Claudio d-Bus

Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918)

Debussy was an instrumental figure in the way we listen to music today. As one of the first "20th century" composers, he nearly began the musical impressionistic movement, following in the footsteps of the artistic movement already underway. His music is very evocative, aiming at soothing or playing with the senses and creating images in the mind through music. Debussy all but threw older harmonic stereotypes out the window. If Schoenberg was to be the "emancipator of dissonance" then one of the first steps was Debussy's emancipation of harmony. His harmonies are free, not following any set rules or progression. Although he does borrow some standards at times, they are mostly free and independent like none before him, and after. Debussy was famous for his ear. Not that is was larger than normal, but that he could listen very well and hear things like nore other. Perhaps this is why in his music, there is usually no rhythmic figuration proloning harmoies, rather Debussy uses silences, to enjoy the sounds being produced and to digest. Debussy loved to play with different scales and harmonic fun things, such as whole tone, octatonic, and pentatonic scales.

In his Preludes, each preludes has a programatic title, which appears at the end of the piece oddly enough. Debusys insisted that the title appear after the piece had been played, perhaps to bring about whatever one's own 'impression' was of the music, then compared to his at the ending. Quite interesting. His most famous is "Volies" (from book 1), which incorporates entires sections in whole tone and pentatonic.

The Images are beautiful, and are also the essence of impressionistic music. Each has a programatic title, which is the image Debussy aimed at painting in the music. As Debussy grew more and more impressionistic, so did his titles, growing more and more particular.