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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• Debussy’s musical development was slow, and as a student he was adept enough to produce for his teachers at the Conservatoire works that would conform to their conservative precepts.

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• As well as Maeterlinck for Pelléas et Mélisande, he drew on Shakespeare and Dickens for two of his Préludes for piano – “La Danse de Puck” (Book 1, 1910) and “Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq. P.P.M.P.C.” (Book 2, 1913).

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• This early style is well illustrated in one of Debussy’s best-known compositions, Clair de lune.

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• He originally studied the piano, but found his vocation in innovative composition, despite the disapproval of the Conservatoire’s conservative professors.

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• With the advent of the First World War, Debussy became ardently patriotic in his musical opinions.
• Another major influence on his style was the Javanese gamelan, an orchestra comprising bells, gongs, and percussions, which he became familiar with in 1889 thanks to his artistic contacts in Paris.

Ensemble: Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra

• 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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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Some of it is difficult to play like the Études and pieces such as L’isle joyeuse (The Happy Island).

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• In this, he was a profound influence on composers as diverse as Bartok, Webern, Arnold Schoenberg, and Varese.
• 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.

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. It was their view that Western harmony had exhausted it potentialities as a potent emotive syntax by the end of the nineteenth century. Like Stravinsky, he looked for inspiration in non-European harmonies, which he incorporated in his music, without rendering it “heathenish,” in the sense of undermining its synchronization with the physics of sound. The three Nocturnes for Orchestra, Pelleas and Melisande, La Mer, and Images established his reputation as one of the most influential composers in post-Wagnerian and the twentieth century music.

What did Claude Debussy create?

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.

1902: Pelléas et Mélisande

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. The academic and journalist Stephen Walsh calls Pelléas et Mélisande (begun 1893, staged 1902) “a key work for the 20th century”. The composer Olivier Messiaen was fascinated by its “extraordinary harmonic qualities and … transparent instrumental texture”. The opera is composed in what Alan Blyth describes as a sustained and heightened recitative style, with “sensuous, intimate” vocal lines. In October Casinojoy casino 1905 La mer, Debussy’s most substantial orchestral work, was premiered in Paris by the Orchestre Lamoureux under the direction of Camille Chevillard; the reception was mixed. Some praised the work, but Pierre Lalo, critic of Le Temps, hitherto an admirer of Debussy, wrote, “I do not hear, I do not see, I do not smell the sea”.[n 12] In the same month the composer’s only child was born at their home.

The 15 most famous tunes in classical music

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• Debussy received piano instruction from Chopin’s pupil Madame de Fleurville, and being very gifted, entered the Paris Conservatoire when he was 11 years old.

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• He wrote incidental music for King Lear and planned an opera based on As You Like It, but abandoned that once he turned his attention to setting Maeterlinck’s play.
• In 1889, Debussy held conversations with his former teacher Guiraud, which included exploration of harmonic possibilities at the piano.
• Based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, it caught the attention of the younger French composers, including Maurice Ravel.

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• The composer Olivier Messiaen was fascinated by its “extraordinary harmonic qualities and … transparent instrumental texture”.

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• He dedicated Children’s Corner for piano to his daughter, whose sweetness and love would quell his depressions.

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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”. 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. Debussy’s last orchestral work, the ballet Jeux, written for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, contains some of his strangest harmonies and textures in a form that moves freely over its own field of motivic connection.

Blind pianist Lucy’s sublime Debussy Arabesque crowned winning performance in The Piano finale

His works have strongly influenced a wide range of composers including Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, George Gershwin, Olivier Messiaen, George Benjamin, and the jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans. He aimed to design a new style that would not emulate those of the acclaimed composers, yet his music also reflects that of Wagner, whose operas he heard on visits to Bayreuth, Germany in 1888 and 1889. Based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, it caught the attention of the younger French composers, including Maurice Ravel. Its understatement and deceptively simple declamation also brought an entirely new tone to opera — but an unrepeatable one. 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.
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Legacy

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He made his music very different from the Romantic style, which other composers used at the time. The main musical influence in Debussy’s work was the work of Richard Wagner and the Russian composers Aleksandr Borodin and Modest Mussorgsky. Wagner fulfilled the sensuous ambitions not only of composers but also of the Symbolist poets and the Impressionist painters.
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Here again he bids farewell to a large late-Romantic orchestra, favoring a smaller ensemble that lends itself to an exploration of orchestral colors and timbres of the instruments. Debussy became a close friend of a wealthy composer and member of Franck’s circle, Ernest Chausson. Debussy received piano instruction from Chopin’s pupil Madame de Fleurville, and being very gifted, entered the Paris Conservatoire when he was 11 years old. In Paris during this time he fell in love with a singer, Blanche Vasnier, the beautiful young wife of an architect; she inspired many of his early works.