The Ysaÿe Quartet was established in 1886 by Eugène Ysaÿe .
153-399: Its members were: The quartet premiered Claude Debussy 's String Quartet on December 29, 1893. This article about a classical ensemble is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Claude Debussy ( Achille ) Claude Debussy ( French: [aʃil klod dəbysi] ; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as
306-661: A progressive , anti-religious system of their own self-styled socialism , which was an eclectic mix of many 19th-century schools of thought. These policies included the separation of church and state , self-policing , the remission of rent, the abolition of child labor , and the right of employees to take over an enterprise deserted by its owner. The Commune closed all Catholic churches and schools in Paris. Feminist , communist , old-style social democracy (a mix of reformism and revolutionism), and anarchist / Proudhonist currents, among other socialist types, played important roles in
459-411: A 1911 interview with Henry Malherbe : I have made mysterious Nature my religion ... When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvellous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul. Around me are the trees stretching up their branches to the skies, the perfumed flowers gladdening
612-577: 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 ), Debussy's home for the rest of his life. In October 1905 La mer , Debussy's most substantial orchestral work, was premiered in Paris by the Orchestre Lamoureux under the direction of Camille Chevillard ; the reception was mixed. Some praised
765-475: A charismatic professional revolutionary who had spent most of his adult life in prison. He had about a thousand followers, many of them armed and organized into cells of ten persons each. Each cell operated independently and was unaware of the members of the other groups, communicating only with their leaders by code. Blanqui had written a manual on revolution, Instructions for an Armed Uprising , to give guidance to his followers. Though their numbers were small,
918-427: A contrary view that the accolade belongs to the ballet score Jeux . The latter failed as a ballet because of what Jann Pasler describes as a banal scenario, and the score was neglected for some years. Recent analysts have found it a link between traditional continuity and thematic growth within a score and the desire to create discontinuity in a way mirrored in later 20th century music. In this piece, Debussy abandoned
1071-412: A deeper sort". In a 2004 study, Mark DeVoto comments that Debussy's early works are harmonically no more adventurous than existing music by Fauré; in a 2007 book about the piano works, Margery Halford observes that Two Arabesques (1888–1891) and "Rêverie" (1890) have "the fluidity and warmth of Debussy's later style" but are not harmonically innovative. Halford cites the popular "Clair de Lune" (1890),
1224-535: A delegation of mayors of the Paris arrondissements , led by Clemenceau, to negotiate with Thiers in Versailles to obtain a special independent status for Paris. On 22 March 1871, demonstrators holding banners declaring them to be "Friends of Peace" were blocked from entering the Place Vendôme by guardsmen who, after being fired on, opened fire on the crowd. At least 12 people were killed and many wounded. The event
1377-548: A euphoric mood. The members adopted a dozen proposals, including an honorary presidency for Blanqui; the abolition of the death penalty ; the abolition of military conscription ; a proposal to send delegates to other cities to help launch communes there; and a resolution declaring that membership in the Paris Commune was incompatible with being a member of the National Assembly. This was aimed particularly at Pierre Tirard ,
1530-517: A few hundreds of persons, mostly quite young". He noted, however, that "working-men, as a class, took no part in the proceedings." A coup was attempted in early 1870, but tensions eased significantly after the plebiscite in May . The war with Prussia, initiated by Napoleon III in July, was initially met with patriotic fervour. Paris was the traditional home of French radical movements. Revolutionaries had gone into
1683-454: A five-act musical play to a text by Gabriele D'Annunzio that took nearly five hours in performance, was not a success, and the music is now more often heard in a concert (or studio) adaptation with narrator, or as an orchestral suite of "Fragments symphoniques". Debussy enlisted the help of André Caplet in orchestrating and arranging the score. Two late stage works, the ballets Khamma (1912) and La boîte à joujoux (1913), were left with
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#17328487307561836-468: A flat in a different arrondissement . On 14 October, five days before their fifth wedding anniversary, Lilly Debussy attempted suicide, shooting herself in the chest with a revolver; she survived, although the bullet remained lodged in her vertebrae for the rest of her life. The ensuing scandal caused Bardac's family to disown her, and Debussy lost many good friends including Dukas and Messager. His relations with Ravel, never close, were exacerbated when
1989-410: A great blow when another turn in his private life caused a scandal the following year. One of his pupils was Raoul Bardac , son of Emma and her husband, Parisian banker Sigismond Bardac. Raoul introduced his teacher to his mother, to whom Debussy quickly became greatly attracted. She was sophisticated, a brilliant conversationalist, an accomplished singer, and relaxed about marital fidelity, having been
2142-507: A job as pianist in the household of Nadezhda von Meck , the patroness of Tchaikovsky . He travelled with her family for the summers of 1880 to 1882, staying at various places in France, Switzerland and Italy, as well as at her home in Moscow. He composed his Piano Trio in G major for von Meck's ensemble, and made a transcription for piano duet of three dances from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake . At
2295-478: A kind of art, in fact, which seemed to reach out into all aspects of experience". In 1988 the composer and scholar Wilfrid Mellers wrote of Debussy: Because of, rather than in spite of, his preoccupation with chords in themselves, he deprived music of the sense of harmonic progression, broke down three centuries' dominance of harmonic tonality, and showed how the melodic conceptions of tonality typical of primitive folk-music and of medieval music might be relevant to
2448-564: A more restrained style. He wrote his own poems for the Proses lyriques (1892–1893) but, in the view of the musical scholar Robert Orledge , "his literary talents were not on a par with his musical imagination". The musicologist Jacques-Gabriel Prod'homme wrote that, together with La Demoiselle élue , the Ariettes oubliées and the Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire (1889) show "the new, strange way which
2601-499: A new ballet score, Jeux . That, and the three Images , premiered the following year, were the composer's last orchestral works. Jeux was unfortunate in its timing: two weeks after the premiere, in March 1913, Diaghilev presented the first performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring , a sensational event that monopolised discussion in musical circles, and effectively sidelined Jeux along with Fauré's Pénélope , which had opened
2754-567: A pedagogic exterior, these 12 pieces explore abstract intervals, or – in the last five – the sonorities and timbres peculiar to the piano." In 1914 Debussy started work on a planned set of six sonatas for various instruments . His fatal illness prevented him from completing the set, but those for cello and piano (1915), flute, viola and harp (1915), and violin and piano (1917 – his last completed work) are all concise, three-movement pieces, more diatonic in nature than some of his other late works. Le Martyre de saint Sébastien (1911), originally
2907-598: A printing factory. In 1870, to escape the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War , Debussy's pregnant mother took him and his sister Adèle to their paternal aunt's home in Cannes , where they remained until the following year. During his stay in Cannes, the seven-year-old Debussy had his first piano lessons; his aunt paid for him to study with an Italian musician, Jean Cerutti. Manuel Debussy remained in Paris and joined
3060-460: A prominent civil servant, and much younger than her husband. She soon became Debussy's lover as well as his muse. Whether Vasnier was content to tolerate his wife's affair with the young student or was simply unaware of it is not clear, but he and Debussy remained on excellent terms, and he continued to encourage the composer in his career. At the Conservatoire, Debussy incurred the disapproval of
3213-444: A railway station, and, once inside, would mistake it for a Turkish bath"), conductors (" Nikisch is a unique virtuoso, so much so that his virtuosity seems to make him forget the claims of good taste"), musical politics ("The English actually think that a musician can manage an opera house successfully!"), and audiences ("their almost drugged expression of boredom, indifference and even stupidity"). He later collected his criticisms with
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#17328487307563366-514: A reaction against Wagner and the German musical tradition. He regarded the classical symphony as obsolete and sought an alternative in his "symphonic sketches", La mer (1903–1905). His piano works include sets of 24 Préludes and 12 Études . Throughout his career he wrote mélodies based on a wide variety of poetry, including his own. He was greatly influenced by the Symbolist poetic movement of
3519-601: A superfluous note"; Pierre Boulez observed, "Modern music was awakened by Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune ". Most of the major works for which Debussy is best known were written between the mid-1890s and the mid-1900s. They include the String Quartet (1893), Pelléas et Mélisande (1893–1902), the Nocturnes for Orchestra (1899) and La mer (1903–1905). The suite Pour le piano (1894–1901) is, in Halford's view, one of
3672-540: A view to their publication as a book; it was published after his death as Monsieur Croche, Antidilettante . In January 1902 rehearsals began at the Opéra-Comique for the opening of Pelléas et Mélisande . For three months, Debussy attended rehearsals practically every day. In February there was conflict between Maeterlinck on the one hand and Debussy, Messager and Carré on the other about the casting of Mélisande. Maeterlinck wanted his mistress, Georgette Leblanc , to sing
3825-440: A week before. In 1915 Debussy underwent one of the earliest colostomy operations. It achieved only a temporary respite, and occasioned him considerable frustration ("There are mornings when the effort of dressing seems like one of the twelve labours of Hercules"). He also had a fierce enemy at this period in the form of Camille Saint-Saëns , who in a letter to Fauré condemned Debussy's En blanc et noir : "It's incredible, and
3978-429: A year, succumbing to the diphtheria epidemic of 1919. Mary Garden said, "I honestly don't know if Debussy ever loved anybody really. He loved his music – and perhaps himself. I think he was wrapped up in his genius", but biographers are agreed that whatever his relations with lovers and friends, Debussy was devoted to his daughter. Debussy and Emma Bardac eventually married in 1908, their troubled union enduring for
4131-469: Is La Damoiselle élue , recasting the traditional form for oratorios and cantatas, using a chamber orchestra and a small body of choral tone and using new or long-neglected scales and harmonies. His early mélodies , inspired by Marie Vasnier, are more virtuosic in character than his later works in the genre, with extensive wordless vocalise ; from the Ariettes oubliées (1885–1887) onwards he developed
4284-489: Is not certain that Debussy, who was apt to skip classes, actually attended these. At the Conservatoire, Debussy initially made good progress. Marmontel said of him, "A charming child, a truly artistic temperament; much can be expected of him". Another teacher was less impressed: Émile Durand wrote in a report, "Debussy would be an excellent pupil if he were less sketchy and less cavalier." A year later he described Debussy as "desperately careless". In July 1874 Debussy received
4437-676: The Blanquists provided many of the most disciplined soldiers and several of the senior leaders of the Commune. By 20 September 1870, the German army had surrounded Paris and was camped just 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) from the French front lines. The regular French Army in Paris, under General Trochu 's command, had only 50,000 professional soldiers of the line; the majority of the French first-line soldiers were prisoners of war, or trapped in Metz , surrounded by
4590-633: The Fantaisie for piano and orchestra, which was heavily based on Franck's music and was eventually withdrawn by Debussy. The Academy chided him for writing music that was "bizarre, incomprehensible and unperformable". Although Debussy's works showed the influence of Jules Massenet , the latter concluded, "He is an enigma". During his years in Rome Debussy composed – not for the Academy – most of his Verlaine cycle, Ariettes oubliées , which made little impact at
4743-678: The Faubourg Saint-Antoine , and the Faubourg du Temple —marched to the centre of the city and demanded that a new government, a Commune, be elected. They were met by regular army units loyal to the Government of National Defence, and the demonstrators eventually dispersed peacefully. On 5 October, 5,000 protesters marched from Belleville to the Hôtel de Ville , demanding immediate municipal elections and rifles. On 8 October, several thousand soldiers from
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4896-555: The National Guard , numbering about 300,000 men. They also had very little training or experience. They were organised by neighbourhoods; those from the upper- and middle-class arrondissements tended to support the national government, while those from the working-class neighbourhoods were far more radical and politicised. Guardsmen from many units were known for their lack of discipline; some units refused to wear uniforms, often refused to obey orders without discussing them, and demanded
5049-591: The Seine froze for three weeks. Parisians suffered shortages of food, firewood, coal and medicine. The city was almost completely dark at night. The only communication with the outside world was by balloon, carrier pigeon , or letters packed in iron balls floated down the Seine. Rumours and conspiracy theories abounded. Because supplies of ordinary food ran out, starving denizens ate most of the city zoo 's animals, then resorted to feeding on rats. By early January 1871, Bismarck and
5202-457: The Trocadéro , fulfilling his wish to rest "among the trees and the birds"; his wife and daughter are buried with him. In a survey of Debussy's oeuvre shortly after the composer's death, the critic Ernest Newman wrote, "It would be hardly too much to say that Debussy spent a third of his life in the discovery of himself, a third in the free and happy realisation of himself, and the final third in
5355-666: The golden ratio , which is approximated by ratios of consecutive numbers in the Fibonacci sequence . Simon Trezise, in his 1994 book Debussy: La Mer , finds the intrinsic evidence "remarkable", with the caveat that no written or reported evidence suggests that Debussy deliberately sought such proportions. Lesure takes a similar view, endorsing Howat's conclusions while not taking a view on Debussy's conscious intentions. Paris Commune Revolt suppressed [REDACTED] French Republic The Paris Commune ( French : Commune de Paris , pronounced [kɔ.myn də pa.ʁi] )
5508-408: The leaders , fled abroad, mostly to England, Belgium or Switzerland. All the surviving prisoners and exiles received pardons in 1880 and could return home, where some resumed political careers. Debates over the policies and outcome of the Commune had significant influence on the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , who described the régime in Paris as the first example of the dictatorship of
5661-652: The legitimists . In Paris, however, the republican candidates dominated, winning 234,000 votes against 77,000 for the Bonapartists. Of the two million people in Paris in 1869, according to the official census, there were about 500,000 industrial workers, or fifteen percent of all the industrial workers in France, plus another 300,000–400,000 workers in other enterprises. Only about 40,000 were employed in factories and large enterprises; most were employed in small industries in textiles, furniture and construction. There were also 115,000 servants and 45,000 concierges. In addition to
5814-552: The whole-tone scale he had often favoured previously in favour of the octatonic scale with what the Debussy scholar François Lesure describes as its tonal ambiguities. Among the late piano works are two books of Préludes (1909–10, 1911–13), short pieces that depict a wide range of subjects. Lesure comments that they range from the frolics of minstrels at Eastbourne in 1905 and the American acrobat "General Lavine" "to dead leaves and
5967-458: The 14 performances in the first run), were loud in their support; the conservative faculty of the Conservatoire tried in vain to stop its students from seeing the opera. The vocal score was published in early May, and the full orchestral score in 1904. In 1903 there was public recognition of Debussy's stature when he was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur , but his social standing suffered
6120-505: The 20th century". The composer Olivier Messiaen was fascinated by its "extraordinary harmonic qualities and ... transparent instrumental texture". The opera is composed in what Alan Blyth describes as a sustained and heightened recitative style, with "sensuous, intimate" vocal lines. It influenced composers as different as Stravinsky and Puccini . Orledge describes the Nocturnes as exceptionally varied in texture, "ranging from
6273-618: The 7th and 8th arrondissements; 68 percent in the 15th, 66 percent in the 16th, and 62 percent in the 6th and 9th. But in the working-class neighborhoods, turnout was high: 76 percent in the 20th arrondissement, 65 percent in the 19th, and 55 to 60 percent in the 10th, 11th, and 12th. A few candidates, including Blanqui (who had been arrested when outside Paris, and was in prison in Brittany), won in several arrondissements . Other candidates who were elected, including about twenty moderate republicans and five radicals, refused to take their seats. In
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6426-616: The Central Committee of the National Guard ordered the three battalions to seize the Hôtel de Ville, where they believed the government was located. They were not aware that Thiers, the government, and the military commanders were at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where the gates were open and there were few guards. They were also unaware that Marshal Patrice MacMahon , the future commander of
6579-511: The Central Committee, led by the Blanquists, demanded an immediate march on Versailles to disperse the Thiers government and to impose their authority on all of France; but the majority first wanted to establish a more solid base of legal authority in Paris. The Committee officially lifted the state of siege, named commissions to administer the government, and called elections for 23 March. They also sent
6732-597: The Committee of Vigilance of the 18th arrondissement , who demanded that they be tried and executed. At 5:00 in the afternoon, the National Guard had captured another important prisoner: General Jacques Leon Clément-Thomas . An ardent republican and fierce disciplinarian, he had helped suppress the armed uprising of June 1848 against the Second Republic. Because of his republican beliefs, he had been arrested by Napoleon III and exiled, and had only returned to France after
6885-484: The Commune. The various Communards had little more than two months to achieve their respective goals before the national French Army suppressed the Commune during the semaine sanglante ("bloody week") beginning on 21 May 1871. The national forces still loyal to the Third Republic government either killed in battle or executed an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Communards, though one unconfirmed estimate from 1876 put
7038-470: The Germans themselves were tired of the prolonged siege. They installed seventy-two 120- and 150-mm artillery pieces in the forts around Paris and on 5 January began to bombard the city day and night. Between 300 and 600 shells hit the centre of the city every day. Between 11 and 19 January 1871, the French armies had been defeated on four fronts and Paris was facing a famine. General Trochu received reports from
7191-526: The Germans. Regular soldiers would give up their arms, but would not be taken into captivity. Paris would pay an indemnity of 200 million francs. At Jules Favre 's request, Bismarck agreed not to disarm the National Guard, so that order could be maintained in the city. The national government in Bordeaux called for national elections at the end of January, held just ten days later on 8 February. Most electors in France were rural, Catholic and conservative, and this
7344-454: The Germans. The regulars were thus supported by around 5,000 firemen, 3,000 gendarmes , and 15,000 sailors. The regulars were also supported by the Garde Mobile , new recruits with little training or experience. 17,000 of them were Parisian, and 73,000 from the provinces . These included twenty battalions of men from Brittany , who spoke little French. The largest armed force in Paris was
7497-461: The Government of National Defence. "Yes" votes totalled 557,996, while 62,638 voted "no". Two days later, municipal councils in each of the twenty arrondissements of Paris voted to elect mayors; five councils elected radical opposition candidates, including Delescluze and a young Montmartrean doctor, Georges Clemenceau . In September and October, Adolphe Thiers , the leader of the National Assembly conservatives, had toured Europe, consulting with
7650-405: The Hôtel de Ville, one narrowly missing Trochu, and the demonstrators crowded into the building, demanding the creation of a new government, and making lists of its proposed members. Blanqui, the leader of the most radical faction, established his own headquarters at the nearby Prefecture of the Seine , issuing orders and decrees to his followers, intent upon establishing his own government. While
7803-580: The Musorgskian start of 'Nuages', through the approaching brass band procession in 'Fêtes', to the wordless female chorus in 'Sirènes ' ". Orledge considers the last a pre-echo of the marine textures of La mer . Estampes for piano (1903) gives impressions of exotic locations, with further echoes of the gamelan in its pentatonic structures. Debussy believed that since Beethoven, the traditional symphonic form had become formulaic, repetitive and obsolete. The three-part, cyclic symphony by César Franck (1888)
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#17328487307567956-589: The National Guard, led by Eugène Varlin of the First International, marched to the centre chanting 'Long Live the Commune!", but they also dispersed without incident. Later in October, General Louis Jules Trochu launched a series of armed attacks to break the German siege, with heavy losses and no success. The telegraph line connecting Paris with the rest of France had been cut by the Germans on 27 September. On 6 October, Defense Minister Léon Gambetta departed
8109-534: The angry crowd of national guardsmen and deserters from Lecomte's regiment at rue des Rosiers seized Clément-Thomas, beat him with rifle butts, pushed him into the garden, and shot him repeatedly. A few minutes later, they did the same to General Lecomte. Doctor Jean Casimir Félix Guyon , who examined the bodies shortly afterwards, found forty bullets in Clément-Thomas's body and nine in Lecomte's back. By late morning,
8262-421: The armistice was signed. At the end of the war, 400 obsolete muzzle-loading bronze cannons , paid for by the Paris public via a subscription, remained in the city. The new Central Committee of the National Guard, now dominated by radicals, decided to put the cannons in parks in the working-class neighborhoods of Belleville , Buttes-Chaumont and Montmartre , to keep them away from the regular army and to defend
8415-460: The assessors at the Conservatoire first applied it, opprobriously, to his early work Printemps . Langham Smith comments that Debussy wrote many piano pieces with titles evocative of nature – "Reflets dans l'eau" (1905), "Les Sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir" (1910) and "Brouillards" (1913) – and suggests that the Impressionist painters' use of brush-strokes and dots is paralleled in
8568-418: The award of deuxième accessit for his performance as soloist in the first movement of Chopin's Second Piano Concerto at the Conservatoire's annual competition. He was a fine pianist and an outstanding sight reader , who could have had a professional career had he wished, but he was only intermittently diligent in his studies. He advanced to premier accessit in 1875 and second prize in 1877, but failed at
8721-477: The cannon away did not arrive, and the army units were immobilized. As the soldiers were surrounded, they began to break ranks and join the crowd. General Lecomte tried to withdraw, and then ordered his soldiers to load their weapons and fix bayonets. He thrice ordered them to fire, but the soldiers refused. Some of the officers were disarmed and taken to the city hall of Montmartre, under the protection of Clemenceau. General Lecomte and his staff officers were seized by
8874-461: The cannons became a symbol of that authority. The Assembly also refused to prolong the moratorium on debt collections imposed during the war; and suspended two radical newspapers, Le Cri du Peuple of Jules Valles and Le Mot d'Ordre of Henri Rochefort , which further inflamed Parisian radical opinion. Thiers also decided to move the National Assembly and government from Bordeaux to Versailles, rather than to Paris, to be farther away from
9027-434: The cannons. The plan was initially opposed by War Minister Adolphe Le Flô , d'Aurelle de Paladines, and Vinoy, who argued that the move was premature, because the army had too few soldiers, was undisciplined and demoralized, and that many units had become politicized and were unreliable. Vinoy urged that they wait until Germany had released the French prisoners of war, and the army returned to full strength. Thiers insisted that
9180-467: The city against any attack by the national government. Thiers was equally determined to bring the cannons under national-government control. Clemenceau, a friend of several revolutionaries, tried to negotiate a compromise; some cannons would remain in Paris and the rest go to the army. However, neither Thiers nor the National Assembly accepted his proposals. The chief executive wanted to restore order and national authority in Paris as quickly as possible, and
9333-415: The city by balloon to try to organise national resistance against the Germans. On 28 October, the news arrived in Paris that the 160,000 soldiers of the French army at Metz, which had been surrounded by the Germans since August, had surrendered. The news arrived the same day of the failure of another attempt by the French army to break the siege of Paris at Le Bourget , with heavy losses. On 31 October,
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#17328487307569486-404: The city. In February, while the national government had been organising in Bordeaux, a new rival government had been organised in Paris. The National Guard had not been disarmed as per the armistice, and had on paper 260 battalions of 1,500 men each, a total of 390,000 men. Between 15 and 24 February, some 500 delegates elected by the National Guard began meeting in Paris. On 15 March, just before
9639-426: The city. While he was at the railway station, national guardsmen sent by the Central Committee arrived at his house looking for him. On the advice of General Vinoy, Thiers ordered the evacuation to Versailles of all the regular forces in Paris, some 40,000 soldiers, including those in the fortresses around the city; the regrouping of all the army units in Versailles; and the departure of all government ministries from
9792-802: The committee of the Société Nationale de Musique in 1893. His String Quartet was premiered by the Ysaÿe string quartet at the Société Nationale in the same year. In May 1893 Debussy attended a theatrical event that was of key importance to his later career – the premiere of Maurice Maeterlinck 's play Pelléas et Mélisande , which he immediately determined to turn into an opera. He travelled to Maeterlinck's home in Ghent in November to secure his consent to an operatic adaptation. In February 1894 Debussy completed
9945-632: The competitions in 1878 and 1879. These failures made him ineligible to continue in the Conservatoire's piano classes, but he remained a student for harmony, solfège and, later, composition. With Marmontel's help Debussy secured a summer vacation job in 1879 as resident pianist at the Château de Chenonceau , where he rapidly acquired a taste for luxury that was to remain with him all his life. His first compositions date from this period, two settings of poems by Alfred de Musset : "Ballade à la lune" and "Madrid, princesse des Espagnes". The following year he secured
10098-462: The complete defeat of the French Army by the Germans by March 1871, soldiers of the National Guard seized control of the city on March 18. The Communards killed two French army generals and refused to accept the authority of the Third Republic; instead, the radicals set about establishing their own independent government. The Commune governed Paris for two months, promoting policies that tended toward
10251-492: The composer. This too made an impression on him, and its harmonic freedom and non-Teutonic tone colours influenced his own developing musical style. Marie Vasnier ended her liaison with Debussy soon after his final return from Rome, although they remained on good enough terms for him to dedicate to her one more song, "Mandoline", in 1890. Later in 1890 Debussy met Erik Satie , who proved a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to composition. Both were bohemians , enjoying
10404-511: The confrontation between the National Guard and the regular army over the cannons, 1,325 delegates of the federation of organisations created by the National Guard elected a leader, Giuseppe Garibaldi (who was in Italy and respectfully declined the title), and created a Central Committee of 38 members, which made its headquarters in a school on the rue Basfroi, between Place de la Bastille and Rue de la Roquette [ fr ] . The first vote of
10557-475: The council were 33 workers; five small businessmen; 19 clerks, accountants and other office staff; twelve journalists; and a selection of workers in the liberal arts. 20 members were Freemasons . All were men; women were not allowed to vote. The winners were announced on 27 March, and a large ceremony and parade by the National Guard was held the next day in front of the Hôtel de Ville, decorated with red flags. The new Commune held its first meeting on 28 March in
10710-409: The disapproval of the Conservatoire's conservative professors. He took many years to develop his mature style, and was nearly 40 when he achieved international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completed, Pelléas et Mélisande . Debussy's orchestral works include Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894), Nocturnes (1897–1899) and Images (1905–1912). His music was to a considerable extent
10863-522: The door of the Institut [de France] must at all costs be barred against a man capable of such atrocities". Saint-Saëns had been a member of the Institut since 1881: Debussy never became one. His health continued to decline; he gave his final concert on 14 September 1917 and became bedridden in early 1918. Debussy died of colon cancer on 25 March 1918 at his home. The First World War was still raging and Paris
11016-451: The downfall of the Empire. He was particularly hated by the national guardsmen of Montmartre and Belleville because of the severe discipline he imposed during the siege of Paris. Earlier that day, dressed in civilian clothes, he had been trying to find out what was going on, when he was recognized by a soldier and arrested, and brought to the building at rue des Rosiers. At about 5:30 on 18 March,
11169-522: The elections, the Central Committee and the leaders of the International gave out their lists of candidates, mostly belonging to the extreme left. The candidates had only a few days to campaign. Thiers' government in Versailles urged Parisians to abstain from voting. When the voting was finished, 233,000 Parisians had voted, out of 485,000 registered voters, or forty-eight percent. In upper-class neighborhoods many abstained from voting: 77 percent of voters in
11322-549: The emphasis is on the overall impression rather than outline or clarity of detail, as in works by Monet , Pissarro , Renoir and others. Langham Smith writes that the term became transferred to the compositions of Debussy and others which were "concerned with the representation of landscape or natural phenomena, particularly the water and light imagery dear to Impressionists, through subtle textures suffused with instrumental colour". Among painters, Debussy particularly admired Turner , but also drew inspiration from Whistler . With
11475-406: The end of 1880 Debussy, while continuing his studies at the Conservatoire, was engaged as accompanist for Marie Moreau-Sainti's singing class; he took this role for four years. Among the members of the class was Marie Vasnier; Debussy was greatly taken with her, and she inspired him to compose: he wrote 27 songs dedicated to her during their seven-year relationship. She was the wife of Henri Vasnier,
11628-475: The end, the council had just 60 members. Nine of the winners were Blanquists (some of whom were also from the International); twenty-five, including Delescluze and Pyat, classified themselves as "Independent Revolutionaries"; about fifteen were from the International; the rest were from a variety of radical groups. One of the best-known candidates, Clemenceau, received only 752 votes. The professions represented in
11781-610: The faculty, particularly his composition teacher, Guiraud, for his failure to follow the orthodox rules of composition then prevailing. Nevertheless, in 1884 Debussy won France's most prestigious musical award, the Prix de Rome , with his cantata L'enfant prodigue . The Prix carried with it a residence at the Villa Medici , the French Academy in Rome , to further the winner's studies. Debussy
11934-513: The first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born to a family of modest means and little cultural involvement, Debussy showed enough musical talent to be admitted at the age of ten to France's leading music college, the Conservatoire de Paris . He originally studied the piano, but found his vocation in innovative composition, despite
12087-480: The first draft of Pelléas and began efforts to get it staged. In May 1898 he made his first contacts with André Messager and Albert Carré , respectively the musical director and general manager of the Opéra-Comique , Paris, about presenting the opera. Debussy abandoned Dupont for her friend Marie-Rosalie Texier, known as "Lilly", whom he married in October 1899, after threatening suicide if she refused him. She
12240-429: The first draft of Act I of his operatic version of Pelléas et Mélisande , and for most of the year worked to complete the work. While still living with Dupont, he had an affair with the singer Thérèse Roger, and in 1894 he announced their engagement. His behaviour was widely condemned; anonymous letters circulated denouncing his treatment of both women, as well as his financial irresponsibility and debts. The engagement
12393-786: The first examples of the mature Debussy as a composer for the piano: "a major landmark ... and an enlargement of the use of piano sonorities". In the String Quartet (1893), the gamelan sonorities Debussy had heard four years earlier are recalled in the pizzicatos and cross-rhythms of the scherzo . Debussy's biographer Edward Lockspeiser comments that this movement shows the composer's rejection of "the traditional dictum that string instruments should be predominantly lyrical". The work influenced Ravel, whose own String Quartet , written ten years later, has noticeably Debussian features. The academic and journalist Stephen Walsh calls Pelléas et Mélisande (begun 1893, staged 1902) "a key work for
12546-417: The first movement. The reviews were sharply divided. Some critics thought the treatment less subtle and less mysterious than his previous works, and even a step backward; others praised its "power and charm", its "extraordinary verve and brilliant fantasy", and its strong colours and definite lines. Of the later orchestral works, Images (1905–1912) is better known than Jeux (1913). The former follows
12699-619: The followers of Blanqui, who went quickly to the Latin Quarter and took charge of the gunpowder stored in the Panthéon , and to the Orléans railway station . Four battalions crossed the Seine and captured the prefecture of police , while other units occupied the former headquarters of the National Guard at the Place Vendôme , as well as the Ministry of Justice. That night, the National Guard occupied
12852-459: The following year. Like many other composers of the time, Debussy supplemented his income by teaching and writing. For most of 1901 he had a sideline as music critic of La Revue Blanche , adopting the pen name "Monsieur Croche". He expressed trenchant views on composers ("I hate sentimentality – his name is Camille Saint-Saëns "), institutions (on the Paris Opéra: "A stranger would take it for
13005-457: The forces against the Commune, had just arrived at his home in Paris, having just been released from imprisonment in Germany. As soon as he heard the news of the uprising, he made his way to the railway station, where national guardsmen were already stopping and checking the identity of departing passengers. A sympathetic station manager hid him in his office and helped him board a train, and he escaped
13158-496: The forces of the Commune ; after its defeat by French government troops in 1871 he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, of which he only served one year. His fellow Communard prisoners included his friend Charles de Sivry, a musician. Sivry's mother, Antoinette Mauté de Fleurville, gave piano lessons, and at his instigation the young Debussy became one of her pupils. Debussy's talents soon became evident, and in 1872, aged ten, he
13311-492: The foreign ministers of Britain , Russia , and Austria-Hungary , and found that none of them were willing to support France against the Germans. He reported to the government that there was no alternative to negotiating an armistice. He travelled to German-occupied Tours and met with Otto von Bismarck on 1 November. The German Chancellor demanded the cession of all of Alsace , parts of Lorraine , and enormous reparations. The Government of National Defence decided to continue
13464-488: The formation of the new government was taking place inside the Hôtel de Ville, however, units of the National Guard and the Garde Mobile loyal to General Trochu arrived and recaptured the building without violence. By three o'clock, the demonstrators had been given safe passage and left, and the brief uprising was over. On 3 November, city authorities organized a plebiscite of Parisian voters, asking if they had confidence in
13617-525: The guardsmen and his mutinous soldiers and taken to the local headquarters of the National Guard under the command of captain Simon Charles Mayer at the ballroom of the Chateau-Rouge . The officers were pelted with rocks, struck, threatened, and insulted by the crowd. In the middle of the afternoon, Lecomte and the other officers were taken to 6 rue des Rosiers by members of a group calling themselves
13770-528: The lack of industrial activity due to the war and the siege; they formed the bedrock of the Commune's popular support. The Commune resulted in part from growing discontent among the Paris workers. This discontent can be traced to the first worker uprisings, the Canut revolts (a canut was a Lyonnais silk worker, often working on Jacquard looms ), in Lyon and Paris in the 1830s. Many Parisians, especially workers and
13923-560: The large cities. The killing of journalist Victor Noir incensed Parisians, and the arrests of journalists critical of the Emperor did nothing to quiet the city. The German military attaché, Alfred von Waldersee , wrote in his diary in February: "Every night isolated barricades were thrown up, constructed for the most part out of disused conveyances, especially omnibuses, a few shots were fired at random, and scenes of disorder were taken part in by
14076-512: The later 19th century. A small number of works, including the early La Damoiselle élue and the late Le Martyre de saint Sébastien have important parts for chorus. In his final years, he focused on chamber music, completing three of six planned sonatas for different combinations of instruments . With early influences including Russian and Far Eastern music and works by Chopin , Debussy developed his own style of harmony and orchestral colouring, derided – and unsuccessfully resisted – by much of
14229-400: The latter in mind the composer wrote to the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe in 1894 describing the orchestral Nocturnes as "an experiment in the different combinations that can be obtained from one colour – what a study in grey would be in painting." Debussy strongly objected to the use of the word "Impressionism" for his (or anybody else's) music, but it has continually been attached to him since
14382-477: The latter joined other former friends of Debussy in contributing to a fund to support the deserted Lilly. The Bardacs divorced in May 1905. Finding the hostility in Paris intolerable, Debussy and Emma (now pregnant) went to England. They stayed at the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne in July and August, where Debussy corrected the proofs of his symphonic sketches La mer , celebrating his divorce on 2 August. After
14535-413: The leaders of the main revolutionary groups in Paris, including Blanqui, Félix Pyat and Louis Charles Delescluze , called new demonstrations at the Hôtel de Ville against General Trochu and the government. Fifteen thousand demonstrators, some of them armed, gathered in front of the Hôtel de Ville in pouring rain, calling for the resignation of Trochu and the proclamation of a commune. Shots were fired from
14688-577: The lower-middle classes, supported a democratic republic. A specific demand was that Paris should be self-governing with its own elected council, something enjoyed by smaller French towns but denied to Paris by a national government wary of the capital's unruly populace. Socialist movements, such as the First International , had been growing in influence with hundreds of societies affiliated to it across France. In early 1867, Parisian employers of bronze-workers attempted to de-unionise their workers. This
14841-606: The meadow, the gentle grass-carpeted earth, ... and my hands unconsciously assume an attitude of adoration. In contrast to the "impressionistic" characterisation of Debussy's music, several writers have suggested that he structured at least some of his music on rigorous mathematical lines. In 1983 the pianist and scholar Roy Howat published a book contending that certain of Debussy's works are proportioned using mathematical models, even while using an apparent classical structure such as sonata form . Howat suggests that some of Debussy's pieces can be divided into sections that reflect
14994-604: The mistress and muse of Gabriel Fauré a few years earlier. After despatching Lilly to her parental home at Bichain in Villeneuve-la-Guyard on 15 July 1904, Debussy took Emma away, staying incognito in Jersey and then at Pourville in Normandy. He wrote to his wife on 11 August from Dieppe , telling her that their marriage was over, but still making no mention of Bardac. When he returned to Paris he set up home on his own, taking
15147-399: The morning of 18 March, two brigades of soldiers climbed the butte of Montmartre , where the largest collection of cannons, 170 in number, were located. A small group of revolutionary national guardsmen were already there, and there was a brief confrontation between the brigade led by General Claude Lecomte , and the National Guard; one guardsman, named Turpin, was shot, later dying. Word of
15300-620: The music of Debussy. Although Debussy said that anyone using the term (whether about painting or music) was an imbecile, some Debussy scholars have taken a less absolutist line. Lockspeiser calls La mer "the greatest example of an orchestral Impressionist work", and more recently in The Cambridge Companion to Debussy Nigel Simeone comments, "It does not seem unduly far-fetched to see a parallel in Monet's seascapes". In this context may be placed Debussy's pantheistic eulogy to Nature, in
15453-480: The musical establishment of the day. His works have strongly influenced a wide range of composers including Béla Bartók , Olivier Messiaen , George Benjamin , and the jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans . Debussy died from cancer at his home in Paris at the age of 55 after a composing career of a little more than 30 years. Debussy was born on 22 August 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye , Seine-et-Oise , on
15606-454: The native French population, there were about 100,000 immigrant workers and political refugees, the largest number being from Italy and Poland. During the war and the Siege of Paris , various members of the middle and upper classes departed the city. At the same time, there was an influx of refugees from parts of France occupied by the Germans. The working class and immigrants suffered the most from
15759-461: The new Central Committee was to refuse to recognise the authority of General D'Aurelle de Paladines, the official commander of the National Guard appointed by Thiers, or of General Vinoy, the Military Governor of Paris. Late on 18 March, when they learned that the regular army was leaving Paris, units of the National Guard moved quickly to take control of the city. The first to take action were
15912-607: The next few years Debussy developed his personal style, without, at this stage, breaking sharply away from French musical traditions. Much of his music from this period is on a small scale, such as the Two Arabesques , Valse romantique , Suite bergamasque , and the first set of Fêtes galantes . Newman remarked that, like Chopin , the Debussy of this period appears as a liberator from Germanic styles of composition – offering instead "an exquisite, pellucid style" capable of conveying "not only gaiety and whimsicality but emotion of
16065-517: The north-west fringes of Paris. He was the eldest of the five children of Manuel-Achille Debussy and his wife, Victorine, née Manoury. Debussy senior ran a china shop and his wife was a seamstress. The shop was unsuccessful, and closed in 1864; the family moved to Paris, first living with Victorine's mother, in Clichy , and, from 1868, in their own apartment in the Rue Saint-Honoré . Manuel worked in
16218-526: The offices vacated by the government; they quickly took over the Ministries of Finance, the Interior, and War . At eight in the morning the next day, the Central Committee was meeting in the Hôtel de Ville. By the end of the day, 20,000 national guardsmen camped in triumph in the square in front of the Hôtel de Ville, with several dozen cannons. A red flag was hoisted over the building. The extreme-left members of
16371-421: The operation to recapture the cannons had failed, and crowds and barricades were appearing in all the working-class neighborhoods of Paris. General Vinoy ordered the army to pull back to the Seine, and Thiers began to organise a withdrawal to Versailles, where he could gather enough troops to take back Paris. On the afternoon of 18 March, following the government's failed attempt to seize the cannons at Montmartre,
16524-448: The orchestration incomplete, and were completed by Charles Koechlin and Caplet, respectively. The application of the term "Impressionist" to Debussy and the music he influenced has been much debated, both during his lifetime and since. The analyst Richard Langham Smith writes that Impressionism was originally a term coined to describe a style of late 19th-century French painting , typically scenes suffused with reflected light in which
16677-464: The partial, painful loss of himself". Later commentators have rated some of the late works more highly than Newman and other contemporaries did, but much of the music for which Debussy is best known is from the middle years of his career. The analyst David Cox wrote in 1974 that Debussy, admiring Wagner's attempts to combine all the creative arts, "created a new, instinctive, dreamlike world of music, lyrical and pantheistic, contemplative and objective –
16830-501: The path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamoured of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas!" Debussy finally composed four pieces that were submitted to the Academy: the symphonic ode Zuleima (based on a text by Heinrich Heine ); the orchestral piece Printemps ; the cantata La Damoiselle élue (1887–1888), the first piece in which the stylistic features of his later music began to emerge; and
16983-420: The planned operation must go ahead as quickly as possible, to have the element of surprise. If the seizure of the cannon was not successful, the government would withdraw from the centre of Paris, build up its forces, and then attack with overwhelming force, as they had done during the uprising of June 1848. The Council accepted his decision, and Vinoy gave orders for the operation to begin the next day. Early in
17136-439: The prefect of Paris that agitation against the government and military leaders was increasing in the political clubs and in the National Guard of the working-class neighbourhoods of Belleville, La Chapelle , Montmartre, and Gros-Caillou. At midday on 22 January, three or four hundred National Guards and members of radical groups—mostly Blanquists—gathered outside the Hôtel de Ville. A battalion of Gardes Mobiles from Brittany
17289-427: The pressure of demonstrations, which further enraged the National Guard and the radical political clubs. On 17 March 1871, there was a meeting of Thiers and his cabinet, who were joined by Paris mayor Jules Ferry, National Guard commander General Louis d'Aurelle de Paladines and General Joseph Vinoy , commander of the regular army units in Paris. Thiers announced a plan to send the army the next day to take charge of
17442-639: The proletariat . Engels wrote: "Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat . Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." On 2 September 1870, France was defeated in the Battle of Sedan , and Emperor Napoleon III
17595-412: The republican mayor of the 2nd arrondissement , who had been elected to both Commune and National Assembly. Seeing the more radical political direction of the new Commune, Tirard and some twenty republicans decided it was wisest to resign from the Commune. A resolution was also passed, after a long debate, that the deliberations of the council were to be secret, since the Commune was effectively at war with
17748-551: The rest of his life. The following year began well, when at Fauré's invitation, Debussy became a member of the governing council of the Conservatoire. His success in London was consolidated in April 1909, when he conducted Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and the Nocturnes at the Queen's Hall ; in May he was present at the first London production of Pelléas et Mélisande , at Covent Garden . In
17901-472: The right to elect their own officers. The members of the National Guard from working-class neighbourhoods became the main armed force of the Commune. As the Germans surrounded the city, radical groups saw that the Government of National Defence had few soldiers to defend itself, and launched the first demonstrations against it. On 19 September, National Guard units from the main working-class neighbourhoods— Belleville , Ménilmontant , La Villette , Montrouge ,
18054-566: The role, and was incensed when she was passed over in favour of the Scottish soprano Mary Garden . The opera opened on 30 April 1902, and although the first-night audience was divided between admirers and sceptics, the work quickly became a success. It made Debussy a well-known name in France and abroad; The Times commented that the opera had "provoked more discussion than any work of modern times, excepting, of course, those of Richard Strauss ". The Apaches, led by Ravel (who attended every one of
18207-437: The same café society and struggling to survive financially. In the same year Debussy began a relationship with Gabrielle (Gaby) Dupont, a tailor's daughter from Lisieux ; in July 1893 they began living together. Debussy continued to compose songs, piano pieces and other works, some of which were publicly performed, but his music made only a modest impact, although his fellow composers recognised his potential by electing him to
18360-524: The same year, Debussy was diagnosed with colorectal cancer , from which he was to die nine years later. Debussy's works began to feature increasingly in concert programmes at home and overseas. In 1910 Gustav Mahler conducted the Nocturnes and Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune in New York in successive months. In the same year, visiting Budapest, Debussy commented that his works were better known there than in Paris. In 1912 Sergei Diaghilev commissioned
18513-483: The shooting spread quickly, and members of the National Guard from all over the neighbourhood, along with others including Clemenceau, hurried to the site to confront the soldiers. While the Army had succeeded in securing the cannons at Belleville and Buttes-Chaumont and other strategic points, at Montmartre a crowd gathered and continued to grow, and the situation grew increasingly tense. The horses that were needed to take
18666-467: The sounds and scents of the evening air". En blanc et noir (In white and black, 1915), a three-movement work for two pianos, is a predominantly sombre piece, reflecting the war and national danger. The Études (1915) for piano have divided opinion. Writing soon after Debussy's death, Newman found them laboured – "a strange last chapter in a great artist's life"; Lesure, writing eighty years later, rates them among Debussy's greatest late works: "Behind
18819-436: The square. The government quickly banned two publications, Le Reveil of Delescluze and Le Combat of Pyat, and arrested 83 revolutionaries. At the same time as the demonstration in Paris, the leaders of the Government of National Defence in Bordeaux had concluded that the war could not continue. On 26 January, they signed a ceasefire and armistice, with special conditions for Paris. The city would not be occupied by
18972-511: The streets and overthrown their governments during the popular uprisings of July 1830 and the French Revolution of 1848 , as well as subsequent failed attempts such as the 1832 June Rebellion and the uprising of June 1848 . Of the radical and revolutionary groups in Paris at the time of the Commune, the most conservative were the "radical republicans". This group included the young doctor and future prime minister Georges Clemenceau , who
19125-424: The third of the four movements of Suite Bergamasque , as a transitional work pointing towards the composer's mature style. Musicians from Debussy's time onwards have regarded Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894) as his first orchestral masterpiece. Newman considered it "completely original in idea, absolutely personal in style, and logical and coherent from first to last, without a superfluous bar or even
19278-519: The time but was successfully republished in 1903 after the composer had become well known. A week after his return to Paris in 1887, Debussy heard the first act of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the Concerts Lamoureux , and judged it "decidedly the finest thing I know". In 1888 and 1889 he went to the annual festivals of Wagner's operas at Bayreuth . He responded positively to Wagner's sensuousness, mastery of form, and striking harmonies, and
19431-634: The toll as high as 20,000. In its final days, the Commune executed the Archbishop of Paris , Georges Darboy , and about one hundred hostages, mostly gendarmes and priests. National army forces took 43,522 Communards as prisoners, including 1,054 women . More than half of the prisoners had not fought, and were released immediately. The Third Republic tried around 15,000 in court, 13,500 of whom were found guilty, 95 were sentenced to death, 251 to forced labor, and 1,169 to deportation (mostly to New Caledonia ). Many other Commune supporters, including several of
19584-402: The tripartite form established in the Nocturnes and La mer , but differs in employing traditional British and French folk tunes, and in making the central movement, "Ibéria", far longer than the outer ones, and subdividing it into three parts, all inspired by scenes from Spanish life. Although considering Images "the pinnacle of Debussy's achievement as a composer for orchestra", Trezise notes
19737-457: The twentieth century Debussy did not give his works opus numbers , apart from his String Quartet, Op. 10 in G minor (also the only work where the composer's title included a key ). His works were catalogued and indexed by the musicologist François Lesure in 1977 (revised in 2003) and their Lesure number ("L" followed by a number) is sometimes used as a suffix to their title in concert programmes and recordings. Debussy's musical development
19890-467: The war and raise a new army to fight the Germans. The newly organized French armies won a single victory at Coulmiers on 10 November, but an attempt by General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot on 29 November at Villiers to break out of Paris was defeated with a loss of 4,000 soldiers, compared with 1,700 German casualties. Everyday life for Parisians became increasingly difficult during the siege. In December, temperatures dropped to −15 °C (5 °F), and
20043-404: The work, but Pierre Lalo , critic of Le Temps , hitherto an admirer of Debussy, wrote, "I do not hear, I do not see, I do not smell the sea". In the same month the composer's only child was born at their home. Claude-Emma, affectionately known as "Chouchou", was a musical inspiration to the composer (she was the dedicatee of his Children's Corner suite). She outlived her father by scarcely
20196-423: The young musician will hereafter follow". Newman concurred: "There is a good deal of Wagner, especially of Tristan , in the idiom. But the work as a whole is distinctive, and the first in which we get a hint of the Debussy we were to know later – the lover of vague outlines, of half-lights, of mysterious consonances and dissonances of colour, the apostle of languor, the exclusivist in thought and in style." During
20349-606: Was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard had defended Paris, and working-class radicalism grew among its soldiers. Following the establishment of the French Third Republic in September 1870 (under French chief-executive Adolphe Thiers from February 1871) and
20502-409: Was a member of the National Assembly and Mayor of the 18th arrondissement . Clemenceau tried to negotiate a compromise between the Commune and the government, but neither side trusted him; he was considered extremely radical by the provincial deputies of rural France, but too moderate by the leaders of the Commune. The most extreme revolutionaries in Paris were the followers of Louis Auguste Blanqui ,
20655-420: Was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris , where he remained a student for the next eleven years. He first joined the piano class of Antoine François Marmontel , and studied solfège with Albert Lavignac and, later, composition with Ernest Guiraud , harmony with Émile Durand , and organ with César Franck . The course included music history and theory studies with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray , but it
20808-549: Was affectionate, practical, straightforward, and well liked by Debussy's friends and associates, but he became increasingly irritated by her intellectual limitations and lack of musical sensitivity. The marriage lasted barely five years. From around 1900 Debussy's music became a focus and inspiration for an informal group of innovative young artists, poets, critics, and musicians who began meeting in Paris. They called themselves Les Apaches – roughly "The Hooligans" – to represent their status as "artistic outcasts". The membership
20961-665: Was briefly influenced by them, but, unlike some other French composers of his generation, he concluded that there was no future in attempting to adopt and develop Wagner's style. He commented in 1903 that Wagner was "a beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn". In 1889, at the Paris Exposition Universelle , Debussy first heard Javanese gamelan music. The gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, and ensemble textures appealed to him, and echoes of them are heard in "Pagodes" in his piano suite Estampes . He also attended two concerts of Rimsky-Korsakov 's music, conducted by
21114-469: Was broken off, and several of Debussy's friends and supporters disowned him, including Ernest Chausson , hitherto one of his strongest supporters. In terms of musical recognition, Debussy made a step forward in December 1894, when the symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune , based on Stéphane Mallarmé 's poem, was premiered at a concert of the Société Nationale. The following year he completed
21267-586: Was captured. When the news reached Paris the next day, shocked and angry crowds came out into the streets. Empress Eugénie , the acting Regent, fled the city, and the government of the Second Empire swiftly collapsed. Republican and radical deputies of the National Assembly proclaimed the new French Republic , and formed a Government of National Defence with the intention of continuing the war. The Prussian army marched swiftly toward Paris. In 1871, France
21420-517: Was deeply divided between the large rural, Catholic, and conservative population of the French countryside and the more republican and radical cities of Paris, Marseille, Lyon and a few others. In the first round of the 1869 parliamentary elections held under the French Empire, 4,438,000 had voted for the Bonapartist candidates supporting Napoleon III, while 3,350,000 had voted for the republicans or
21573-545: Was defeated by a strike organised by the International. Later in 1867, a public demonstration in Paris was answered by the dissolution of its executive committee and the leadership being fined. Tensions escalated: Internationalists elected a new committee and put forth a more radical programme, the authorities imprisoned their leaders, and a more revolutionary perspective was taken to the International's 1868 Brussels Congress . The International had considerable influence even among unaffiliated French workers, particularly in Paris and
21726-614: Was dominant in Paris, where they won 37 of the 42 seats. On 17 February the new parliament elected the 74-year-old Thiers as chief executive of the Third Republic . He was considered to be the candidate most likely to bring peace and to restore order. Long an opponent of the Prussian war, Thiers persuaded parliament that peace was necessary. He travelled to Versailles , where Bismarck and the German Emperor were waiting, and on 24 February
21879-426: Was elected in 26 departments, the most of any candidate. There were an equal number of more radical republicans, including Jules Favre and Jules Ferry , who wanted a republic without a monarch, and who felt that signing the peace treaty was unavoidable. Finally, on the extreme left, there were the radical republicans and socialists, a group that included Louis Blanc , Léon Gambetta and Georges Clemenceau . This group
22032-405: Was fluid, but at various times included Maurice Ravel , Ricardo Viñes , Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla . In the same year the first two of Debussy's three orchestral Nocturnes were first performed. Although they did not make any great impact with the public they were well reviewed by musicians including Paul Dukas , Alfred Bruneau and Pierre de Bréville . The complete set was given
22185-404: Was inside the building to defend it in case of an assault. The demonstrators presented their demands that the military be placed under civil control, and that there be an immediate election of a commune. The atmosphere was tense, and in the middle of the afternoon, gunfire broke out between the two sides; each side blamed the other for firing first. Six demonstrators were killed, and the army cleared
22338-516: Was labeled the Massacre in the Rue de la Paix . In Paris, hostility was growing between the elected republican mayors, including Clemenceau, who believed that they were legitimate leaders of Paris, and the Central Committee of the National Guard. On 22 March, the day before the elections, the Central Committee declared that it, not the mayors, was the legitimate government of Paris. It declared that Clemenceau
22491-517: Was more to his liking, and its influence can be found in La mer (1905); this uses a quasi-symphonic form, its three sections making up a giant sonata-form movement with, as Orledge observes, a cyclic theme, in the manner of Franck. The central "Jeux de vagues" section has the function of a symphonic development section leading into the final "Dialogue du vent et de la mer", "a powerful essay in orchestral colour and sonority" (Orledge) which reworks themes from
22644-503: Was much more impressed by the music of the 16th-century composers Palestrina and Lassus , which he heard at Santa Maria dell'Anima : "The only church music I will accept". He was often depressed and unable to compose, but he was inspired by Franz Liszt , who visited the students and played for them. In June 1885, Debussy wrote of his desire to follow his own way, saying, "I am sure the Institute would not approve, for, naturally it regards
22797-475: Was no longer the Mayor of Montmartre, and seized the city hall there, as well as the city halls of the 1st and 2nd arrondissements , which were occupied by more radical national guardsmen. "We are caught between two bands of crazy people," Clemenceau complained, "those sitting in Versailles and those in Paris." The elections of 26 March elected a Commune council of 92 members, one for every 20,000 residents. Ahead of
22950-483: Was reflected in the results; of the 645 deputies assembled in Bordeaux on February, about 400 favoured a constitutional monarchy under either Henri, Count of Chambord (grandson of Charles X ) or Prince Philippe, Count of Paris (grandson of Louis Philippe ). Of the 200 republicans in the new parliament, 80 were former Orléanists (Philippe's supporters) and moderately conservative. They were led by Adolphe Thiers, who
23103-449: Was slow, and as a student he was adept enough to produce for his teachers at the Conservatoire works that would conform to their conservative precepts. His friend Georges Jean-Aubry commented that Debussy "admirably imitated Massenet's melodic turns of phrase" in the cantata L'enfant prodigue (1884) which won him the Prix de Rome. A more characteristically Debussian work from his early years
23256-524: Was there from January 1885 to March 1887, with three or possibly four absences of several weeks when he returned to France, chiefly to see Marie Vasnier. Initially Debussy found the artistic atmosphere of the Villa Medici stifling, the company boorish, the food bad, and the accommodation "abominable". Neither did he delight in Italian opera, as he found the operas of Donizetti and Verdi not to his taste. He
23409-455: Was under German aerial and artillery bombardment . The military situation did not permit the honour of a public funeral with ceremonious graveside orations. The funeral procession made its way through deserted streets to a temporary grave at Père Lachaise Cemetery as the German guns bombarded the city. Debussy's body was reinterred the following year in the small Passy Cemetery sequestered behind
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