Mary-Catherine Rogers

April 26th, 2018

Dr. Goodwin
MUH 371

Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy, a French composer in the late 17th century, influenced many

forms, styles and views of music during his lifetime. Debussy did not limit himself in

the possibilities of composition and performance style by expanding the French

tradition of music to using Russian style in his writing. Debussy’s musical style

broadened the realm of possibilities for future composers, such as Ravel, Scriabin, and

Bartók. The French composer himself was greatly influenced by Wagner. The changes

Debussy introduced in harmonic and orchestral usage made him one of the seminal forces

in the history of music. Debussy focused on sound as an element of music and opened

doors to new possibilities that composers explored. Claude Debussy had a huge influence

on the sounds of music during the 1900’s.

Claude Debussy took a different direction on the composition style of music.

Born on August 22nd in 1862, Claude Debussy came from a family environment that was

not musically inclined. His father, Manuel-Achille Debussy, owned a china shop and his

mother, Victorine Manoury Debussy, was a seamstress. The house was located on No. 38

rue au Pain and can still be seen to this day. Vallas describes the house and how, “on the

ground floor, Manuel-Achille Debussy and Vicorine Manoury, the parents of the future

artist kept a china shop during the years 1863-1864” (1). Claude was the oldest out of

five children. The Debussy family lived in St. Germain-en-Laye for five years after

Claude was born but relocated to Paris due to his father’s work. However, Claude and his
pregnant mother escaped to his aunt’s house in Cannes because of the Franco-Prussian

War. Claude began piano lessons at the age of seven with an Italian violinist named Jean

Cerutti. During this time, Debussy’s aunt paid for his lesson. Burkholder describes that

shortly after Debussy moved, he began studying at the Paris conservatoire(792). At the

conservatoire, Debussy began his studies in piano but later switched to composition. It

was during his time at the conservatoire that Debussy took part in the Conservatoire

competitions in counterpoint and fugue. He was awarded a second honorable mention for

his fugue. Debussy also went into the preliminary examination for the Prix de Rome

competition but did not pass. The two tasks set for the test were a fugue and a chorus

with orchestral accompaniment. The fugue was written on a theme supplied by Gounod, a

French composer who was best known for his Ava Maria. The chorus was written for

female voices and orchestra and bears the title Printemps, meaning springtime. This

composition was among his earliest works and was considered to show no sign of

originality. It was during the time when his fellow students were entering the Prix that

Debussy was training himself for the following years competition by composing other

works. As said by Vallas, “by the year of 1883, Debussy was ready for the final

competitions for the Prix de Rome. He took fourth place, coming after Paul Vidal,

Charles René, and Xaiver Leroux, and before Edmond Missa” (230). It was not until the

1884 Prix de Rome that Debussy won first with his composition L'enfant prodigue.

Debussy received a scholarship to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The scholarship paid

for a four-year residence at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome, where

Debussy furthered his studies. According to several sources Debussy did not enjoy his
time at the Academy. It has been said that he felt the atmosphere to be stifling, the

company of the fellow students rude, the food bad, and the living quarters awful.

Debussy established himself among many musicians as one whose compositions

were incoherent and did not add up. He was thought to be unintelligent by many of his

teachers. Of those compositions under question were The Nocturnes. Debussy used the

term ‘Nocturnes’ in a general sense not literally a night song. The feeling of the songs

does suggest that Debussy hope that listeners would picture different scenes of nature

while listening to the pieces. It was not used to describe the typical form of the Nocturne

but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word might

imply. Debussy’s Nocturnes are dated 1897-1899 and were written as Vallas states,

“almost as a palette on which the colors were blended in a way they seemed entirely

novel” (40). Nichols describes that Sirènes, one of the Nocturnes, “gives the most

compact demonstration of Debussy’s compositional principles” (30). "Nocturnes" or

Trois Nocturnes is an orchestral composition, which is in three movements. The three

movements were inspired by a series of impressionist paintings, also entitled ‘Nocturnes’,

by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The three movements are ‘Nuages’, which means

Clouds, ‘Fêtes’, which means Festivals, and ‘Sirènes’, which means Sirens. Nichols

describes the first movement, 'Nuages' as having the “changing aspect of the sky and the

slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones lightly tinged with white”

(45). The second movement, 'Fêtes', Nichols illustrates as, “the lively, dancing rhythm of

the atmosphere with sudden flashes of light” (45). During the second movement, there is

an episode of the procession, an amazing vision, which passes through and becomes

merged in it. But the background remains the same: the second movement with it’s
blending of music and radiant dust participating in the cosmic rhythm. And lastly, the

third movement, 'Sirènes', Nichols states that Debussy, “depicts the sea and its

immeasurable rhythms and presently is heard the mysterious song of the Sirens as they

laugh and move on” (46). This description of the Nocturnes gives a brilliant painting of

how Debussy’s music sounds. Orledge gives an excellent example of how Debussy’s

music was based off natural elements. “Debussy's earlier orchestral music includes

the Nocturnes (1897–1899), with their exceptionally varied textures ranging from the

Musorgskian start of Nuages, through the approaching brass band procession in Fêtes, to

the wordless female chorus in Sirènes, whose study of ‘sea-textures’ is a kind of

preparation for La Mer (1903–1905)” (25). The Nocturnes are a fantastic representation

of one of Debussy’s finest orchestral works, with is sweeping movements and dissonant

harmonies. The three movements take listeners on a journey through the different

paintings created by Whistler and allow the imagination to escape the world through not

only the painting but also the music.

The more traditional professors and composers of the time were perplexed by

Debussy’s style of composing. They were disconcerted by an instrumentation that was so

completely different from the style that they were familiar. It wasn’t until the critic, Jean

Marnold, wrote about the composer’s music in an article did Debussy’s innovations be

regarded as normal and inevitable. Vallas gives a brief look into how the critic viewed

Debussy:

The absolute freedom of the harmony caused even the more amazement than the

other elements of this music. There were so many strange modes, irregular scales;

forbinned successions of doubled chords or aggregations strung together in

 defiance of rules, above all, so many consecutive ninths. This wealth of harmonic

invention, which many musicians mistook for incoherence, was carefully studied

by a very able critic. (114)

In his article about the young composer, Jean demonstrated that this new form of

harmony was really orderly, logical, and even historical. Jean traced the development of

the dissonant chord throughout the past. Dumesnil pointed out that, “the gradual increase

in the number is chords that were considered consonant, and their eventual acceptance as

such, which occurred in the order of the harmonic sounds themselves” (114). Because of

the success of the Nocturnes, those musicians that were bewildered by the pieces found

themselves obligated to take the new art into consideration. “’I don’t believe in theory,’

Achille [Debussy] declared vehemently; ‘there’s no such thing as theory. One must listen,

one must hear, and that’s enough.’”(Dumesnil 164).

Another composition of Debussy’s that created an uproar was the ‘Prélude à

L’Après-midi d’un Faune’. ‘Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un Faune’ is Debussy through and

through. Listeners of the piece will hear nothing but Debussy. The work takes ten

minutes to perform but it took the composer two years to write it. The Prélude is consider

Debussy’s first masterpiece and was the first performance of his that has an

enthusiastically encored. This is remarkable because the work was not only revolutionary

in its sounds and ideas, but to a large extent the sounds are the ideas.

Primarily, Debussy was a pianist. The composer had no mastery over any other

instrument. Thompson says that Debussy was, “ not a singer. He was an indifferent

conductor” (247). Because of his ability to play the piano, when he composed for the

piano, he composed for the one medium of expression that was responsive to his personal
touch. Debussy wrote in a way that he could approach in a companionate way and not

vicariously through the interpretation of others. Most of Debussy’s compositions were

written for piano; however, the artist did compose for others, such as the voice, violin and

the cello. The piano was the only instrument that could live up to the innovations of his

creative art. The instrument was able to produce a harmony of tonal blending rather than

one of a simple melodic statement. The piano was also still capable of gradations of

color. It was only on the piano that Debussy was able to produce a shifting of tonalities

while still suggesting the absence of tonality. Thompson states that, “If Debussy had been

an organist or a harpist he would scarcely have dealt with chords as he did; if a violinist,

he might never have been a composer at all. As a pianist, his blending had in them little

of the symphonic essence of orchestral music” (248). Claude Debussy’s piano music is

some of the most beautiful and unusual. A term that came about because of his music is,

“’half-pedal’ and “overlapping pedal’”(Vallas 45). These terms are used for the sort of

tone modeling that is characteristic of good Debussy playing. In order to execute a “half-

pedal” technique one must simply use the damper pedal as a tone modifier by means of

which much of the tone is sustained without losing all the dissonance of the tone. After

the musician strikes the chord with the damper pedal down, he simply modifies it by

lifting the foot only a fraction of an inch off and then immediately putting the pedal back

down. Because the contact of the dampers with the strings doesn’t cut off the vibrations

completely, the pianist is left with a soft yet dissonant sound. This form of technique is

used to achieve a sort of delicate coloring in which Debussy’s piano music abounds.

Like most of Debussy’s starts in something, his career in chamber music had an

interesting beginning. His first work as a chamber music composer was a cyclic
String Quartet. Later on he composed an influential scherzo of which, with its cross-

rhythms and flying pizzicatos, recalled a piece he had heard during his time traveling in

Paris in the late of 1880’s. It was not until his final years did Debussy revert to a different

medium. Biasin, Gian-Paolo states that, “In both his orchestral and –especially- piano

works after 1902, Debussy emphasized the new rigor linking harmony and melody and

instead of concealing the melodic and rhythmic line in an impressionistic halo, evidences

it neatly” (13). Ever concerned with the necessity for French music to be true to itself, he

planned a series of six chamber sonatas in the French traditional form. Before finally

dying from rectal cancer, he completed three of them. The finale of the Sonata caused the

ailing Debussy immense effort, though there is no evidence of declining powers in any of

his music. All three of the sonatas anticipated neo-classicism in their effortlessness,

simplicity, and artistic restraint.

Claude Debussy achieved many magnificent things as a composer and pianist.

The one thing that set him apart from others is that even when his piers and teachers

looked down on his work with a critical eye, the young man kept striving forward with

ambition and determination to create music that not only spoke to the listener but also

conveyed how he felt and perceived music to be. Debussy’s style of music was like no

one else’s during that time. It was validated when critics and other musicians were

baffled by the use of harmonies and tones in his compositions. Debussy’s style of written

was very unusual compared to that of his peers and the composers before him. Because of

his perspective on how music is to be played, there is an entirely new form of how to not

only write music but also play it. Debussy introduced current and future musicians to a

new way of thinking and playing. Although he endured criticism from fellow musicians,
Debussy did not stop fighting for how he viewed music. Claude Debussy not only had an

enormous influence on the sounds of piano music during the 1900 hundreds but also on

the future generates.

 Works Cited

Biasin, Gian-Paolo, and Muse Project. Montale, Debussy, And Modernism. Princeton,

N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989. eBook Academic Collection

(EBSCOhost). Web. 22 Mar. 2016.

Burkholder, James Peter. A History Of Western Music. New York: W. W. Norton and

Company, 1960. Print.

Dumesnil, Maurice. Claude Debussy Master of Dreams, New York: Vail-Ballou Press

Inc., 1940. Print.

Nichols, Roger. Oxford Studies of Composers Debussy, Great Britain: Oxford University

Press, 1972. Print.

Orledge, Robert. "Debussy, Claude." The Oxford Companion to Music. Ed. Alison

Latham. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 23 Mar. 2016.

<http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e1846>.

Thompson, Oscar. Debussy Man and Artist, New York: Dover Publication, Inc., 1965.

Print

Vallas, Léon. Claude Debussy His Life and Works, New York: Dover Publications, Inc.,

1973. Print.