Claude Debussy

The boy from Saint-Germain-en-Laye

Debussy was born in 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye near Paris. His family was not well off, and his parents were far from music. Yet the boy, who began piano lessons around nine, showed astonishing talent and entered the Paris Conservatoire at ten.

There he cared more for composition and harmony than for the piano, seeking sounds that were beautiful to the ear rather than following fixed rules. In his late teens he even traveled around Europe as pianist to the household of Madame von Meck, Tchaikovsky's patron.

The Prix de Rome and Wagner

In 1884 Debussy won the Prix de Rome, the dream of young French composers, and studied in Rome. But he found life there stifling and returned to Paris earlier than planned. Like many French musicians of the time he fell deeply under Wagner's spell, then gradually escaped that vast shadow to find his own way.

Among poets and painters

Debussy was closer to poets and painters than to musicians. He attended the poet Mallarmé's Tuesday gatherings and set poems by Verlaine and Mallarmé. Javanese gamelan music, which he heard at the 1889 Paris World's Fair, also influenced him deeply.

The Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun of 1894 was the fruit. Its flow, in which the beat seems to melt, and its chords like colors astonished listeners. With the opera Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902 he became a leading French composer. People called him an "Impressionist," though Debussy himself reportedly disliked the label.

The sea and the preludes

In 1905 he presented the orchestral work La mer, and that year his daughter Claude-Emma was born. He adored her, calling her "Chouchou," and wrote the piano suite Children's Corner for her. From 1909 he wrote twenty-four piano Préludes in two books.

In his last years Debussy suffered long from cancer. In March 1918, as shells fell on Paris during the First World War, he died at fifty-five.

Music to hear on Pyeongeum

• "Clair de lune" from the Suite bergamasque: the thirteenth stop on our Music Journey.
• Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Arabesque No. 1, and "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair."

Start with the youthful Arabesque and "Clair de lune," then move to the Faun and "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair." Sound that was at first beautiful and tidy gradually slips free of beat and harmony and floats like air. It is Debussy's own path, heard in order.

People around him

• Stéphane Mallarméthe poet of "The Afternoon of a Faun," whose Tuesday gatherings opened new ideas to Debussy.
• Erik Satiehis friend from Montmartre; Debussy orchestrated two of Satie's Gymnopédies.
• His daughter Claude-Emma, "Chouchou": who inspired Children's Corner.