Cart is emptyHe suggests that some of Debussy’s pieces can be divided into sections that reflect the golden ratio, frequently by using the numbers of the standard Fibonacci sequence. At times these divisions seem to follow the standard divisions of the overall structure; elsewhere they appear to mark out other significant features of the music. In this, he was a profound influence on composers as diverse as Bartok, Webern, Arnold Schoenberg, and Varese. The sonatas, written during the war, seem to outline a new, more concise, almost elliptical style, perhaps due to a new vision, or just because he was in pain when he wrote them.
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- Some of it is difficult to play like the Études and pieces such as L’isle joyeuse (The Happy Island).
- In May 1893 Debussy attended a theatrical event that was of key importance to his later career – the premiere of Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande, which he immediately determined to turn into an opera.
- The Apaches, led by Ravel (who attended every one of the 14 performances in the first run), were loud in their support; the conservative faculty of the Conservatoire tried in vain to stop its students from seeing the opera.
- With the advent of the First World War, Debussy became ardently patriotic in his musical opinions.
- In this, he was a profound influence on composers as diverse as Bartok, Webern, Arnold Schoenberg, and Varese.
- This early style is well illustrated in one of Debussy’s best-known compositions, Clair de lune.
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Non-Western influences
Yet he had no real desire to spend three years in Rome, writing more music to please the Conservatoire moguls while unable to visit his mistress. Repelled by the gossip and scandal arising from this situation, he sought refuge for a time at Eastbourne, on the south coast of England. In addition to the composers who influenced his own compositions, Debussy held strong views about several others. Debussy did not give his works opus numbers, apart from his String Quartet, Op. 10 in G minor (also the only work where the composer’s title included a key). It made Debussy a well-known name in France and abroad; The Times commented that the opera had “provoked more discussion than any work of modern times, excepting, of course, those of Richard Strauss”. The Apaches, led by Ravel (who attended every one of the 14 performances in the first run), were loud in their support; the conservative faculty of the Conservatoire tried in vain to stop its students from seeing the opera.
Music
Ravel once remarked that upon hearing Debussy’s music, he first understood what real music was.. He did find Debussy displeasing, though, not only for his philosophy when it came to human relationships but also because of Debussy’s recognition as the composer who developed Avant-Garde music, which Ravel maintained was plagiarism of his own Habanera. Nevertheless, Debussy protested his label as “Father of Impressionism in music,” and academic circles too believe that the term might be a misnomer. He dedicated Children’s Corner for piano to his daughter, whose sweetness and love would quell his depressions. Since his death, France has Casinojoy casino celebrated him as one of the most distinguished ambassadors of its culture, and his music is repeatedly heard in film and television. At the 1889 Exposition Universelle, he heard gamelan music from Java and the sometimes violent music of the Annamite Theatre of Vietnam.
The Late Sonatas
Above all he went to Bayreuth—the great German Wagner festival—and heard Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde for the first time. He had long known and been fascinated by these works in the published scores but resisted the Wagnerism that was infecting much French music of the day. Less individual, for good reasons, are the cantatas he wrote as set pieces for the Prix de Rome.
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- Recent analysts have found it a link between traditional continuity and thematic growth within a score and the desire to create discontinuity in a way mirrored in later 20th century music.
- He wrote his own poems for the Proses lyriques (1892–1893) but, in the view of the musical scholar Robert Orledge, “his literary talents were not on a par with his musical imagination”.
- Claude Debussy, along with other notable composers such as Igor Stravinsky, sought to explore new and innovative ways to expand harmonic language and in so doing move away from the Germanic influence of the previous two centuries.
- The central “Jeux de vagues” section has the function of a symphonic development section leading into the final “Dialogue du vent et de la mer”, “a powerful essay in orchestral colour and sonority” (Orledge) which reworks themes from the first movement.
- Bartók first encountered Debussy’s music in 1907 and later said that “Debussy’s great service to music was to reawaken among all musicians an awareness of harmony and its possibilities”.
- The main musical influence in Debussy’s work was the work of Richard Wagner and the Russian composers Aleksandr Borodin and Modest Mussorgsky.
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Entre Ardenne et Bretagne
- In the music of Palestrina, Debussy found what he called “a perfect whiteness”, and he felt that although Palestrina’s musical forms had a “strict manner”, they were more to his taste than the rigid rules prevailing among 19th-century French composers and teachers.
- He travelled to Maeterlinck’s home in Ghent in November to secure his consent to an operatic adaptation.
- He criticized Realism and programmatic writing, instead envisioning a style that would be to music what Manet, Renoir, and Cezanne were to painting and Stéphane Mallarmé to poetry.
- Debussy was much in sympathy with the Symbolists’ desire to bring poetry closer to music, became friendly with several leading exponents, and set many Symbolist works throughout his career.
- The course included music history and theory studies with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, but it is not certain that Debussy, who was apt to skip classes, actually attended these.
- Estampes for piano (1903) gives impressions of exotic locations, with further echoes of the gamelan in its pentatonic structures.
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String Quartet in G Minor and the orchestral prelude “L’Apres midi d’un faune,” composed between 1893 and 1894, were the first masterpieces of the new style. This early style is well illustrated in one of Debussy’s best-known compositions, Clair de lune. Bartók first encountered Debussy’s music in 1907 and later said that “Debussy’s great service to music was to reawaken among all musicians an awareness of harmony and its possibilities”. Not only Debussy’s use of whole-tone scales, but also his style of word-setting in Pelléas et Mélisande, were the subject of study by Leoš Janáček while he was writing his 1921 opera Káťa Kabanová. The application of the term “Impressionist” to Debussy and the music he influenced has been much debated, both during his lifetime and since. Although considering Images “the pinnacle of Debussy’s achievement as a composer for orchestra”, Trezise notes a contrary view that the accolade belongs to the ballet score Jeux.
Debussy: Première rapsodie for Clarinet and Piano
He wrote to his wife on 11 August from Dieppe, telling her that their marriage was over, but still making no mention of Bardac. The course included music history and theory studies with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, but it is not certain that Debussy, who was apt to skip classes, actually attended these.
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