Achille Claude Debussy
Born: 1862Died: 1918
Education: self-taught
Career: composer
Claude Debussy was born on 22 August 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, the eldest of five children. His father, Manuel-Achille Debussy, owned a china shop there; his mother, Victorine Manoury Debussy, was a seamstress. The family moved to Paris in 1867, but in 1870 Debussy's pregnant mother fled with Claude to his paternal aunt's home in Cannes to escape the Franco-Prussian war. Debussy began piano lessons there at the age of seven with an Italian violinist in his early 40s named Cerutti; his aunt paid for his lessons. In 1871 he drew the attention of Marie Maute de Fleurville, who claimed to have been a pupil of Frederic Chopin. Debussy always believed her, although there is no independent evidence to support her claim. His talents soon became evident, and in 1872, at age ten, Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he spent the next 11 years. During his time there he studied composition with Ernest Guiraud, music history/theory with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, harmony with Emile Durand, piano with Antoine Francois Marmontel, organ with Cesar Franck, and solfege with Albert Lavignac, as well as other significant figures of the era. He also became a lifelong friend of fellow student and distinguished pianist Isidor Philipp. After Debussy's death, many pianists sought Philipp's advice on playing Debussy's works. From the outset, although clearly talented, Debussy was argumentative and experimental. He challenged the rigid teaching of the Academy, favoring instead dissonances and intervals that were frowned upon. Like Georges Bizet, he was a brilliant pianist and an outstanding sight reader, who could have had a professional career had he so wished. The pieces he played in public at this time included sonata movements by Beethoven, Schumann and Weber; and Chopin—the Ballade No. 2, a movement from the Piano Concerto No. 1, and the Allegro de concert, a relatively little-known piece but one requiring an advanced technique (it was originally intended to be the opening movement of a third piano concerto). During the summers of 1880, 1881, and 1882 Debussy accompanied the wealthy patroness of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Nadezhda von Meck, as she travelled with her family in Europe and Russia. The young composer's many musical activities during these vacations included playing four-hand pieces with von Meck at the piano, giving music lessons to her children, and performing in private concerts with some of her musician friends. Despite von Meck's closeness with Tchaikovsky, the Russian master appears to have had minimal effect on Debussy. In September 1880 she sent Debussy's Danse bohemienne for Tchaikovsky's perusal. A month later Tchaikovsky wrote back to her, "It is a very pretty piece, but it is much too short. Not a single idea is expressed fully, the form is terribly shriveled, and it lacks unity." Debussy did not publish the piece; the manuscript remained in the von Meck family, and it was sold to B. Schott's Sohne in Mainz, and published by them in 1932. A greater influence was Debussy's close friendship with Marie-Blanche Vasnier, a singer he met when he began working as an accompanist to earn some money. She and her husband, Henri, gave Debussy emotional and professional support. Henri Vasnier introduced him to the writings of influential French writers of the time, which gave rise to his first songs, settings of poems by Paul Verlaine, the son-in-law of his former teacher, Mme. Maute de Fleurville. As the winner of the 1884 Prix de Rome with his composition L'enfant prodigue, Debussy received a scholarship to the Academie des Beaux-Arts, which included a four-year residence at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome, to further his studies (1885–1887). According to letters to Marie-Blanche Vasnier, perhaps in part designed to gain her sympathy, he found the artistic atmosphere stifling, the company boorish, the food bad, and the monastic quarters "abominable". Neither did he delight in the pleasures of the "Eternal City", finding the Italian opera of Donizetti and Verdi not to his taste. Debussy was often depressed and unable to compose, but he was inspired by Franz Liszt, whose command of the keyboard he found admirable. In June 1885, Debussy wrote of his desire to follow his own way, saying, "I am sure the Institute would not approve, for, naturally it regards the path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamoured of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas!" Debussy finally composed four pieces that were sent to the Academy: the symphonic ode Zuleima, based on a text by Heinrich Heine; the orchestral piece Printemps; the cantata La damoiselle elue (1887–1888), which was criticized by the Academy as "bizarre"; and the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra. The third piece was the first in which stylistic features of Debussy's later style emerged. The fourth piece was heavily based on Cesar Franck's music and Debussy withdrew it. The Academy chided him for "courting the unusual" and hoped for something better from the gifted student. Even though Debussy's works showed the influence of Jules Massenet, Massenet concluded, "He is an enigma." During his visits to Bayreuth in 1888–9, Debussy was exposed to Wagnerian opera, which had a lasting impact on his work. Debussy, like many young musicians of the time, responded positively to Richard Wagner's sensuousness, mastery of form, and striking harmonies. Wagner's extroverted emotionalism was not to be Debussy's way, but the German composer's influence is evident in La damoiselle elue and the 1889 piece Cinq poemes de Charles Baudelaire. Other songs of the period, notably the settings of Verlaine – Ariettes oubliees, Trois melodies, and Fetes galantes – are all in a more capricious style. Around this time, Debussy met Erik Satie, who proved a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to composition and to naming his pieces. During this period, both musicians were bohemians enjoying the same cafe society and struggling to stay afloat financially. In 1889, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, Debussy heard Javanese gamelan music. He incorporated gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, and ensemble textures into some of his compositions, most notably Pagodes from his piano collection Estampes. Debussy's private life was often turbulent. At the age of 18 he began an eight-year affair with Marie-Blanche Vasnier, wife of a Parisian civil servant. The relationship eventually faltered following his winning of the Prix de Rome in 1884 and obligatory residence in Rome. On his permanent return to Paris and his parents' home on the avenue de Berlin (now rue de Liege) he began a tempestuous relationship with Gabrielle ('Gaby') Dupont, a tailor's daughter from Lisieux, soon cohabiting with her on the rue de Londres, and later the rue Gustave Dore. During this time he also had an affair with the singer Therese Roger, to whom he was briefly engaged. Such cavalier behaviour was widely condemned, and precipitated the end of his long friendship with Ernest Chausson. He ultimately left Dupont for her friend Rosalie ('Lilly') Texier, a fashion model whom he married in 1899, after threatening suicide if she refused him. However, although Texier was affectionate, practical, straightforward, and well liked by Debussy's friends and associates, he became increasingly irritated by her intellectual limitations and lack of musical sensitivity. Moreover, her looks had prematurely aged, and she was unable to bear children. In 1904, Debussy was introduced to Emma Bardac, wife of Parisian banker Sigismond Bardac, by her son Raoul, one of his students. In contrast to Texier, Bardac was a sophisticate, a brilliant conversationalist, and an accomplished singer. After despatching Lilly to her father's home at Bichain in Villeneuve-la-Guyard on 15 July 1904, Debussy secretly took Bardac to Jersey for a holiday. On their return to France, Debussy wrote to Texier from Dieppe on 11 August, informing her their marriage was over, but still making no mention of Bardac. Debussy briefly moved to an apartment at 10 avenue Alphand. On 14 October, five days before their fifth wedding anniversary, Texier attempted suicide, shooting herself in the chest with a revolver while standing in the Place de la Concorde; she survived, although the bullet remained lodged in her vertebrae for the rest of her life. The ensuing scandal was to alienate Debussy from many of his friends, whilst Bardac was disowned by her family. In the spring of 1905, finding the hostility towards them intolerable, Debussy and Bardac (now pregnant) fled to England, via Jersey. Bardac's divorce was finalized in May. The couple settled at the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne from 24 July to 30 August 1905, where Debussy was to correct proofs to his symphonic suite La mer, and celebrate his divorce from Texier on 2 August. After a brief visit to London, the couple returned to Paris in September, buying a house in a courtyard development off the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne (now Avenue Foch), where Debussy was to reside for the rest of his life. Their daughter (the composer's only child) Claude-Emma was born there on 30 October. Her parents were eventually married in 1908, their troubled union enduring until Debussy's death in 1918. More affectionately known as 'Chouchou', it has been speculated that Claude-Emma was the only person Debussy ever loved. Mary Garden, who played the part of Melisande in the original production of Pelleas et Melisande in 1902, was to write of him: "I honestly don??t know if Debussy ever loved anybody really. He loved his music – and perhaps himself. I think he was wrapped up in his genius... He was a very, very strange man." Chouchou was a great musical inspiration to Debussy (she was the dedicatee of his Children's Corner suite); he was to remark towards the end of his life, when gravely ill, that were it not for Chouchou, he might have committed suicide. She outlived her father by scarcely a year, succumbing to the diphtheria epidemic of 1919 after her doctor administered the wrong treatment.