirety!
Here is the magnificent Barbra Streisand (Have I mentioned how much I adore her--FunnyGirl!) singing Beau Soir.
Vite, depechez-vous, download Debussy on iTunes!! Oh, what a delight to have that on in the house on a lazy day and just let yourself float ....
Bon gros bisous de musique extraordinaire et a demain!
Love, Charley
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