Debussy, Claude

Debussy, (Achille-) Claude

Claude Debussy, painting by Marcel Baschet, 1884; in the Versailles Museum.

(credit: Giraudon/Art Resource, New York)

(born Aug. 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France—died March 25, 1918, Paris) French composer. Born into near poverty, he showed an early gift for the piano. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1873, and soon thereafter he was employed as pianist by Nadezhda von Meck, Pyotr Tchaikovsky's patroness. Influenced by the Symbolist poets and Impressionist painters, he was early inclined toward a compositional style of great originality, shunning the strictures of traditional counterpoint and harmony to achieve new effects of great subtlety. Regarded as the founder of musical Impressionism, he used unusual voice leading and timbral colours to evoke pictorial images and moods, especially of languor and hedonism. His significance in weakening the hold of traditional tonal harmony equals that of Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, and Arnold Schoenberg. Given his effect on such composers as Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Alban Berg, Anton Webern, and Pierre Boulez, he can be seen as the most influential French composer of the last three centuries. His works include the opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), the orchestral works Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun (1894) and La Mer (1905), and the piano Préludes (1910, 1913).