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

As German troops bombarded the city of Paris, Claude Debussy died in 25 March 1918. The chaotic situation did no permit a public funeral, but a lonely funeral cortège nevertheless made its way through deserted streets, passing the Tuileries, and

We think of Debussy as the composer of the dreamworld sound of impressionism. He was an active follower of the symbolist movement, which rejected naturalism, realism, and clear-cut forms in favour of the indefinite and the mysterious. The symbolist poets

Claude Debussy (1862-1918), better known for his piano and orchestral works, was also a master of the string quartet. He wrote his first one in 1893 and planned a second one to go into a series of six chamber works.

Slowly, sleepily, and lasciviously, the faun awakes. So begins Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, taking us to the imaginary world of a mythical creature. The work should really be entitled Prélude à ‘l’après-midi d’un faune’ because it is a

In 1920, Henry Prunières, editor of the French music journal Revue Musicale, commissioned 10 of the leading composers of the day to contribute to a work in memory of Claude Debussy, who had died from cancer 2 years earlier. The