Claude Debussy

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Debussy is celebrated in Google's latest doodle. Photograph: Google
Google is celebrating the 151st anniversary of the birth of French composer Achille-Claude Debussy with an animated doodle set to one of his best-known pieces, Clair de lune (Moonlight).
The doodle features a moonlit riverside scene which progresses to the sound of the piece, the third movement of his most famous piano suites, Suite bergamasque (1890–1905). Lights in the streets and houses flicker on and off in time to the music as the silhouettes of cars, boats and cyclists pass by, smoke rises from chimneys and rain begins to fall.
The animation ends with two people in different boats crossing paths on the river and sharing a red umbrella.
Debussy's compositions are considered a seminal force in the music of the 20th century. He developed a system of harmony and musical structure that has been compared to the work of Impressionist and Symbolist painters. His style was reflected in his best known quote: "Music is the space between the notes."
His other major works include Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, 1894), the opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), and La Mer (The Sea, 1905).
Debussy was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, on 22 August 1862. In 1884, aged just 22, he won the Grand Prix de Rome with his cantata L'Enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Child).
He died of colon cancer at his home in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris on 25 March 1918 when he was only 55.

Born On This Day
Claude Debussy was born on this day in 1862.


 
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Quick Facts

• NAME: [url=/people/groups/famous-named-claude/]Claude[/url] Debussy
  
• OCCUPATION: [url=/people/groups/musicians/songwriters/]Songwriter[/url]
  
• BIRTH DATE: [url=/people/groups/born-on-august-22/]August 22[/url], [url=/people/groups/born-1862/]1862[/url]
  
• DEATH DATE: [url=/people/groups/died-on-march-25/]March 25[/url], 1918
  
• EDUCATION: Paris Conservatory
  
• PLACE OF BIRTH: Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
  
• PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France
  
• Full Name: Achille-Claude Debussy
  
• AKA: Claude Debussy
  

Best Known For

Embracing nontraditional scales and tonal structures, Claude Debussy became one of the most highly regarded composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is seen as the founder of musical impressionism.

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Think you know about Biography?
Synopsis
Claude Debussy was born into a poor family in France, but his obvious gift at the piano sent him to the Paris Conservatory at age 11. At age 22, he won the Prix de Rome, which financed two years of further musical study in the Italian capital. After the turn of the century, Debussy established himself as the leading figure of French music. During World War I, while Paris was being bombed by the German air force, he succumbed to colon cancer at the age of 55.
Contents

• [url=/people/claude-debussy-9269290?page=1#synopsis][/url]
  Early Life

The oldest of five children, Claude Debussy was born on August 22, 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. While his family had little money, Debussy showed an early affinity for the piano, and he began taking lessons at age seven. By age 10 or 11, he had entered the Paris Conservatory, where his instructors and fellow students recognized his talent but often found his attempts at musical innovation strange.
Musical Composer
In 1880, Nadezhda von Meck, who had previously supported Russian composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, hired Debussy to teach piano to her children. With her and her children, Debussy traveled Europe and began accumulating musical and cultural experiences in Russia that he would soon turn toward his compositions, most notably gaining exposure to Russian composers who would greatly influence his work.

In 1884, Debussy entered his cantata The Prodigal Son in the Prix de Rome, a competition for composers, and he took home the top prize, which allowed him to study for two years in the Italian capital. While there, he studied the music of German composer, specifically his opera Tristan und Isolde. Wagner’s influence on Debussy was profound and lasting, but despite this, Debussy generally shied away from the ostentation of Wagner’s opera in his own works.

Debussy returned to Paris in 1887 and attended the Paris World Exhibition two years later. There he heard a Javanese gamelan—a musical ensemble composed of a variety of bells, gongs and xylophones, sometimes accompanied by vocals—and the subsequent years found Debussy incorporating the elements of the gamelan into his existing style to produce a wholly new kind of sound. The music written during this period came to represent his early masterpieces—Ariettes oubliées (1888), Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1892), and the String Quartet (1893)—which were clearly delineated from the works of his coming mature period.

Debussy's seminal opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, was completed in 1895 and was a sensation when first performed in 1902, although it deeply divided listeners (audience members and critics either loved it or hated it). The attention gained with Pelléas, paired with the success of Prélude in 1892, earned Debussy extensive recognition, and over the following 10 years he was the leading figure in French music, writing such lasting works as La Mer (1905) and Ibéria (1908), both for orchestra, and Images (1905) and Children's Corner Suite (1908), both for solo piano.
Later Years and Death
Debussy spent his remaining years writing as a critic, composing and performing his own works internationally, before dying of colon cancer in 1918.

Claude Debussy biography