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Debussy: Claude Debussy
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Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was the first composer to radically break with the Romantic tradition, giving rise to the explorations of sound and form that dominated the twentieth century. In sharp contrast to the Wagnerian attention to leitmotif and development, Debussy's music deals with light, color and mood. Startling dissonances alternate with Eastern-influenced pentatonic harmonies and rich chordal textures that later influenced jazz. His non-linear structures move mysteriously from one sound-image to the next, leaving the listener on his own to find an overall unity or pattern. Scholars have found in his pieces the Golden Ratio, a common pattern in nature which gives Debussy's music its natural, organic quality. Critics dubbed Debussy's style Impressionism after the mysterious, sensuous landscapes of Monet and Cezanne.
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One of the most important composers at the turn of the twentieth century, Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a French composer whose harmonic creativity and original use of color and timbre had a profound influence of those who followed. At the bridge of the Romantic and modern eras, Debussy’s sense of tonality in music was both progressive and unique, incorporating elements of modality and concepts from world music. Though often thought of, along with Ravel (link to: Podcast composer page for Ravel), as an “impressionist,” Debussy himself apparently disliked the categorization. The musical ideas Debussy pioneered later became recognizable influences in the music of Stravinsky, Messiaen, Boulez, and many other modern composers.
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Claude Debussy, born on August 22, 1862 in St Germain-en-Laye, did not come from a musical family but was encouraged to take up music at an early age. At the age of 10, he studied with Guiraud at the Paris Conservatoire. Initially, he planned to be a virtuoso pianist but abandoned it when he won the coveted Prix de Rome competition twice.
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Even when he was young, Claude Debussy loved to experiment with new sounds. That got him into trouble when he was a student at the Paris Conservatory, but it turned out to be a good thing when he grew up. Inspired by Impressionist poets and visual artists around him, Debussy created Impressionism in music.
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Claude Debussy was born in St. Germain-en-Laye in 1862, the eldest of five children. His father owned a china shop and his mother was a seamstress. Debussy began piano lessons when he was seven years old with an elderly Italian named Cerutti; his lessons were paid for by his aunt. In 1871, the shy awkward boy gained the attention of Mme. de Fleurville, the mother-in-law of the poet Paul Verlaine, who had been a pupil of Chopin. His talents soon became evident, and, at age eleven, Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire. During Debussy's twelve years at the Paris Conservatoire, beginning in 1872, he studied composition with Ernest Guiraud, harmony with Emile Durand, piano with Antoine-Francois Marmontel, organ with César Franck, and solfeggio with Albert Lavignac, as well as other significant figures of the era.
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Claude Debussy is generally considered the dominant figure in the transition from the late romantic style to that of the twentieth century. Born in St. Germain de Fleurville, France in 1862, Debussy studied at the famous Paris Conservatory from the age of ten to twenty-two and awarded the Prix de Rome in 1884. Debussy's principal influences included the music of Russia, the exotic colors of Asian music (which he first heard at the Paris International Exposition in 1889), and the ideas of writers and poets like Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and Charles-Pierre Baudelaire. Following the production of his opera Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902 and the completion of his popular orchestral work La Mer (The Sea) (1905) Debussy was soon recognized as a leading composer of early twentieth-century.
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