![]() The result is piano music designed to be diaphanous, vague, and sensual.Īlmost all Debussy’s music featured a descriptive title that hammered away at this sensual component. He felt that a pianist should, “penetrate into the notes,” and that the piano should sound like an “instrument without hammers” (Schonberg 462).ĭebussy achieved this by using the damper pedal with significant effect and by eschewing nearly all the rules of harmony. Debussy went even further than Chopin in this direction. Debussy, however, had this to say about him, “I became finally and completely convinced that Beethoven definitely wrote badly for the piano” (Schonberg 462).ĭebussy much preferred the light touch and subtle tone of Chopin over the blunt touch and thundering tone of Beethoven. Remember, nearly all the Romantics considered Beethoven to be the undisputed king of the universe. Students of music history can differentiate Debussy from the rest of the Romantic composers by noting his apathy towards Beethoven. The rest is a lot of humbug invented by frigid imbeciles riding on the backs of the Masters… (Schonberg 456).ĭebussy’s rejection of “frigid imbeciles” is best characterized by his piano music. I am more and more convinced that music, by its very nature, is something that cannot be cast into a traditional and fixed form. Here is Debussy on his thinking about music: Regardless of this, his music garnered many devotees, and he is usually considered the greatest French composer. He much preferred cats to people, and he disliked performing and conducting despite being a master at both.ĭebussy’s unusual temperament, style, and talent earned him many detractors. ![]() Consequently, he didn’t have many friends. The Character of Debussyĭebussy was surly, easily offended, and egotistical. Wandering dreamily without destination is the primary character trait of Impressionist music. With pitch collections like the pentatonic scale and the whole-tone scale, it is possible to construct melodies that wander without a destination in a manner suggestive of a dream. Instead of using the precision and clarity of the major and minor scales, Debussy often favored the ambiguity and vagary of the pentatonic and whole-tone scales (Randell 180). The painting style of Monet was marked by subject matter expressed with vague suggestion rather than precise representation. The name for Debussy’s period, Impressionist, comes from an 1872 oil painting by Claude Monet (1840-1926) called Impression, Sunrise (Schonberg 453). 21st-century (2000-present) (“Art music” sidebar 1).Here are how the later periods of Western art music break down according to Wikipedia: Period names like 20th-century, Modern, and Impressionist can be confusing, so it is best to have some music-history-timeline software running on your brain. Music that emphasized these types of sounds became common during the 20th-century, and Debussy can be considered a 20th-century composer. His most significant contribution to music history was that he was the progenitor of the Impressionist style, which was a form of music that featured unorthodox textures, dreamlike harmonies, and ethereal melodies. ![]() Debussy’s StyleĬlaude Debussy (1862-1918) was a French composer of the late Romantic period and early Modern period. Impressionist painter Claude Monet’s 1872 painting, Impression, Sunrise, and Impressionist composer, Claude Debussy, photographed in 1890.
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