how did debussy die

Where did Claude Debussy die?

16th arrondissement of Paris, Paris, FranceClaude Debussy / Place of death

What is Debussy most famous piece?

La Mer (1905) La Mer is Debussy's most popular and widely performed concert work. These three orchestral 'symphonic sketches' capture Debussy's almost superhuman ability to translate the play of light on the water and the sea's place in the natural world into musical sound.

When did Debussy live and die?

Claude Debussy, in full Achille-Claude Debussy, (born August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France—died March 25, 1918, Paris), French composer whose works were a seminal force in the music of the 20th century.

What did Debussy think of Beethoven?

One of Debussy's harshest comments on Beethoven was the following: 'Debussy answered by asking another question: "What do you call classics? Some of his later statements seem to be a little more measured. uncritically just because people have told me that they are masters!

How do I pronounce Debussy?

0:000:51How to Pronounce Debussy? (CORRECTLY) - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipBonjour de france. Françoise atypical france prononciation claude.MoreBonjour de france. Françoise atypical france prononciation claude.

Why is Debussy so great?

Historical answer: Debussy was an innovator in many ways. He was among the first Western composers to find inspiration in non-Western music, an influence which he made use of extensively in his own work.

Is Clair de Lune a person?

0:1510:15Why Do People Think Clair de Lune is GREAT? - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipWe all know Claire de Lune means the light of the moon. One can imagine being out in the late nightMoreWe all know Claire de Lune means the light of the moon. One can imagine being out in the late night and seeing the color of a full moon spread its glow over very gently over the landscape.

How old is Clair de Lune?

Clair de lune, (French: Moonlight) the third segment in Suite bergamasque, a four-movement composition for piano by French composer Claude Debussy, begun in 1890 and revised and published in 1905.

How many songs Debussy wrote?

Debussy's Compositions During his lifetime, Claude Debussy wrote 141 compositions. Some of them were considered chamber music, and others were written for voices and an orchestra. Debussy also composed several operas.

Did Beethoven have secret lovers?

Beethoven never married, but in his early forties he feel deeply in love with a mysterious woman who remains known as “immortal beloved” — the eternally enchanting term of endearment by which the great composer addressed her in his letters.

What did Einstein say about Beethoven?

Einstein once said that while Beethoven created his music, Mozart's ''was so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master." Einstein believed much the same of physics, that beyond observations and theory lay the music of the spheres - which, he wrote, revealed a ...

What was Beethoven's fear?

So while Beethoven feared an existential death of “Fate knocking on the door” in the form of his deafness, something that would possibly rob him of the entire meaning of his life, we can also hear the paranoia that brims around the sound of the police sirens that, to some, signify the fear of a literal death.

What was Debussy's favorite piece?

Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine's poem provided the inspiration for Clair de lune, Debussy's best-loved piano work.

Is Clair de lune a masterpiece?

Clair de lune, a masterpiece composed by Debussy, is one of my favorite piano piece.

Why is Clair de lune so good?

Composed in 1890, the piece is calm and expressive and has provided a moving soundtrack to a number of emotional film and TV moments, including Atonement and Ocean's Eleven. And it turns out 'Clair de lune' looks just as beautiful as it sounds.

What is Clair de lune known for?

Clair de lune, (French: Moonlight) the third segment in Suite bergamasque, a four-movement composition for piano by French composer Claude Debussy, begun in 1890 and revised and published in 1905. The gentle “Clair de lune” provides an elegant contrast to the suite's sprightly second and fourth movements.

Why is Claude Debussy famous?

French composer Claude Debussy’s works were a seminal force in the music of the 20th century. He developed a highly original system of harmony and...

What did Claude Debussy create?

French composer Claude Debussy’s major works included Clair de lune (“Moonlight”; in Suite bergamasque, 1890–1905), Prélude à l’après-midi d’un fau...

What was Claude Debussy’s early life like?

Claude Debussy was a gifted pianist by age nine. He was encouraged by an associate of Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, and in 1873 he entered the P...

When did Debussy's obituary appear?

This edited extract from the obituary that appeared in the Guardian on 27 March 1918, two days after Debussy’s death. This article was amended on 22 March 2018 to correct a sub-heading which may have suggested that the obituary had appeared on 19 March 1918. Topics.

What was Debussy's first work?

His first works gave merely the sense of an exquisite refinement and freshness, and when in 1884 he won the Rome prize with his scenic cantata L’Enfant Prodigue there was little to proclaim the most revolutionary of modern French harmonists. In the setting of Rossetti’s poem The Blessed Damozel, for female voices and orchestra, he found a subject and a medium of expression as exquisite as even his imagination could desire. His fastidiousness now turned itself to the invention of harmonic subtleties, in as judicious concessions to poetic ideas and the sense of the picturesque as can be reflected in music. Debussy’s genius in this harmonic development has not only been vindicated by the admiration of his own works but by the adhesion of a host of followers, whose work has made the French school the most significant of our day.

What is Debussy's genius?

Debussy’s genius in this harmonic development has not only been vindicated by the admiration of his own works but by the adhesion of a host of followers, whose work has made the French school the most significant of our day .

Who is the most famous French composer who died?

Photograph: Universal/Getty Images. The famous French composer Claude Achille Debussy, who had been suffering from cancer, has died in Paris at the age of 55. Debussy is not only the most original but the most refined and, since Berlioz, the first truly modern composer of the French school.

Which composer left us a world of beautiful music?

27 March 1918: Of all composers in our day Debussy has the finest aesthetic. He has left us a world of beautiful music

Where was Debussy born?

Early life. Debussy was born on 22 August 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Seine-et-Oise, on the north-west fringes of Paris. He was the eldest of the five children of Manuel-Achille Debussy and his wife, Victorine, née Manoury. Debussy senior ran a china shop and his wife was a seamstress.

How much of Debussy's life was spent in the discovery of himself?

In a survey of Debussy's oeuvre shortly after the composer's death, the critic Ernest Newman wrote, "It would be hardly too much to say that Debussy spent a third of his life in the discovery of himself, a third in the free and happy realisation of himself, and the final third in the partial, painful loss of himself". Later commentators have rated some of the late works more highly than Newman and other contemporaries did, but much of the music for which Debussy is best known is from the middle years of his career.

What was Debussy's only opera?

He took many years to develop his mature style, and was nearly 40 when he achieved international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completed, Pelléas et Mélisande . Debussy's orchestral works include Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894), Nocturnes (1897–1899) and Images (1905–1912).

What music did Debussy learn?

In 1889, at the Paris Exposition Universelle, Debussy first heard Javanese gamelan music. The gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, and ensemble textures appealed to him, and echoes of them are heard in "Pagodes" in his piano suite Estampes. He also attended two concerts of Rimsky-Korsakov 's music, conducted by the composer. This too made an impression on him, and its harmonic freedom and non-Teutonic tone colours influenced his own developing musical style.

What was the most important award Debussy won in 1884?

Nevertheless, in 1884 Debussy won France's most prestigious musical award, the Prix de Rome, with his cantata L'enfant prodigue. The Prix carried with it a residence at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome, to further the winner's studies.

When did Debussy visit France?

Debussy was there from January 1885 to March 1887, with three or possibly four absences of several weeks when he returned to France, chiefly to see Marie Vasnier. Initially Debussy found the artistic atmosphere of the Villa Medici stifling, the company boorish, the food bad, and the accommodation "abominable".

How long was Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien?

Le Martyre de saint Sébastien (1911), originally a five-act musical play to a text by Gabriele D'Annunzio that took nearly five hours in performance, was not a success, and the music is now more often heard in a concert (or studio) adaptation with narrator, or as an orchestral suite of "Fragments symphoniques". Debussy enlisted the help of André Caplet in orchestrating and arranging the score. Two late stage works, the ballets Khamma (1912) and La boîte à joujoux (1913), were left with the orchestration incomplete, and were completed by Charles Koechlin and Caplet, respectively.

How did Debussy die?

Debussy spent his remaining years writing as a critic, composing and performing his own works internationally. He died of colon cancer on March 25, 1918, when he was just 55 years old, in Paris.

Who Was Claude Debussy?

After the turn of the century, Debussy established himself as the leading figure of French music. During World War I, while Paris was being bombed by the German air force, he succumbed to colon cancer at the age of 55.

What did Debussy hear?

Debussy returned to Paris in 1887 and attended the Paris World Exposition two years later. There he heard a Javanese gamelan— a musical ensemble composed of a variety of bells, gongs, metallophones and xylophones, sometimes accompanied by vocals—and the subsequent years found Debussy incorporating the elements of the gamelan into his existing style to produce a wholly new kind of sound.

When was the first Debussy opera performed?

Debussy's seminal opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, was completed in 1895 and was a sensation when first performed in 1902, though it deeply divided listeners (audience members and critics either loved it or hated it). The attention gained with Pelléas, paired with the success of Prélude in 1892, earned Debussy extensive recognition. Over the following 10 years, he was the leading figure in French music, writing such lasting works as La Mer ( The Sea; 1905) and Ibéria (1908), both for orchestra, and Images (1905) and Children's Corner Suite (1908), both for solo piano.

What was Debussy's most famous work?

Over the following 10 years, he was the leading figure in French music, writing such lasting works as La Mer ( The Sea; 1905) and Ibéria (1908), both for orchestra, and Images (1905) and Children's Corner Suite (1908), both for solo piano. Around this same time, in 1905, Debussy's Suite bergamasque was published.

What age did Debussy start playing piano?

While his family had little money, Debussy showed an early affinity for the piano, and he began taking lessons at the age of 7. By age 10 or 11, he had entered the Paris Conservatory, where his instructors and fellow students recognized his talent but often found his attempts at musical innovation strange.

What was Debussy's last work?

In his last works, the piano pieces En blanc et noir, (1915; In Black and White) and in the Douze Études (1915; “Twelve Études”), Debussy had branched out into modes of composition later to be developed in the styles of Stravinsky and the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. It is certain that he would have taken part in the leading movements in composition of the years following World War I had his life not been so tragically cut short by cancer.

What was Debussy's alter ego?

During the latter part of his life Debussy created an alter ego, “Monsieur Croche,” with whom he carried on imaginary conversations on the nature of art and music. “What is the use of your almost incomprehensible art?” Monsieur Croche asks. “Is it not more profitable to see the sun rise than to listen to the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven?” Elsewhere Monsieur Croche supports the cause of the musical explorer: “I am less interested in what I possess than in what I shall need tomorrow.”

What is the title of the third sketch of Debussy's La Mer?

Evolution of his work. Excerpt from the third symphonic sketch, “Dialogue du vent et de la mer” (“Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea”), from Claude Debussy's La Mer ( The Sea ), L. 109; from a 1954 recording by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pierre Monteux.

What was Debussy's first attack on the language of the 19th century?

Debussy’s music marks the first of a series of attacks on the traditional language of the 19th century. He did not believe in the stereotyped harmonic procedures of the 19th century, and indeed it becomes clear from a study of mid-20th-century music that the earlier harmonic methods were being followed in an arbitrary, academic manner.

Did Debussy use brass?

Debussy also used the brass in original colour transformations. In fact, in his music, the conventional orchestral construction, with its rigid woodwind, brass, and string departments, finds itself undermined or split up in the manner of the Impressionist painters.

Is Debussy's music poetry?

“One must seek the poetry in his work,” said his friend the French composer Paul Dukas. There is not only poetry in his music; there is often an inspiration from painting.

Did Debussy make the fall of the House of Usher an opera?

Throughout his life Debussy planned to set The Fall of the House of Usher in the form of an opera—the shadow of the tale never having been realized in Pelléas et Mélisande —and actually signed a contract for the production of this work at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, but it was never completed.

Overview

Life and career

Works

Style

Influences

Influence on later composers

Recordings

Notes, references and sources