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Born on August 22, 1862, Achille-Claude Debussy began his musical education as an apprentice of Madame Muate, a Chopin’s pupil. In 1873, he joined the Conservatory, became a student in Marmontel’s piano class, and won numerous prizes for his remarkable performances and highly praised musical pieces. In 1884, he was awarded the first prize for “L’Enfant prodigue.” In 1888, he wrote “Suite Bergamasque”. At the end of the 1880es, he formed an artistic and personal bond with the symbolists which brings us his first symphonic work “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune” in 1892. Soon after this he starts working on the “Pelléas et Mélisande” opera which takes him ten years to finish. He does not stop releasing other musical pieces during that time, and the world sees “Quatuor à Cordes” and “Nocturnes” in 1893, “Suite pour le piano” in 1900, and “Estampes” in 1903. He composes scores for plays like “Le Martyre de saint Sébastien” and does orchestral music. His last orchestral composition was a score written for the Russian ballet “Jeux”.
His private life was just as intricate as his personality. He was not a simple man to shoulder – intelligent, sophisticated, stubborn, and obsessed his affections caused much trouble to the women he had relationships with. “Independence is the dominant factor to his character. <…> He hated vulgarity in any form, and his epicurean or sybaritic impulses often deprived him of the sheer material necessities, yet they were essential to his heart and soul” (Schmitz 5). Being slightly sociopathic, Debussy translated these tendencies and peculiarities into his work. He was married twice. He met his first spouse, Rosalie “Lilly” Texier, in 1898. She was the daughter of a “widowed telegraph inspector” and a friend of Debussy’s then-lover Gabrielle Dupont. They married the next year. According to Nichols, “Lilly hesitated before plunging into marriage – even though in September Debussy threatened in eloquent style to kill himself” (18).
She spent almost five years by his side only to become unceremoniously abandoned in favor of another woman – Emma Bardac. Bardac was married to a Parisian banker when she started her affair with Debussy. When it was made public, a huge scandal broke out: Lilly tried to shoot herself once the issue of divorce was raised, and Bardac was disowned by her family causing her and Debussy to move to England. They got married on January 20th,1908, three years after the birth of their daughter, Claude-Emma Debussy. Life was never easy for people in a relationship with him. His colleague and friend, Mary Garden, who used to know Debussy well, described him as a person of questionable affections. She assumed he never really loved anyone apart from himself, and he never cared about anyone the way he cared about his music.
This rollercoaster of emotion could not fail to leave a mark on Debussy’s musical work. His style was colored by impressionism and symbolism; it passionately conveyed vivid imagery and set unforgettable scenes, creating a unique atmosphere. His main objective always was to make people – audience and musicians alike – feel every littlest moment of the music played, soak it in, and derive enjoinment from it. His technique was based on maintaining a tonal focus at the same time trying to make the chords retain a sense of independence (Aenil par. 9). He drew inspiration from all kinds of literary sources, be it novels, poems or folklore tales, and was hugely enamored by theater and visual arts. Thanks to his friendship with symbolists, his music tenderly grew to combine “classic and romantic heritages” (Schmitz 17) as he discarded realism and moved on to more mystical ideas.
He was also greatly influenced by such artistic changes and poetic devices as the disappearance of life models in visual arts and the creation of free verse respectively. His forms are “strictly classical” but at the same time are “evolutions of former forms, adaptations, revelations, not copies” (Schmitz 20). I find Debussy’s ability to transform and re-invent familiar musical standards immensely fascinating. The imagery of his pieces envelops the listener, harmonizing with the timbres and “exotic scales such as the whole-tone, octatonic, and pentatonic, juxtaposing them as the music progresses” (Aenil par. 9). It is speculated that Debussy deliberately used mathematical approach when structuring his compositions. These theories imply that he attributed mathematical models on every occasion, even to purely classical pieces. Supposedly, one can even divide them into sections and observe them exhibiting golden ratio.
Debussy influenced many with his impressionistic approach, including (but not limited to) Maurice Ravel, Ned Rorem, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Igor Stravinsky, Herbie Hancock, to name a few. His complex, diverse music always was and always will be a subject for analytical studies, his works always will be discussed and dissected, their structure will never cease to be explored in detail. It is quite ironic if you think of it: the composer himself never liked analytical critique of his music believing it to be something otherworldly, ethereal, not approachable by mere human thought.
This particular quirk of his demonstrates his gravitation towards esoteric and a voluntary rejection of realism for the sake of preserving “magic” in the music. His respect for such composers as Strauss, Chopin, Stravinsky, Alkan (especially his piano miniatures), and Bach shaped him as a musical entity and gave him an infinite amount of ideas to experiment on. He was attracted to moods and atmosphere in music, so there was no wonder why these particular composers gave him inspiration. On the other hand, as many people know, Debussy was not much fond of Schubert and Mendelssohn, deeming them to be repetitive and lacking personality. Beethoven seemed to be a huge influence, but of a kind Debussy would never admit to; he could not show any particular disrespect for the German composer and at the same time he did not want to praise him too much.
In conclusion, I would like to elaborate a little more on what interests me most of all in Debussy’s work. As I have already mentioned, his ability to create vivid imagery through his composition and encouraging musicians to dissolve themselves in music, becoming a part of a harmony and a continuation of an instrument they play always made me marvel at Debussy’s abilities as an artist and a man of truly outstanding personality. A talented conductor who can connect with the orchestra beautifully; a brilliant composer who uses mathematical approach to create magic; an unconventional mind full of fantastic ideas for unimaginable musicscapes, he will always stay one of the most sophisticated geniuses of music, theater, literature, and visual arts in history.
Works Cited
Aenil, J. Claude Debussy. 2012. Web.
Nichols, Roger. “The life of Debussy.” Choice Reviews Online, 36.2 (1998): 1-196. Print.
Schmitz, E. Robert. The piano works of Claude Debussy. New York, New York: Dover Publications, 1966. Print.
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