Claude Debussy is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century, with his unique style and innovative harmonies setting a new standard in classical music. The piano played a central role in Debussy’s compositions, and

Debussy hated being called an impressionist composer. Impressionism in painting had been given its name based on the title of a Monet picture, Impression, soleil levant (Impression: Sunrise), the painters preferred to regard themselves as realists, showing the world in

We interviewed digital performer and arranger Francis Gorgé in February 2022 and now look at this recording as our Music of the Week. In Debussy’s Préludes, Book I, the second piece has the title Voiles, which can be translated as

Let’s continue to look at Debussy’s relationships with his fellow artists and musicians. The Scottish operatic soprano Mary Garden wrote, “I honestly don’t know if Debussy ever loved anybody really. He loved his music – and perhaps himself. I think

For a good many of his contemporaries, Claude Debussy was considered unsociable and reserved. Some writers even describe him as having “little strength of character.” To be sure, he frequently distanced himself from most musicians and tended to mingle with

Claude Debussy writes, “I love music passionately. And because I love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth, an open-air art boundless as the elements, the wind, the

For students at the Paris Conservatoire, winning the Prix de Rome meant following a tradition that had been established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. The prize meant receiving a stipend that would cover 3 to

Claude Debussy once told a journalist in Vienna, “See how they are mistaken. Some think I am a melancholy northerner, other that I am from the south, from Provence, the country of Daudet—tireli, tirela! Well, I am just a native