Throughout history, we have encountered many composers who have showcased their innovations through various techniques and approaches that are still used in today’s musical process. Achille- Claude Debussy is one, of few, ingenious composers who tested limits that made him remarkable. Debussy was born on August 22, 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. He was a French composer and force to be reckoned with throughout the transition from the late romantic period to the 20th century. Claude Debussy was not afraid to stray away from the traditional use of harmony, melody, and structural techniques of his lifetime. Instead he had his own ideas that pushed him to be most associated with Impressionism and [Symbolism], much like the art of Monet,
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When Debussy was 10 and studied at the Paris Conservatory, Nadezhda von Meck hired him as a teacher for her young ones and during his years with her, gained much of his musical experience. While working for Von Meck, Debussy was exposed to the works of Russian composers, such as Borodin and Mussorgsky. Some other influences on Debussy included Asian Gamelan music, which he heard at the Paris International Exposition in 1889, and ideas of writers and poets like Stéphanie Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and Charles Baudelaire(*cite). Though Debussy was exposed to various genres including American ragtime and plainsong, his main influence was most likely Richard Wagner. Wagner fulfilled the sensuous ambitions not only of composers but also of the Symbolist poets and Impressionist painters that Debussy was so intrigued by. One reason was probably based on Wagner’s conception of Gesamtkunstwerk (“total art work”); this encouraged artists to refine upon their emotional responses and to exteriorize their hidden dream states, often in a shadowy, incomplete form; hence the more tenuous nature of the work of Wagner’s French disciple (Lockspeiser 1) Pelléas proves just how much the Wagnerian technique could be incorporated into a single piece to "portray …show more content…
Although in order to truly be appreciated and known for greatness, he had to get through the critiques and audience
When Debussy was 10 and studied at the Paris Conservatory, Nadezhda von Meck hired him as a teacher for her young ones and during his years with her, gained much of his musical experience. While working for Von Meck, Debussy was exposed to the works of Russian composers, such as Borodin and Mussorgsky. Some other influences on Debussy included Asian Gamelan music, which he heard at the Paris International Exposition in 1889, and ideas of writers and poets like Stéphanie Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and Charles Baudelaire(*cite). Though Debussy was exposed to various genres including American ragtime and plainsong, his main influence was most likely Richard Wagner. Wagner fulfilled the sensuous ambitions not only of composers but also of the Symbolist poets and Impressionist painters that Debussy was so intrigued by. One reason was probably based on Wagner’s conception of Gesamtkunstwerk (“total art work”); this encouraged artists to refine upon their emotional responses and to exteriorize their hidden dream states, often in a shadowy, incomplete form; hence the more tenuous nature of the work of Wagner’s French disciple (Lockspeiser 1) Pelléas proves just how much the Wagnerian technique could be incorporated into a single piece to "portray …show more content…
Although in order to truly be appreciated and known for greatness, he had to get through the critiques and audience