Claude Debussy
French classical composer (1862–1918)
Claude Debussy and the changing sound of French music
Training and a prize
Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire as a child and won the Prix de Rome in 1884. The formal training gave him a foundation, but his later music moved away from many of the conventions he encountered there.
An orchestral voice and an opera
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, first heard in the 1890s, made orchestral colour central to the work. Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande followed in 1902; rather than relying on showpiece arias, it joined speech-like singing to a finely shaded orchestra.
Sea, piano and late chamber works
La mer, completed in 1905, developed his approach to orchestral texture on a larger scale. He also wrote two books of piano Préludes and, in his final years, three chamber sonatas for different instruments. These works show that his experiments continued beyond the opera.
Data and sources
Deutsche Grammophon — Claude Debussy ↗