Claude Debussy

Described as an "impressionist" composer, a label he refuted, Claude Debussy paved the way for 20th-century modernism with his Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, his blurred piano works and his opera Pelléas et Mélisande. Born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye on August 22, 1862 into a modest family with an earthenware shopkeeper father and a seamstress mother, Achille-Claude Debussy began piano lessons with Mme Mauté de Fleurville, the mother-in-law of poet Paul Verlaine, who claimed to have been a pupil of Chopin. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten, in 1872, where his teachers included Antoine Marmontel (piano), Albert Lavignac (solfège), Émile Durand (harmony) and Ernest Guiraud (composition). A brilliant student who won second prize for piano, he showed little interest in the traditional teaching of harmony and academic rules in general. Recommended by Tchaikovsky's patron Nadejda von Meck, who introduced him to Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov, he taught piano to her children in Interlaken and followed the family on their summer trips to Italy and Moscow, before preparing for the Grand Prix de Rome, which he won in 1884 with the cantata L'Enfant prodigue. Although his stay at the Villa Médicis proved unsatisfactory, he nevertheless sent in the symphonic suite Printemps, the cantata La Demoiselle élue and a Fantaisie for orchestra, all of which were little appreciated by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which would not play any of them. His style, which emerged in the first version of Fêtes galantes, developed further after his return to Paris, where he frequented the circle of Symbolist poets, particularly Stéphane Mallarmé, who fascinated him. The same was true of Wagner, after attending two operas performed in Bayreuth, before rejecting this influence to follow his own path. His curiosity turned to the pavilions at the 1889 World's Fair, in particular the Javanese gamelan and its exotic sounds. Between literary sources and his research into the use of the scale, harmonic nuances and irregular rhythms, Debussy forged a unique sonic identity, which soon became apparent, whether in the Ariettes oubliées after Verlaine (1888), the Suite bergamasque for piano with its famous Clair de lune (1890-1905), the Quatuor à cordes à la forme cyclique (1893) and, above all, the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894), an orchestral piece that heralded the next century. At the same time, he was working on the composition of the opera Pelléas et Mélisande, based on Maeterlinck's play seen in 1892, and inspired by Moussorgski's prosody in Boris Godounov. In the meantime, he diversified his musical writing, composing Chansons de Bilitis after Pierre Louÿs (1897), Nocturnes for orchestra with evocative titles(Nuages, Fêtes and Sirènes, 1899) and Pour le piano (1901). In his private life, after a youthful love affair with Gabrielle Dupont, known as "Gaby", he married his sister Rosalie "Lily" Texier on October 19, 1899. Under the pseudonym of "Monsieur Croche", he plays the role of a harsh music critic in the Revue blanche. The creation of Pelléas gave rise to a battle between Maeterlinck, who wanted to impose his wife Georgette Leblanc, and Debussy, whose preference was for the Scottish singer Mary Garden. The latter finally created the role on April 30, 1902 at an Opéra-Comique that turned into a riot, as much for this rivalry as for the opera's innovative aspect. His other attempts in this field remained unfinished, notably The Fall of the House of Usher after Edgar Poe. In 1904, a scandal broke out following the revelation of his affair with Emma Bardac, while his wife attempted suicide. Debussy took refuge in Jersey, where he completed the symphonic poem La Mer (1905), whose cyclical form turned the heads of critics indifferent to orchestral subtlety. The same year saw the birth of Claude-Emma dite "Chouchou", to whom Children's Corner and its Golliwog's Cakewalk were dedicated, mocking the famous chord from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. The piece follows on from other works in an extensive piano catalog, including Estampes (1903), Masques and L'Isle joyeuse (1904) and the two series in the collection Images (1908). The same name is given to an orchestral triptych including Ibéria. Following the formalization of his union with Emma Bardac in 1908, Debussy lived a stable life, collaborating with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes for Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien (1910) and Jeux (May 15, 1913), whose choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky was roundly criticized, two weeks before Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps. Both in the orchestration of this ballet and in the piano piece En blanc et noir (for two pianos, 1915), his ideas on the abolition of traditional forms came to fruition. Meanwhile, the composer embarked on a European tour as a conductor. He also began two books of Preludes for piano, completed in 1910 and 1913, and two more books of Études in 1915, between several chamber works including Syrinx for solo flute (1913), the Sonata for cello and piano and the Sonata for flute, viola and harp (1915), followed by the Sonata for violin and piano (1917). Stricken by colorectal cancer, he made one last trip to St. Petersburg, where he played for Sergei Prokofiev, before returning to his mansion in the Bois-de-Boulogne. At the outbreak of the First World War, he composed his last pieces in a nationalist spirit, and died on March 25, 1918 at the age of 55.