Claude Debussy

The first of Igor Stravinsky's three famous early ballets, The Firebird is the most traditional and derivative. While The Firebird, similar to Petrushka and The Rite Of Spring, is unquestionably one of Stravinsky's masterpieces, if considered strictly historically it can be, with some justice, viewed as warmed-over Rimsky-Korsakov (the device of contrasting a folkloristic, diatonic style representing human characters, with a highly chromatic style reserved for depicting the supernatural had its most conspicuous use in Rimsky's

In the 19th century, there was an artistic transition from realism to a new form called impressionism. This change originated in France, as the world underwent a transition to industrialization. The impressionist was able to understand how light and color operate hand in hand in a painting. Instead of seeing an image as a whole work, impressionist would see smaller images making up the entire piece. The style was primarily made of the use of intense colors, open composition, light and movement and brush strokes. They were mainly

He was so impressed by Stravinsky's promise as a composer that he invited him to join his small group of artistic assistants. For the rest of the 1909 season Diaghilev asked Stravinsky to compose various pieces of ballet music. Then, in 1910, Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to compose his new ballet, The Firebird.

The exploration of the timbral possibilities of the piano as a percussive instrument would be developed later in the 20th century by composers such as John Cage, for example, in his works for prepared piano in the 1940s.

The reason why I have chosen to write about The Firebird is because it was Stravinsky’s first ballet and a milestone in modernist culture. Because of its modernist attributes, The Firebird became very famous within ballet circles.

Achille-Claude Debussy or Claude Debussy was a French 20th century composer known for his prominent role in impressionistic music. Debussy never described his pieces as impressionism as he disliked the term when it was associated with his music. Born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, he and his family left for Paris in 1867 only to move to Cannes in 1870 to escape the Franco-Prussion war. Claude Debussy learnt to play piano from an Italian violinist by the name Jean Cerutti and later studied under a woman, by the name of Marie Mauté de Fleurville, who claimed to have been a pupil of Frédéric Chopin. In 1872 he was enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire and remained there to develop musically over the next 11 years. Debussy was infamous for his experimental nature breaking

In Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, Claude Debussy was born on August 22, 1862. By the time he was nine, Debussy became skilled at playing the piano. Debussy was encouraged to enter the Paris Conservatory in 1873. At this conservatory, he studied the piano and its structure. In 1884, with his cantata The Prodigal Child, Debussy won the Grand Prix de Rome. Debussy’s childhood was filled with many troubling situations. It was quite a bumpy ride. He was faced with problems, both substantial and emotional. He lived with his parents in the suburbs of Paris. They struggled living in poverty. Unpredictably, Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck, a Russian millionaire, took Debussy under her patronage. Throughout Europe, she and Debussy traveled to grand residences,

Claude was known to experiment with unusual harmonic relationships and dissonances. Claude made use of the whole-tone scale and by doing such he achieved new nuances of mood and expression. Claude composed many pieces over the course of his life, and always worked at his own pace. As per Sudip Bose “Debussy was a slow worker. He could spend hours getting a single chord or phrase just right.”

Similarities can be found between the two, especially with their comparison in a natural type of flow and driven expression. Debussy’s vision of music was comprised of poetic compositions full of strong moods, imagery, and impressions. Many refer to his music as impressionistic, referring to Claude Monet’s style of painting. Debussy’s works such as Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894) and Three Noctures (1990) are examples of Debussy’s attention and great lengths he did to accomplish his goal of creating perfect imagery in the listener’s mind.

In the music Debussy composed, all instruments were called upon to share the innovations of his creative art, but only the piano was truly capable of incorporating his ideas. For this there were two reasons. First, the piano, being an instrument of harmony and of tonal blending rather than one of simple melodic statement, was the natural medium for experimentation in a personal art built upon harmony and tone blending. Second, the piano, in spite of all that had been accomplished for it by several generations of exploiting virtuosi, was still capable of gradations of color and nuances of accentuation that had been ignored – or perhaps more correctly, used only sparingly – by the high-riding masters of its sonorities.

Claude-Achilles Debussy was a French composer. He and Maurice Ravel were the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music, though Debussy disliked the term when applied to his compositions. He was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honors in his native France in 1903Debussy was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his use of non-traditional scales and chromatics influenced many composers who followed. Debussy’s music is noted for its sensory content and frequent usage of nontraditional tonalities. The prominent French literary style of his period was known as Symbolism, and this movement directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant. Debussy was experimental

Impressionism is a style of painting that emerged in the mid to late 1800s and emphasizes an artist's immediate impression of a moment or scene, usually communicated through the use of light and its reflection, short brushstrokes, and separation of colors. Impressionist painters often used modern life as their subject matter and painted quickly and

Stravinsky innovated through his expansion of Russian idioms, and influence in neoclassicist music. Bartok blended folk tradition with modern musical practices to create an accessible yet modern sound. Debussy’s work as an impressionist composer influenced

Claude Debussy was born in France on August 22, 1862 during a decade in which Roger Nichols’s claims was one of “the low points of French musical life” (4). Debussy clashed with the musical norms of his time due to his fascination with writing music for how it sounds and feels. Lesure writes, “Ever since his years at the Conservatoire, Debussy had felt that he had more to learn from artists than from career-obsessed musicians” (5). Debussy composed from the ideas around him and this is heard in his composition of “Clair de lune”. Claude Debussy’s “Claire de lune” is one of his most beloved and known piano works. “Clair de lune” is the third movement of Debussy’s piano concerto, Suite Bergamasque, published in 1905 and offers a view into the complexity and originality of Claude Debussy. “Clair de lune” beautifully displays Debussy’s fascination with nature and symbolist poetry. Debussy uses form and atmospheric phrasing to depict the melancholic and subdued beauty of nature.

From a very early age, it was apparent that Claude Debussy was incredibly talented. It was also apparent from the start that he despised many of the forms and foundational teachings of the prestigious school, the Paris Conservatory, much to the dismay of a somewhat archaic faculty. However, despite his “utterly unorthodox” (Roberts 36) methods and approaches to his schoolwork, Debussy’s teachers recognized his ingenious and respected his “burning need to find expression for the sounds in his imagination” (Lederer 15).