Debussy - Piano Music

Claude Debussy

Debussy represents the beginning of the modern era, and not just in the classical sphere - he also profoundly influenced 20th-century popular music and jazz. He abandoned traditional theory and made ‘pleasure’ his only law, looking to poetry and painting for inspiration. By putting familiar chords in unfamiliar sequences, favoring ancient and exotic scales, and focusing on texture and color, he created sounds that appear to be happening by magic rather than being written down.

Top Pieces:

Clair de Lune

With its ethereal mood and sense of mystery, Clair de Lune beautifully evokes Verlaine’s lines about “the sad and lovely moonlight that sets the birds dreaming in the trees”.

Rêverie

Unlike nearly everything else written for the Parisian salons of the 1880s, this music still has the power to gently lure you into an addictive dream world.

Arabesque 1

The first Arabesque, with its flowing, decorative lines, fuses salon music with the Baroque, which according to Debussy mirrored the movements and patterns of nature itself, following the “laws of beauty”.

La fille aux cheveux de lin

Here Debussy depicts a sweet, innocent — possibly slightly sad — girl, using some of his harmonic trademarks, like 9th and 11th chords, pentatonic scales, and parallel voice leading.

La cathédrale engloutie

The Breton legend about a sunken cathedral mysteriously rising out of the ocean, inspired Debussy to compose this Prelude, featuring the distant sounds of submerged bells, organ pipes, and chanting priests.

Biography

Although he himself wished to reserve the term for the visual arts, Claude Debussy (1862-1918) has often been considered the founder of musical Impressionism. Indeed he added a quite new range of timbre and colour to western classical music. When graduating from the Paris Conservatory he won the prestigious Prix de Rome, which financed two years of further study in the Italian capital, where he had the opportunity to meet Franz Liszt. He also made two trips to Wagner’s Bayreuth. Back in Paris he became a frequent participant at Stéphane Mallarmé’s symbolist gatherings and formed friendships with many leading Parisian writers, musicians and artists.

At the Universal Exposition of 1889 he became fascinated by the music of eastern cultures, especially the Javanese gamelan, a discovery that made him want to get away from Wagner’s influence. The year 1894 saw the sensational premiere of his Prélude à l´après-midi d´un faune, immediately launching Debussy into the spotlight as one of the leading composers of the era. The opera Pelléas et Mélisande made a similar impact, and caused a lasting division among Paris audiences between the forward-looking believers in "Debussyism" and those who failed to appreciate his style.

Debussy cohabited in Paris with Gabrielle Dupont for nine years before marrying her friend Rosalie Texier, a fashion model, in 1899. Increasingly irritated by Texier’s lack of intellectual and musical interest, Debussy left her for Emma Bardac, the wife of a Parisian banker and an accomplished singer. Texier, like Dupont before her, attempted suicide. The scandal obliged Debussy and Bardac (already carrying his child) to flee to England until the hysteria subsided. The couple were eventually married in 1908.

Debussy spent his remaining years immersed in French musical society, writing as a critic, composing, and performing as pianist and conductor. The war depressed Debussy into a state of creative sterility, but the summer of 1915 marked the start of a new productive era: in quick succession he composed the Cello Sonata, En blanc et noir, the Etudes, and the Sonata for flute, viola and harp. Unfortunately, at the end of the year he had to undergo a debilitating colostomy for rectal cancer, one of the very first such operations. Many of his planned projects remained unrealized, but he managed to complete the Violin Sonata in 1917. He died in Paris during the bombardment of Paris in the last German offensive of World War I.

Quotes by Debussy

Quotes about Debussy

Debussy Piano Sheet Music

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Total pieces by Debussy: 95