Claude Debussy 's `` Claire De Lune ``

It had been four-weeks since Madame Valmonde has seen Desiree and the baby. As she arrives at L’Abri, the home of Armand and Desiree, she “shudders at the first sight of it.” The house is covered by “big, solemn oaks” (Chopin 422) who’s “branches far-reaching shadowed it like a pall” (Chopin 422). Offering another foreshadowing, it is suggested that the shadowing trees and the branches that cover the house compare to a cloth used to cover a coffin; allowing the reader to envision L’Abri as a gloomy or serious place that is absent of pleasure and happiness--a place that had not had a woman’s touch since Armand and his father returned from Paris after the death of his mother when Armand was just eight-years old.

8.      Claude Debussy was among the most influential composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born Achille-Claude Debussy in 1862 in St.-Germain-en-Laye, France, his mature compositions, distinctive and appealing, combined modernism and sensuality so successfully that their sheer beauty often obscures their technical innovation. Debussy is considered the founder and leading exponent of musical Impressionism (although he resisted the label), and his adoption of non-traditional scales and tonal structures was paradigmatic for many composers who followed. The son of a shopkeeper and a seamstress, Debussy began piano studies at the Paris Conservatory at the age of 11. While a student there, he encountered the wealthy Nadezhda von Meck, whom was most famous as Tchaikovsky's patroness. She employed Debussy as a music teacher to her children; through travel, concerts and acquaintances, she provided him with a wealth of musical experience. Most importantly, she exposed the young Debussy to the works of Russian composers, such as Borodin and Mussorgsky, who would remain important influences on his music. Debussy began composition studies in 1880, and

Right now I want to introduce this work with more detail information. This band work of Scenes from the Louvre created for the original film score for the 1964 documentary. Scenes from The Louvre was premiered March 13, 1966, conducted by the composer. So there are five movements in this works. The first one is an introduction focus on the film score. Another three movements are based on the Renaissance tunes. The movement 2 called Children’s Gallery is a theme based on Tielman Susato’s “Ronde and Saltarello.” Themes by court composers Jean Baptiste Lully and Pietro Antonio Cesti serve as a base for movement 3, “The King of France,” a chorale and development. Movement 4, “The Nativity Paintings,” is based on “In delci jubilo;” the same theme used by Dello Joio in “Variants on a Medieval Tune” and for all thirteen movements of “Colonial Variants.” The final movement, “Finale,” is based on Albrici’s “Cestiliche Sonate.” Primarily written around the keys of C, G and F

The development of the suite in French keyboard and lute music during the 17th century

“Pagodes” is taken from Claude Debussy’s “Estampes”, a collection of three pieces for solo piano composed in 1903. Working from Paris, in these pieces Debussy explores the beginnings of the new French impressionist style that Debussy was a central innovator in, though Debussy personally rejected the term. “Estampes” moves away from the predominantly German, late-Romantic style by avoiding extreme length and melodic complexity in favour of, as Michael Kennedy describes it, “conveying the moods and emotions aroused by the subject” through briefer and melodically simpler pieces. Debussy also moves away from the tonal system, utilising techniques such as the use of the whole-tone and pentatonic scales and quartal and quintal chords to create

Ludwig Van Beethoven was one of the most influential composers of his time. The decades around the 1800’s were years of many changes and Beethoven’s new approach to music was something that reflected that. “His symphonies, concertos, string quartets and piano sonatas are central to the repertory of classical music.” This essay will focus on the historical and theoretical aspects of the third movement of Sonata Op. 28 No. 15.

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

Bergeron, paradoxically yet successfully, chooses to get to the core of the French mélodie by looking at it from a distance. Her focuses on the mélodie’s complex relationship with the German Lied, the pedagogical movements of the French language in the late-nineteenth century, and Claude Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Melisande in order to “examine the range of French expression [Debussy] puts on stage and how he represents that range in music” are all indirect yet inventive ways in which Bergeron embraces the challenges of defining this elusive vocal genre (xiii). Perhaps Bergeron sets out to define the French mélodie through indirect methods for exactly that reason; a genre as complex as the mélodie could not be fully understood if one attempted to get to its center through traditional means. Stating that French art song is “a musical repertory based on […] delicacy and restraint […]”, Bergeron clearly has a grasp on

The early piano sonatas of Beethoven deserve special mention. Although his first published examples of concertos and trios and the first two symphonies are beneath the masterpieces of Mozart and Haydn, the piano sonatas bear an unmistakably Beethovian stamp: grandiose in scope and length, and innovative in their range of expression. The sonatas were able to move expression from terrible rage to peals of laughter to deep depression so suddenly. Capturing this unpredictable style in his music, a new freedom of expression which broke the bounds of Classical ideals, was to position Beethoven as a disturbed man in the minds of some of his contemporaries. Furthermore, he was to be seen as the father of Romanticism and the single most important innovator of music in the minds of those after him. (Bookspan 27).

After listening to “Clair de Lune” a few times, I find Claude Debussy’s piano music to be claiming and relaxing. Debussy used various tones and Keys to create a soft natural melody. At times in this piece he would change his tones and pitch using half-tones between notes given more intense melody. He composed a rhythms of patterns of alternation that was appropriate with his impressionism approach.

Besides, Claude Debussy as one of the most brilliant musician of the Impressionist music was inspired by Katsushika Hokusai’s painting. More specifically, La Mer

The piece written at a slow tempo and has a meter of 4/4 throughout. It has a soft and small dynamic range, moving between pianissimo and piano, and a light texture. The piece is written with three staves in order to clarify and neaten Debussy’s notation. The piece has a B-flat in the key signature, suggesting D minor. The piece mainly centers around the pitch D.

In later years following his graduation, after composing his ‘Suite Bergamasque’ for piano, he found himself in the impressionist art movement with fellow composers -like Maurice Ravel- because of the link French music had with the paintings of Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Van Gogh and other modern, like-minded artists, even though he stated that he never felt connected to the movement with the words,

Chopin’s third sonata is a masterwork filled with pianistic elements, daring harmonies, experimental form, and a wealth of expressivity. In this four-movement work, references to other Chopin compositions and influences from fellow composers are found. At the same time, there is a progressive element; it looks forward to the heights which would be achieved by Chopin and later composers.

They say what’s old is new again. There is nothing new under the sun. What goes around comes around. History repeats itself. These may be just a few banal sayings, but they might hold true for classical music as well. Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin is one such example. Written during the neo-classical and neo-baroque movements of the early 1900s, this clever piece ties together French musical traditions, baroque styles, and World War I in just six short pieces. This essay will detail the origins of the suite form and the neo-classical neo-baroque movement, and compare Le Tombeau de Couperin with Bach’s French Suite no. 5 in G Major, BWV 816.