Debussy Trivia

Ok, so its pretty obvious that you can enjoy music spontaneously, without any background information. However I think if you can find out a bit about the story behind a piece of music or a composer it can change the perspective entirely. This is even more so for the musician, a greater understanding of the composer can shed new light on how a piece should be interpreted and performed.

With this in mind I'll be doing the odd brain spew to provide some information or trivia about the composers and pieces which I post on here.

So first up, Debussy.
Let's see, a French composer, born 1862 and died 1918, which puts him mostly in the Romantic Period of European music, although he begrudgingly was considered one of the most prominent composers of Impressionistic music. To put it briefly, this mainly means that his music was less regimented and theory-defined then his predecessors', and instead was about atmosphere and tended to be more fluid and melodic. Apparently Debussy himself said that he was trying to do something different, and there is still a distinct difference in his compositions to those from earlier decades.

True to this, the suite of pieces that Clair de lune is from (Suite bergamasque) was started in 1890, but Debussy did not finish the composition until 1905 when it is said that he made significant revisions, claiming that he detested his earlier style.

Another notable distinction of Debussy's work is his use of parallel chord progressions, which you can see at around 1.10 in the clip.

Finally, I'll leave with you some gossip about his personal life. Wikipedia describes it as "turbulent" and I remember being told when I was younger that Debussy was somewhat of a womaniser, conducting affair after affair, with little regard for his or his partner's marriage statuses. He once dumped his live-in girlfriend because, to put it shortly, she was dumb, and he later dated a student's mother (a wife of a Parisian banker) who shot herself in the chest when he tried to end the affair, surviving but living the rest of her life with the bullet lodged in her vertebrae. The two ended up eloping and she gave birth to his only child.

So next time you lend your ear to a bit of Debussy magic, perhaps keep some of the above in mind, it might change the experience for you.