Achille-Claude Debussey - Moonlight
“There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law. I love music passionately. And because I love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth, an open-air art boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art.” Achille-Claude Debussy (a-kill-ee / clod / day-buse-say) was born near Paris in the town of St. Germain-en-Laye. Young children are usually not capable of, nor are they mature enough to understand passion. However Achille-Claude Debussey was as far from “usual” as a child can be. As a small child Debussey found his life’s passion to be music and wasted little time paying attention to anything else. While attending the Paris Conservatory, he shocked his professors when at the tender age of ten he was already composing and reading music at an adult level. As unusual of a child Debussey was, so too his musical style became. He crafted and mastered his unique musical style to the point at which it now serves as a model that is followed by many contemporary composers. He was a tonal composer yet his harmonies were not within the tradition of that time. He strived to break the
Orchestral Music was by far the most influential music of Debussy. Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) was his most popular and influential orchestral piece. This piece eventually blossomed into a ballet by Nijinsky. “The music evokes a pagan world, as the satyr of the title takes his ease in the afternoon shade on a summer day. The three symphonic sketches that constitute La mer (The Sea), published with a famous woodcut known as The Wave, from the Japanese artist Hokusai's views of Mount Fuji, an indication of oriental influence on Debussy, offer evocations of the sea from dawn to midday, of the waves and of the dialogue of wind and sea” (HNH 2). Debussy wrote many other orchestral pieces including, three movements of Nocturnes – Nuages, Fetes, and Sirenes. Nuages translated means clouds, fetes translated means festivals, and sirenes meaning just that. Along with many others Debussy proved he had not only mastered the opera as well as orchestral music Chamber music includes harps, violins and usually a string quartet. Debussy again did not follow this pattern. His first chamber music piece was only a culmination of one string quartet. Some of his later chamber music pieces included a rhapsody for saxophone, flute, viola and harp. Debussy completed three projected works, a violin sonata, a cello and flute sonata and a viola and harp sonata. Claude Debussy was by far one of the most influential composers of his time. He bent the boundaries of music composition. He had many influences, Chopin and Wagner being two main ones. Through Opera music, Chamber music, orchestral music and mainly the Piano Debussy’s mastery is shown. With a culmination of hundreds and hundreds of musical compositions Debussy became a well known name in the early twentieth century. “Debussy was among the greatest and most important of 20th-century Composers both by reason of his own achievement and by the paths he opened for others to explore” (Oxford 1). Debussy was quite different from other composers at that time, and in the evidence shown above it is very apparent that he thought outside of the lines more often than most. While most composers were telling stories with their pieces, Debussy was trying to evoke thoughts and emotions. He would write a piece with the intention of just a feeling. No stories, no hidden meaning, just a simple sensatio
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Approximate Word count = 1628
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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