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Debussy: Paris Conservatory
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About 1910 Debussy developed cancer, which sapped his strength during his last years. Many projects were started, such as an opera based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, but few were completed. He died in Paris in 1918.
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The origins of this piece go back to the Paris Exhibition of 1889, where Debussy came into contact with oriental art and in particular Javanese music. Note the use of a pentatonic (five-note) scale, common in Eastern music.
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Debussy was born on August 22, 1862, at St. Ger/main/en-Laye, on the outskirts of Paris; at the time his parents were running a china shop. His father was later imprisoned for revolutionary activities in 1871 during the Commune. Debussy was meanwhile receiving piano lessons from Mme. Maute, the mother-in law of Verlaine. In 1872 he was accepted in the piano and theory classes at the Paris Conservatoire. At one point he had studies with Franck, whom he derisively referred to as a "modulating machine."
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Debussy was ... strongly affected by the Javanese gamelan, which he saw performed at the Paris World Exposition of 1889. This orchestra, with its variety of bells, gongs, and xylophones (instruments made up of a series of wooden bars that sound different notes when struck with two small hammers), produced a series of soft effects and rhythms that Debussy loved. The years between 1890 and 1900 brought the elements of the gamelan into play with others already present in Debussy's style and produced a new kind of sound. The completion of this process around 1900 can serve as a line dividing the masterpieces of the earlier years—Ariettes oubliées (1888), Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1892; Afternoon of a Faun), and the String Quartet (1893)—from those composed during Debussy's mature period.
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Debussy may have first heard the instruments of the gamelan as early as 1887, when the Dutch government gave a gamelan to the Paris Conservatoire. But he first heard the complete gamelan orchestra, played by skilled native musicians, in 1889 at the Paris'))" href="http://click.hotbot.com/director.asp?site=search.lycos.com&partner=&start_group=retriever_topic_more&id=5&keys=Debussy&target=http%3A%2F%2Fbrenthugh.com%2Fdebnotes%2Fgamelan.html">brenthugh.com
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During 1889, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, Debussy heard Javanese gamelan music. Although direct citations of gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, or ensemble textures have not been located in any of Debussy's own compositions, the equal-tempered pentatonic scale appears in his music of this time and afterward.
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