Song library
Browse piano sheets by Claude Debussy on Zen Virtual Piano. In June 1885 Debussy wrote of his desire to follow his own way: “I am sure the Institute would not approve, for, naturally it regards the path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamoured of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas!” At the Conservatoire he had incurred the disapproval of the faculty, particularly his composition teacher, Guiraud, for his failure to follow the orthodox rules of composition then prevailing, and nevertheless in 1884 he won France’s most prestigious musical award. Winning France’s most prestigious musical award in 1884, the year before his statement about following his own way, complicates the picture of a rebel shut out by the establishment. He was born on 22 August 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, on the north-west fringes of Paris. In 1872, aged ten, he was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris, where he remained a student for the next eleven years, first in the piano class of Antoine François Marmontel. With Marmontel’s help he secured a summer vacation job in 1879 as resident pianist at the Château de Chenonceau, where he rapidly acquired a taste for luxury that was to remain with him all his life. Eleven years in one conservatoire beside a taste for luxury picked up at a château suggests a youth that moved between discipline and indulgence. At the end of 1880 he became accompanist for Marie Moreau-Sainti’s singing class, a role he kept for four years. A faculty that disapproved of his way with the rules, and a summer post at a château, show a young musician learning in the classroom and outside it. He took many years to develop his mature style and was nearly 40 when he achieved international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completed, Pelléas et Mélisande. In May 1893 he had attended the premiere of Maurice Maeterlinck’s play of that name, which he immediately determined to turn into an opera. Deciding at once on Maeterlinck’s play, and reaching international fame only with the opera that followed, suggests a composer who recognized his material before the world recognized him. With early influences including Russian and Far Eastern music and works by Chopin and Liszt, he developed his own style of harmony and orchestral colouring, derided, and unsuccessfully resisted, by much of the musical establishment of the day. In October 1905 La mer, his most substantial orchestral work, was premiered in Paris by the Orchestre Lamoureux under Camille Chevillard, and the reception was mixed. He vigorously rejected the label Impressionist, although it has stuck to him. Turning down the label that has stuck to him fits a composer who wrote that he was too fond of his own ideas. He died at 55 after a composing career of a little more than 30 years.
Browse piano sheets by Claude Debussy on Zen Virtual Piano.
In June 1885 Debussy wrote of his desire to follow his own way: “I am sure the Institute would not approve, for, naturally it regards the path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamoured of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas!” At the Conservatoire he had incurred the disapproval of the faculty, particularly his composition teacher, Guiraud, for his failure to follow the orthodox rules of composition then prevailing, and nevertheless in 1884 he won France’s most prestigious musical award. Winning France’s most prestigious musical award in 1884, the year before his statement about following his own way, complicates the picture of a rebel shut out by the establishment.
He was born on 22 August 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, on the north-west fringes of Paris. In 1872, aged ten, he was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris, where he remained a student for the next eleven years, first in the piano class of Antoine François Marmontel. With Marmontel’s help he secured a summer vacation job in 1879 as resident pianist at the Château de Chenonceau, where he rapidly acquired a taste for luxury that was to remain with him all his life. Eleven years in one conservatoire beside a taste for luxury picked up at a château suggests a youth that moved between discipline and indulgence. At the end of 1880 he became accompanist for Marie Moreau-Sainti’s singing class, a role he kept for four years. A faculty that disapproved of his way with the rules, and a summer post at a château, show a young musician learning in the classroom and outside it.
He took many years to develop his mature style and was nearly 40 when he achieved international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completed, Pelléas et Mélisande. In May 1893 he had attended the premiere of Maurice Maeterlinck’s play of that name, which he immediately determined to turn into an opera. Deciding at once on Maeterlinck’s play, and reaching international fame only with the opera that followed, suggests a composer who recognized his material before the world recognized him.
With early influences including Russian and Far Eastern music and works by Chopin and Liszt, he developed his own style of harmony and orchestral colouring, derided, and unsuccessfully resisted, by much of the musical establishment of the day. In October 1905 La mer, his most substantial orchestral work, was premiered in Paris by the Orchestre Lamoureux under Camille Chevillard, and the reception was mixed. He vigorously rejected the label Impressionist, although it has stuck to him. Turning down the label that has stuck to him fits a composer who wrote that he was too fond of his own ideas. He died at 55 after a composing career of a little more than 30 years.
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Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Common questions
In 1902, when he was nearly 40, with Pelléas et Mélisande, the only opera he completed.
No. He vigorously rejected the term, although it has stuck to him.
In June 1885 he wrote that he was “too enamoured of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas!”