As far as women were concerned, Claude Debussy was a bastard! “There was a woman at each crossroad of Debussy’s life,” Marcel Dietschy writes. “Certainly women of all ages seemed fascinated by him, and they attached themselves to him like

Claude Debussy’s friend Paul Dukas candidly wrote “the strongest influence to which Debussy submitted was that of the littérateurs, not that of the musician.” And while most of us have no problems describing Debussy as an “Impressionist,” a term originating

The Scottish operatic soprano Mary Garden, who sung the part of “Mélisande” in the original production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, was to later write about the composer, “I honestly don’t know if Debussy ever loved anybody really.

Sonic Explorer and Visionary On 25 March 1918, Achille-Claude Debussy (1862-1918) lost his battle with rectal cancer at his Paris home. Aged 55, Debussy was universally acknowledged as one of the most important musicians of his time. His harmonic innovations

An Exploration of Debussy’s Piano Music — Preludes After a two-year break, Debussy continued his work on the Préludes for piano, writing another 12 and again showing influences of all areas of popular and ancient culture and from artists, writers,

A Look at Debussy Piano Music — Preludes Following the model of Bach and his 24 Preludes and Fugues from 1722, Debussy also wrote his own set of Préludes for the piano. Debussy began Book 1 in December 1909, finishing

In his delicately titled, Ariettes oubliées (Forgotten Little Songs), Claude Debussy (1862-1918) took the poetry of Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) and created a song cycle to match the stylistic subtleties of his poems. Debussy met the older poet via his mother-in-law.

We associate the sound of Debussy with his ‘impressionist’ music of works such as Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune or his piano music. In some of his most important songs, however, we have more of a Germanic influence, i.e., Wagner.