Claude Debussy (born Achille-Claude Debussy) was among the most influential composers of the late

19th and early 20th centuries. His mature compositions, distinctive and appealing, combined modernism
and sensuality so successfully that their sheer beauty often obscures their technical innovation. Debussy
is considered the founder and leading exponent of musical Impressionism (although he resisted the
label), and his adoption of non-traditional scales and tonal structures was paradigmatic for many
composers who followed.

The son of a shopkeeper and a seamstress, Debussy began piano studies at the Paris Conservatory at the
age of 11. While a student there, he encountered the wealthy Nadezhda von Meck (most famous as
Tchaikovsky's patroness), who employed him as a music teacher to her children; through travel,
concerts, and acquaintances, she provided him with a wealth of musical experience. Most importantly,
she exposed the young Debussy to the works of Russian composers such as Borodin and Mussorgsky,
who would remain important influences on his music.

Debussy began composition studies in 1880, and in 1884 he won the prestigious Prix de Rome with his
cantata L'enfant prodigue. This prize financed two years of further study in Rome -- years that proved to
be creatively frustrating. However, the period immediately following was fertile for the young
composer; trips to Bayreuth and the Paris World Exhibition (1889) established, respectively, his
determination to move away from the influence of Richard Wagner, and his interest in the music of
Eastern cultures.

After a relatively bohemian period, during which Debussy formed friendships with many leading Parisian
writers and musicians (not least of which were Mallarmé, Satie, and Chausson), the year 1894 saw the
enormously successful premiere of his Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a
Faun) -- a truly revolutionary work that brought his mature compositional voice into focus. His seminal
opera Pelléas et Mélisande, completed the next year, would become a sensation at its first performance
in 1902. The impact of those two works earned Debussy widespread recognition (as well as frequent
attacks from critics, who failed to appreciate his forward-looking style), and over the first decade of the
20th century he established himself as the leading figure in French music -- so much so that the term
"Debussysme" ("Debussyism"), used both positively and pejoratively, became fashionable in Paris.
Debussy spent his remaining healthy years immersed in French musical society, writing as a critic,
composing, and performing his own works internationally. He succumbed to colon cancer in 1918,
having also suffered a deep depression brought on by the onset of World War I.

Debussy's personal life was punctuated by unfortunate incidents, most famously the attempted suicide
of his first wife, Lilly Texier, whom he had abandoned for the singer Emma Bardac. However, his
subsequent marriage to Bardac, and their daughter Claude-Emma, whom they called "Chouchou" and
who became the dedicatee of the composer's Children's Corner piano suite, provided the middle-aged
Debussy with great personal joys.

Debussy wrote successfully in most every genre, adapting his distinctive compositional language to the
demands of each. His orchestral works, of which Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and La mer (The Sea,
1905) are most familiar, established him as a master of instrumental color and texture. It is this
attention to tone color -- his layering of sound upon sound so that they blend to form a greater,
evocative whole -- that linked Debussy in the public mind to the Impressionist painters.

His works for solo piano, particularly his collections of Préludes and Etudes, which have remained
staples of the repertoire since their composition, bring into relief his assimilation of elements from both
Eastern cultures and antiquity -- especially pentatonicism (the use of five-note scales), modality (the use
of scales from ancient Greece and the medieval church), parallelism (the parallel movement of chords
and lines), and the whole-tone scale (formed by dividing the octave into six equal intervals).

Pelléas et Mélisande and his collections of songs for solo voice establish the strength of his connection
to French literature and poetry, especially the symbolist writers, and stand as some of the most
understatedly expressive works in the repertory. The writings of Mallarmé, Maeterlinck, Baudelaire, and
his childhood friend Paul Verlaine appear prominently among his chosen texts and joined symbiotically
with the composer's own unique moods and forms of expression.