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<¹Ï¤ù: [Debussy]>

Claude Debussy

1862-1918

The music of Claude Debussy had a monumental impact on Western music, in
that it revolutionized how musicians approached harmony, tonality and
rhythm. Composers as diverse as Ravel, Stravinsky and Satie owe him
acknowledgement, and rafts of writers who were to come after Debussy's
all-too-brief career could not help but be influenced by his unique musical
style. In a time when European music was rife with change - from the
earth-shaking music of Richard Wagner to the harmonic adventures of many
late Romantics - and literary movements vied for intellectual hegemony,
Debussy represented one of the most potent marriages of programmatic
elements and musical innovation. The only true musical Impressionist, he
was as influenced by literary Symbolism and Impressionism as much as he was
by the greatest Romantic composers, particularly Chopin, Liszt and
Mussorgsky.

Debussy was born in Paris in 1862, and received his formal musical
education at the Paris Conservatoire, where he was trained in traditional
Romantic techniques and sonorities. A facile and talented composer, he was
early on enough of a traditionalist to win First Prize at the 1884 Prix de
Rome competition - the same contest that Debussy's brilliant contemporary,
Ravel, would enter several times but never win, in part due to Ravel's
revolutionary sense of harmony and rhythm. Soon after this triumph,
however, Debussy started to reject many of the precepts of his training,
including the importance of the Germanic musical tradition, of which Wagner
was the most oft-cited example.

As Debussy set off to write his own style of music, he found himself in the
heady cultural hotbed of late-19th century Parisian society, a climate
enriched by Russian music, non-western idioms demonstrated at the Paris
Exposition of 1889, and Symbolist poetry, as well as a revolution in visual
arts. Paris was a remarkable melting pot of cultural diversity and artistic
influence, and the young Debussy began to make these influences heard in
his music, which placed an emphasis on aural images, clusters and metaphors
rather than on traditional musical devices. His early, pre-Impressionist
compositions for piano are remarkable in their craft, especially the Suite
bergamasque (1893). The same year, he premiered the seminal Quartet in G
minor for Strings, and people started to scratch their heads in confusion,
so novel was Debussy's sound. Critics complained that the composer was a
self-indulgent non-conformist. The next year brought the brilliant Prélude
? l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), Debussy's
first orchestral work and a masterpiece of novel ensemble texture and
harmonic innovation. The work was inspired by a Stephane Mallerm? poem of
the same name, and the music roughly evokes each scene in the poem.

Later works exhibited a more fully-developed "Impressionistic" style -
notably Estampes, Images, and La Mer. Another seminal work was his one
opera, Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), wherein he used musical imagery and
dramatic devices that flew in the face of Wagner's dominant style. Later
pieces ushered in such radical tonal juxtapositions that Debussy is often
cited as the father of atonality - which at that time was new and
unchartered territory.

Perhaps Debussy's greatest achievement as a composer - and there were many
- is his development of timbre. Although the tonal relationships and
harmonic content of music were of the utmost importance to him - and his
contributions in this area were original and profound - he also created a
revolution in the area of pure sound. He combined different instruments in
ways that produced radical new textures; his sense of register (what range
an instrument plays in) was utterly original; and his free-associating,
uninhibited tonal colors influenced virtually every composer who followed
him. For this and many other trends in 20th century music, we owe Debussy
our gratitude. His works sound today as fresh and new as they did 100 years
ago, a remarkable testament to a unique and original musical imagination.
Recommended Recordings:

Debussy, String Quartet, Op. 10 (+ Ravel)
Tokyo String Quartet
Red Seal #09026-62552-2

Debussy, Sonata for Violin and Piano (+ Ravel, Saint-Saens)
Kyoko Takezawa, violin
Rohan de Silva, piano
Red Seal #09026-61386-2

Debussy, Piano Works (+ Barber, Mozart)
Van Cliburn, piano
Gold Seal #60415-2-RG

Debussy, Prélude ? l'après-midi d'un faune / La Mer
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Charles Munch, cond.
Gold Seal #6719-2-RG

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