Achille-Claude Debussy 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918 was a French composer. Debussy was among the most influential composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and his use of non-traditional scales and chromaticism influenced many composers who followed.
Debussy's music is noted for its sensory component and frequent eschewing of tonality. The 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.
Claude Achille Debussy : his story and his music. Sine Qua Non, 1974.
Debussy, Claude, 1862-1918 Walter Gieseking plays Debussy. Odyssey, [1969] Walter Gieseking, piano.
Debussy, Claude, Boulez conducts Debussy. Columbia, 1969 New Philharmonia Orchestra, London. Cleveland Orchestra.
Debussy's private life was often turbulent. At the age of 18 he began an eight-year affair with Marie-Blanche Vasnier, wife of a Parisian civil servant. The relationship eventually faltered following his winning of the Prix de Rome in 1884 and obligatory residence in Rome.
On his permanent return to Paris and his parents' home on the avenue de Berlin (now rue de Liège) he began a tempestuous relationship with Gabrielle ('Gaby') Dupont, a tailor's daughter from Lisieux, soon cohabiting with her on the Rue de Londres, and later the Rue Gustave Doré. During this time he also had an affair with the singer Thérèse Roger, to whom he was briefly engaged. Such cavalier behaviour was widely condemned, and precipitated the end of his long friendship with Ernest Chausson. He ultimately left Dupont for her friend Rosalie ('Lilly') Texier, a fashion model whom he married in 1899, after threatening suicide if she refused him. Although Texier was affectionate, practical, straightforward, and well liked by Debussy's friends and associates, he became increasingly irritated by her intellectual limitations and lack of musical sensitivity. In 1904, Debussy was introduced to Emma Bardac, wife of Parisian banker Sigismond Bardac, by her son Raoul, one of his students. In contrast to Texier, Bardac was a sophisticate, a brilliant conversationalist, and an accomplished singer. After despatching Lilly to her father's home in Bichain on 15 July 1904, Debussy secretly took Bardac to Jersey for a holiday. On their return to France, Debussy wrote to Texier from Dieppe on 11 August, informing her their marriage was over, but still making no mention of Bardac. Debussy briefly moved to an apartment at 10 av. Alphand. On 14 October, five days before their fifth wedding anniversary, Texier attempted suicide, shooting herself in the chest with a revolver while standing in the Place de la Concorde; she survived, although the bullet remained lodged in her vertebrae for the rest of her life. The ensuing scandal was to alienate Debussy from many of his friends, whilst Bardac was disowned by her family.
After a brief visit to London, the couple returned to Paris in September, buying a house in a courtyard development off the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne (now Avenue Foch), where Debussy was to reside for the rest of his life. Their daughter (the composer's only child) Claude-Emma was born there on 30 October. Her parents were eventually married in 1908, their troubled union enduring until Debussy's death in 1918. More affectionately known as 'Chouchou', Claude-Emma was possibly the only person Debussy ever loved, and a great musical inspiration to him (she was the dedicatee of his Children's Corner suite). Debussy was to remark towards the end of his life, when gravely ill, that were it not for Chouchou, he might have committed suicide. She outlived her father by scarcely a year, succumbing to the diphtheria epidemic of 1919 after her doctor administered the wrong treatment
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