Claude Debussy 1862-1918
Growning up from humble beginnings to become the most important French composer of the early Twentieth Century, Achille-Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was born near Paris in the town of St. Germain-en-Laye, where his parents kept a china shop. And his father also worked as a travelling salesman, as a printer's assistant, and as a clerk. His mother was a seamstress who managed to provide a very happy childhood for her son. Debussy's musical talent was discovered by his first piano teacher, Madame Maut de Fleurville, who had been a student of Chopin. Maut sent Debussy to the Conservatory in Paris, where he studied for ten years, beginning in 1872. At first, Debussy wanted to be a virtuoso pianist, but he later abandoned the idea after two failures in the piano examinations in 1878 and 1879. In 1880 he attended the composition class of Ernest Guiraud whose tutelage led Debussy to win the second Prix de Rome in 1883 and the coveted first Prix de Rome the following year with his Cantata L'enfant prodigue, which enabled him to study composition at the Villa de Medici in Rome for three years.
Debussy first entered the Paris Conservatory when he was only ten years old. Within a few years, he shocked his professors with "bizarre" harmonies that defied the rules. "What rules then do you observe?" inquired one of his teachers. "None-only my own pleasure!" "That's all very well," retorted the professor, "provided you're a genius." It became increasingly apparent that the daring young man was exactly that. His early compositions were highly influenced by Chabrier and Faur , and although later on he would not admit it, Wagner's music was also an important influence on Debussy's orchestration and harmonic language as he developed into a mature composer.
Debussy was twenty-two years old when his Cantata The Prodigal Son won the Prix de Rome. Like Berlioz before him, he looked upon his stay in the Italian capital as a dreary exile from the boulevards that made up his world. By this time, he had already conceived major elements of his mature style.
The 1890s were the most productive decade of Debussy's career, and the decade culminated in the writing of Pell as et M lisande. Based on the symbolist drama by the Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck, this opera occupied him for the better part of ten years. He continued to revise the score up to the opening night, which took place on April 30, 1902, at the Opera-Comique. Pell as was attacked as being decadent and lacking in melody, form, and substance. Nevertheless, its quiet intensity and subtlety of nuance had a profound impact upon the musical public. It became an international success.
After Pell as, Debussy was famous. He appeared in the capitals of Europe as conductor of his works, and he wrote articles that established his reputation as one of the wittiest critics of his time. In the first years of the Twentieth Century, he became known as the “Father of Impressionism.”.
Debussy married Emma Bardac in 1908 and they had one daughter, Claude-Emma, nicknamed "Chou-chou" to whom the Children's Corner Suite (1906-1908) was dedicated.
His energies increasingly sapped by the ravages of cancer several years later, Debussy worked on with remarkable fortitude. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 robbed him of all interest in music. France, he felt, "can neither laugh nor weep while so many of our men heroically face death." After a year of silence, he realized that he had to contribute to the struggle in the only way he could, "by creating to the best of my ability a little of that beauty which the enemy is attacking with such fury." One of his last letters speaks of his "life of waiting--my waiting-room existence, I might call it--for I am a poor traveler waiting for a train that will never come any more." His last work, the Fourth Sonata for Violin and Piano, was performed in May 1917 with Debussy at the piano. It was the last music that he played in public, at St. Jean-de-Luz in September.
Debussy died in March 1918 during the bombardment of Paris by airships and long-distance guns during the last German offensive of World War I. This was a time when the military situation of France was considered desperate by many, and these circumstances did not permit his being paid the honor of a public funeral, or ceremonious graveside orations, or festivals of his works. The funeral procession made its way through deserted streets as shells from the German guns ripped into his beloved city. It was just eight months before victory was celebrated in France. And French culture has ever since celebrated Debussy as one of its most distinguished representatives.