Giorgi Latsabidze

Debussy's Musical Impressionism "I have no hobbies...They never taught me anything but music." ––Claude Debussy. He brought an entirely new musical style into the public eye; he expressed visual phenomena by appealing to auditory senses; he stepped outside of the grasp of Romanticism, yet still followed its pathways; he paved the road for nearly all modern music to be composed after him; he altered music history. Claude Debussy was nothing if not an absolute master of the art of composition, yet, as a man, he was so much more than just a musician––he was a strong-willed, inventive, and confused man who used music to express his views of life. This essay seeks to acquaint the reader with the life, style, and values of this exquisite composer through the subsequent paragraphs. In the year of 1862, in a town close to the renowned city of Paris, a shopkeeper and his wife welcomed into the world a son whom they named Claude Achille Debussy. Unlike most musicians, Debussy never studied at a school as a young child, although he did begin piano lessons at the age of eight, but was nevertheless allowed to commence classes at the Paris Conservatory at the tender age of eleven. Debussy remained at the Conservatory, surrounded by teachers who did not appreciate his disobedience and, in their eyes, markedly rash ideas on composition, until he was twenty-two-years-old. One of his professors openly stated that, "Everything he does is wrong, but he is wrong in a talented way" (Stuart…