Claude Debussy

(Achille) Claude Debussy (August 22, 1862 – March 25, 1918) is a French composer.

He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejects the term.

He is among the most influential composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Born to a family of modest means and little cultural involvement, Debussy shows enough musical talent to be admitted at the age of ten to France's leading music college, the Conservatoire de Paris.

He originally studies the piano, but finds his vocation in innovative composition, despite the disapproval of the Conservatoire's conservative professors.

He takes many years to develop his mature style, and was nearly forty when he achieves international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completes, Pelléas et Mélisande.

Debussy's orchestral works include Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894), Nocturnes (1897–1899) and Images (1905–1912).

His music is to a considerable extent a reaction against Wagner and the German musical tradition.

He regards the classical symphony as obsolete and seeks an alternative in his "symphonic sketches", La mer (1903–1905).

His piano works include two books of Préludes and two of Études.

Throughout his career he writes mélodies based on a wide variety of poetry, including his own.

He is greatly influenced by the Symbolist poetic movement of the later nineteenth century.

A small number of works, including the early La Damoiselle élue and the late Le Martyre de saint Sébastien have important parts for chorus

In his final years, he focuses on chamber music, completing three of six planned sonatas for different combinations of instruments.

With early influences including Russian and far-eastern music, Debussy develops his own style of harmony and orchestral coloring, derided—and unsuccessfully resisted—by much of the musical establishment of the day.

His works have strongly influenced a wide range of composers including Béla Bartók, Olivier Messiaen, George Benjamin, and the jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans.

Debussy dies from cancer at his home in Paris at the age of fifty-five after a composing career of a little more than thirty years.

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