Claude Debussy Research Paper

Claude Debussy was born August 22, 1862 near Saint-Germain-en-laye, France. He died March 25, 1918 in Paris. His birth name was Achille-Claude Debussy; he later changed it to Claude Debussy. Claude was the oldest of five children. He is from the Impressionism era of music.

He began piano lessons at the age of 7 with an Italian violinist after his mother fled with him to Cannes to escape the Franco-Prussian War. He showed that he was a gifted pianist and was able to enter the Paris Conservatory in 1873 to study piano and composition when he was 10. Claude never went to regular school. He won the Grand Prix de Rome with his cantata L’Enfant produgue (The Prodigal Child) in 1884. By winning the 1884 Prix de Rome he received a scholarship to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. He found that while studying there the Italian opera was not for him. Sometimes he was a depressed person and wouldn’t be able to compose, but he found himself

His early style can be heard in Clair de lune, which is a folk song about being love-sick. Debussy had one child, a daughter named Claude-Emma, who was the inspiration to Debussy’s Children’s Corner suite, of which the music is more on the side of classicism.

Debussy wrote one opera Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902. The opera was a success and was influential to younger composers, one of which was Maurice Ravel. He formulated the “21-note scale”. This was designed to drown out the tonality. He used instruments in unusual ways that added artistic influences to his music like an impressionist painter.

He had plans for an American tour and more ballet scores, as well as revisions to some of Chopin’s and Bach’s works that were to be for republication, but these were all cut short by his ill health and the outbreak of World War I. Debussy was considered the great French composer of his time and he revolutionized music of that time period. He redefined what music consisted