Claude Debussy (né Achille-Claude Debussy), who is often considered one of the most original and influential composers of late 19th and early 20th-century music, spent a lifetime passionately committed to demonstrating that “music remains for all time the finest means of expression we have.” From 1879 – 1917 he composed 38 piano works; 90 songs; chamber music including works for piano, cello, violin, flute, viola, harp, clarinet, bassoon, and trumpet; 4 ballets; 14 orchestral works; 34 dramatic works, and 1 opera.

Although he only composed one full-length opera, Pelléas et Mélisandre, Debussy actually produced an enormous output of vocal works. He composed over 90 songs for voice and piano, most of which were composed during the 1880’s during his late teens and 20’s. These early masterpieces show a deep love of French literature and poetry, especially Mallarmé, Baudelaire, and his childhood friend Paul Verlaine. His keen appreciation of Wagner is also apparent through much of the harmonic language of these songs, although he would later come to reject Wagner’s overtly emotional idiom (and length of compositions!)

Debussy also dabbled in writing poetry and in 1892/93 he composed Proses Lyriques, a song cycle set to the composer’s own poetry. These songs – perhaps more than any others he wrote – best illustrate Debussy’s use of the piano as an equal partner with the voice, rather than as mere background accompaniment. The orchestral piano writing shows off the composer’s near lifelong fascination with producing different colors and timbres from the piano.

During this centenary year of his death, March 25, 1918, Noontime Concerts will present 8 commemorative programs to honor the legacy of this original, prolific, poetic, and iconoclastic composer. We hope to awaken your curiosity and to entice your ears to hear the depth, breadth, mystery, nuance, unique harmony and structure, and sheer beauty of Claude Debussy’s life and music.

Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel*

Ravel’s stylistic relationship to Debussy is especially interesting. Marked similarities in their music are apparent and Ravel himself willingly expressed his debt to his older countryman. Ravel’s early interest in elaborate yet finely detailed textures clearly owes much to Debussy (although his application of Debussian textural ideas to the keyboard notably in Jeux d’eau, at a time when Debussy’s major piano works had not yet appeared, may, in turn, have influenced the older composer), and Ravel’s harmonic vocabulary, with its richly structured triadic extensions and freely employed nonharmonic tones, was no doubt also in part derived from his predecessor. Further reminiscent of Debussy is a preference for brief melodic ideas, developed mainly by repetition and subtle modification. Yet Ravel’s music projects little of the ambiguity or mystery so characteristic of Debussy. To Debussy’s seemingly unbroken transitional flow, it opposes lucid formal articulations, and Ravel’s harmonic innovations are more firmly tied to traditional root movements, providing a stronger tonal pull. Indeed, in general, Ravel’s music seems more solid, more firmly anchored, than Debussy’s. Its rhythmic patterns are more regular, and its cool lyricism is bound within a much more clearly delineated framework of phrase divisions.

*Debussy & Ravel: form – Indiana University, Bloomington

Learn More: Claude Debussy Biographical Timeline