LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Debussy: Music
built 624 days ago
The music of Debussy's mature style was the forerunner of much modern music and made him one of the most important composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His innovations were chiefly harmonic. Although he did not devise the whole-tone scale, he was the first composer to exploit it successfully. His treatment of chords was radical for its time: Taking advantage of their individual colors and effects, he arranged them so as to weaken, rather than support, the illusion of any specified key. The lack of fixed tonality in Debussy's music gives it a dreamy quality that some critics of his time referred to as musical impressionism, after the resemblance they saw to the pictorial effect achieved by artists of the impressionist school (see Impressionism). The term impressionism is still used to describe Debussy's work.
Source:
Perhaps the first of Debussy's works which can formally be considered impressionistic in nature is l'Apres-midi d'un faune (Prelude to te Afternoon of a Faun). Literature and music critic Arthur Symons, an authority on the Symbolist movment maintains that Debussy is, "the Mallarme of music, not because he has set L'Apres-midi d'un faune to sound, but because the music has all the qualities of the poem and none, for instance, of Verlaine.... Mallarme has a beauty of his own, calculated, new alluring; and Debussy is not less original, aloof , deliberately an artist." (Lockpeiser 120) Written when Debussy was 30 years old, l'apres-midi d'un faune was intended to be a three-movement symphony in free form. The orchestration of this piece was revolutionary in terms of lines and harmony. It's very opening is unique, with a beautiful, elegant, yet haunting flute solo. The tonal modulations of of the opening line shatters the familiar order of traditional tonality.
Source:
To his contemporaries, Debussy's music had the effect of transporting the listener into a world of dreams. The language of music suddenly became rich and strange. The instruments were no longer stating things, but suggesting them. Everything became possible, nothing was stated, all suggested, open to interpretation.
Source:
Debussy's pieces of the following years show certain marked changes in style. Not as well known as his works of the preceding years but in no way inferior, they have less surface appeal and are therefore more difficult to approach. It is ironic that just when he was exploring new avenues of thought he was in a sense relegated to the shadows by a "radicalism" more sensational than anything connected with Pelléas 10 years earlier. Debussy's ballet Jeux, his last and most sophisticated orchestral score, which had its premiere on May 15, 1913, was virtually eclipsed by the scandal of Igor Stravinsky's ballet Sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring) on May 29. Debussy's ambivalent attitude toward Stravinsky's music may reflect a certain resentment of the younger composer's noisy arrival on the scene. Debussy evinced a genuine, if limited, admiration for Stravinsky's work and even incorporated certain Stravinsky-like effects in En blanc et noir (1915) and the études (1915).
Source:
From 1887 on, Debussy confined his activity to composition, rarely appearing in public as a performer. Although he associated little with musicians, he enjoyed the company of the leading impressionist poets and painters who gathered at the home of the poet Stephane Mallarme. Their influence is felt in Debussy's first important orchestral work, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1892-94), inspired by Mallarme's poem, L'Apres-midi d'un faune. This work established the style of impressionist music and initiated Debussy's most productive period, which lasted nearly 20 years. During that time he composed the orchestral suites Nocturnes (1893-99), La Mer (1903-05), and Images (1906-09); most of his piano music, including the two books of Preludes (1910-13); the incidental music to The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (1911); the ballet Jeux (1912); a number of songs and some chamber music; and his one completed opera, Pelleas et Melisande (1892-1902), based on Maurice Maeterlinck's drama.
Source:
In his visits to Bayreuth in 1888-9, Debussy was exposed to Wagnerian opera, which had a lasting impact on his work. Richard Wagner had died in 1883 and the cult of Wagnerism was still in full swing. Debussy, like many young musicians of the time, responded positively to Wagner's sensuousness, mastery of form, and striking harmonies, but ultimately Wagner's extroverted emotionalism was not to be Debussy's way either. Wagner's influence is evident in La damoiselle élue and the 1889 piece Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire. Other songs of the period, notably the settings of Verlaine—Ariettes oubliées, Trois mélodies, and Fêtes galantesare all in a more capricious style. Around this time, Debussy met Erik Satie who proved a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to composition and to naming his pieces.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Music