Line #16 Music/ClaudeDebussy


1	[[quoteright:281:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ClaudeDebussy_5517.png]]
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3	->''Music is the space between the notes.''
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5	->''First of all, ladies and gentlemen, you must forget that you are singers.''
6	-->-- Instructions to the performers of his opera ''Pelléas et Mélisande''
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8	[[EmbarrassingFirstName Achille-Claude]] Debussy (22 August 1862 -- 25 March 1918) was a French composer. A noted trend starter in the history of music, his ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' (''Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun'') is considered as a turning point of classical music, starting the Impressionist movement and in many ways the antecedent of Modern and Contemporary Classical music. Needless to say, he was and still is a highly important and inspiring figure in classical music. His influence on music is as much as Claude Monet's influence on painting. Modern music historians and critics consider him as the ultimate example, along with his fellow composer Music/MauriceRavel, of the Impressionist movement. (However, Debussy himself hated the label "Impressionism" for his music, believing it to be better suited for the visual arts.)
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10	Outside of his musical success, though, his life was kind of turbulent. He had an affair with another's wife although already married, his ex-wife attempted suicide (unsuccessfully) and produced a huge scandal, so much that he had to flee to England. He had a child with his mistress after they married, but she sadly only outlived her father by a year, dying in the diphtheria epidemic of 1919. The whole family was buried together.
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12	Inside of the classical circle, his notable pieces include ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' (''Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun''), ''La Mer'' (''The Sea''), the Préludes for piano, and ''Pelléas et Mélisande'' (''Pelléas and Mélisande''). The popular listeners might have heard of ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LXl4y6D-QI Clair de Lune]]'' (''Moonlight''), Arabesque No. 1, and ''Children's Corner Suite''.
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14	!!Debussy's work provides examples of the following tropes:
15	* EtherealChoir: Atmospheric choral music pervades "Sirènes," the final movement of ''Nocturnes''.
16	* MusicGenreDissonance: Debussy is often referred to as an "Impressionist" composer, after the art movement. He personally disliked the label, thinking it shouldn't be applied to music.
17	* OceanAwe: Debussy's ''La Mer'' depicts the sea in three contrasting moods.
18	* OlderIsBetter: While Debussy generally avoided standard 18th and 19th century structures, he did write pieces patterned on Baroque forms such as the suite (see ''Pour Le Piano'', consisting of a "Prelude," "Sarabande," and "Toccata"). Like Music/FryderykChopin, Debussy wrote sets of Preludes for piano solo, essentially modeled after Music/JohannSebastianBach's ''Well Tempered Clavier'' minus the fugues.
19	* {{Orientalism}}: Debussy's works show influence of Asian music in its use of such things as Indonesian-inspired gamelan timbres and pentatonic scales.
20	* SongParody: "Golliwog's Cakewalk" from the ''Children's Corner Suite'' quotes the iconic opening of Music/RichardWagner's ''[[Theatre/TristanUndIsoldeWagner Tristan und Isolde]]'' only to poke fun at it in the following measures.
21	* TravelogueShow: Or travelogue work in this case. Debussy found Spanish culture exotic and alluring, and this is reflected in such works as the "Ibéria" section from ''Images Pour Orchestre'' and the solo piano movement "Evening in Granada" from ''Estampes''.
22	* VelvetRevolution: Debussy's music is truly revolutionary in the history of ClassicalMusic. With its unusual scale usage (such as the whole tone scale), avoidance of standard 18th and 19th century forms (such as sonatas and rondos), and employment of non-functional harmony based progressions, his music marks a clear break with the past. At the same time, his pieces have an alluring atmospheric sheen and still rely on triadic aggregates -- to the point where a casual listener won't usually find the music confrontational in feel.

Context Music / ClaudeDebussy