Akchir-Claude Debussy (French: Achille-ClaudeDebussy,1August 22, 862-1965438+March 25, 2008), a Frenchman, was an influential composer and innovator in European music at the end of19 century and the beginning of the 20th century.
Debussy was influenced by impressionist art since he was a child. Influenced by the French music tradition initiated by senior composers such as Masnai, he combined some characteristics of oriental music, Spanish dance music and jazz music, applied the artistic techniques of French Impressionism to music, and created his own unique harmony. His music had a far-reaching influence on composers after him.
Debussy's representative works include orchestral works The Sea, Prelude to the Faun in the Afternoon, Moonlight for the Piano, Prelude and Etudes, and the highest peak of his creation is the opera pelias and Melisand.
Debussy is generally regarded as the representative of impressionist music, although he himself does not agree with it and even tries to stay away from this title. Some writers, such as Robert schmitz and Ceci Gray, also think Debussy is a "symbolist" rather than an "impressionist". It is also written in the New Grove Music Dictionary that it is not accurate to call Debussy's music aesthetics "impressionism".
During the First World War, he wrote some works of sympathy for the suffering people, and his creative style also changed. At this time, he was suffering from cancer and died on March 25th, 2008 when Germany attacked Paris.
Chinese name: Claude Debussy
Mbth: Achille-Claude Debussy
Nationality: France
Date of birth:1August 22, 862
Date of death:1965438+March 25th, 2008.
Occupation: composer, music critic
Graduate school: Paris Conservatory of Music.
Representative works include: Perris and Melisand, Afternoon of the Faun, Nocturne, Sea, Prints Collection, etc.
Main achievements: the originator and representative of modern impressionist music.
The life of the character
achievement
Debussy is regarded as the representative of impressionist music, although he himself does not agree with it and tries to stay away from this title.
Some writers, such as Robert schmitz and Ceci Gray, think Debussy is a "symbolist" rather than an "impressionist". It is also written in the New Grove Music Dictionary that it is not accurate to call Debussy's music aesthetics "impressionism".
In any case, Debussy was influenced by impressionist art from an early age. Influenced by the French music tradition initiated by senior composers such as Masnai, he combined some characteristics of oriental music, Spanish dance music and jazz music, applied the artistic techniques of French Impressionism to music, and created his own unique harmony. His music has a profound influence on other composers.
be born
Debussy's family was originally a peasant family and moved from Burgundy to Paris in about 1800. His grandfather was a wine merchant and later became a carpenter. Debussy's father, Manuel akhil, spent seven years as an infantryman in the navy, and later settled in Saint-Germain-Angles with his wife, Vitolin, and ran a porcelain shop.
Debussy was born in Saint-Germain-Angles on August 22nd, 862. He was also the first child of Manuel and his wife. Manuel wants his son to be a sailor.
1870 During the Franco-Prussian War, Debussy's family moved to Clementine's home in Cannes. Debussy is not from a musical family and has no good musical environment, but he loves music very much and has shown extraordinary musical talent since he was a child. Clementine arranged piano lessons for Debussy. An Italian named JeanCerutti worked as a teacher and began to learn piano at the age of seven.
go to school
Debussy, 187 1 year old, was taken care of by MarieMautédeFleurville, a former Chopin student.
1872, Debussy, 1 1 years old, entered the Paris Conservatory of Music and studied there for 12 years. His teachers of composition, music theory and history, harmony, piano, organ and vocal music were almost all famous musicians at that time. Ernest Giraud, Louis-Albert Bulgar-Ducoure, Mile Durand, Antoine-Fran? ois Marmontel, Cesar Frank, Albert Lavignac. Debussy is a student who can make friends by reading music. He plays the piano so well that he can play professionally. He has played piano sonatas by Beethoven, Schumann and Weber, and Chopin's second ballad.
When Debussy was studying in the Conservatory of Music, he showed that he was an innovative student. In the process of teaching music by himself, he always has a strong desire to break old rules and explore new fields. In order to find new sound combinations, he often plays a series of augmented chords, ninth chords, eleventh chords and diatonic scales on the piano. The chords he played were not prepared and solved according to the traditional rules at all. For this reason, he is often scolded by the teacher.
sublimate
1880, Debussy went to Russia to become Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky's best friend and Nadezhda von Meek's family pianist. He benefited a lot from this opportunity. He came into contact with the works of many Russian music masters, especially Musorgskiy. The master's distinctive and novel harmony had a profound influence on young Debussy and laid the foundation for his later "Impressionist" music.
make one's name
1884, Debussy won the Rome Prize for his chorus "L'Enfantprodigue", and was awarded a scholarship and a four-year qualification to study at the Institut de France in Rome, Italy. Since then, his creative activities have become more and more frequent. At the same time, he made extensive friends with the most active and influential composers in Europe at that time, and became interested in Richard Wagner's music.
Debussy spent 1885-1887 in Rome, Italy.
He left Rome on 1888 to attend the music festival in Bayreuth, Germany, where he was shocked by Wagner's opera. He stayed in Bayreuther until 1889 before returning to Paris. Wagner died as early as 1883, but his musical style influenced young Debussy.
1889, the World Expo was held in Paris, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris was established that year. At the Expo, Debussy listened to the performance of Java Camaro and was deeply impressed by the twelve-tone average law and the five-tone style.
Forming/shaping
After 1890, Debussy met the symbolic poet Malamei, and he joined the Paris Literature Salon headed by Malamei. Here, Debussy met many young artists. He often attended their art discussion parties, and some brand-new artistic views and ideas of these artists deeply influenced Debussy. He began to appreciate their poems and compose music for them. At this time, his music has begun to have the color of "impressionism" and gradually developed into his final overall artistic style.
Create the mystery of music
Influence on Russia
Debussy, the founder of modern music, has developed a world of strange sounds that no musician has ever found.
He was born in 1862. There were no musicians among his predecessors. His father is a shopkeeper, too poor to let his son receive any kind of education, so he plans to make his child a sailor. But a kind lady who used to be a student of Chopin was very interested in this child with musical talent, so she gave him lessons for free. Debussy cherishes this opportunity very much. He studies hard. At the age of eleven, Debussy was admitted to the Paris Conservatory of Music.
During his stay in the Conservatory of Music, Debussy became a piano teacher of a wealthy Russian lady, Nadezhda von Meek, and had the opportunity to travel all over Europe-Florence, Vienna and Venice, and finally lived in a Russian manor in Nadezhda von Meek for a period of time. There, Debussy met some Russian composers (represented by Musorgskiy, known as Russian national music school), who tried to create a national music for their motherland from folk music.
Debussy is very interested in the strange scales used by these Russian musicians, which are very different from the major and minor scales used by composers in other countries. These scales are based on the folk music of fanatical orientals.
Isotonic scale
A year later, Debussy returned to the Paris Conservatory of Music and, like many other French musicians, won the Rome Prize and completed his conservatory course. But the music he writes is completely different from other musicians. He doesn't often use the major and minor scales used in traditional classical music. Sometimes, he will return to the strange old mode of early church music, and he often uses diatonic scales.
Our major and minor scales consist of seven tones, five whole tones and two semitones. The difference between major and minor scales lies in where those semitones are placed. In major scales, semitones are always in the third and fourth tones, and the seventh and eighth tones (3-4; 7- 1). In minor scales, a semitone is always between the second and third notes, but there are also several different minor scales, in which the second semitone is in a different place.
Debussy's favorite scale has six whole tones and no semitones at all (such as C, D, E, F-sharp, G-sharp and A-sharp), so his melody sounds different from any previous music, and the chords are even more strange. Debussy constructed his unique "dream world" with his preferred diatonic scale.
suggestion
Debussy made many bold innovations in traditional music. Perhaps it's because no musician has ever had such keen ears: Debussy actually heard more overtones than the average person.
Just like a color is often composed of some other colors (purple = blue+red, orange = red+yellow, etc. ), a sound is often composed of many sounds. All kinds of sounds are caused by all kinds of vibrations in the air, and we can see from the Greek Dan Xian piano that whether a sound is high or low depends on the speed of vibration. However, in addition to the first or main vibration, there are some secondary vibrations that are crisp in the tone.
The first and strongest overtone is the fifth tone above the pitch, which Debussy can hear without hearing AIDS. If we have a well-tuned piano, press a key silently, and then hit the fifth tone above or below it loudly, we can often hear that it is the overtone of another tone, producing an effect that Debussy once heard with his ears. The second overtone is the tenth tone above the original tone (pitch), and the third overtone is higher, but weak. The following overtones and so on.
The main reason why different musical instruments have different timbres is the difference of overtones. Musical instruments such as violin have smooth and round sound quality and low overtones; The higher the overtone of an instrument like a trumpet, the better the sound quality.
Debussy used these inaudible sounds in the air to construct his strange and non-earthly music. In order for everyone to hear, he boldly made sounds that people didn't even know they had heard. Because of Debussy's sensitive ears, he also used different combinations of various instruments in the orchestra to produce soft and flashing sound effects. At first, everyone was confused by his music and didn't know how to understand it, but once they got used to it, they would like it very much.
result
This kind of music created by Debussy is the music called "Impressionism" by later generations.
Musical characteristics
Debussy's music is far from classical music. In his works, we can't see the rigorous structure, profound ideology and logic of classical music, and we can't see the rich emotions of romantic music. Instead, it is strange fantasy factors, hazy feelings and mysterious colors. His harmony is delicate and complicated, the orchestration is novel and colorful, and the melody is slightly indifferent and erratic, which is not available in classical music and romantic music.
Although Debussy did not create many works in his life, his works have their outstanding characteristics in every capital. Many of his works have become models of impressionist music, among which the most famous ones are: opera Pereas and Melisand, orchestral Afternoon of Faun and Nocturne, three symphonic essays "The Sea", piano music "Prints Collection" and some instrumental and chamber music works.
Debussy's music is of epoch-making significance, especially his unique "impressionism" style, which directly influenced modern music in the twentieth century. Therefore, Debussy is often regarded as the pioneer of modern music in the twentieth century.
Besides composing and teaching, Debussy is also engaged in music criticism. Because of his pertinent position and sharp words, he was quite respected and published a collection of music reviews. At this time, the development of the Paris art world was at its peak, and painters such as Rehnova, Monet and Cezanne were very active. At that time, Monet finished a painting called Impression of Sunrise, which was famous for a period of time. This was the beginning of Impressionism and Impressionism. In addition, literary works are all impressionist, and these writers and artists have a great influence on musicians. Debussy applied his theory to his works and developed into impressionism, the founder and finisher of impressionism.
The last decade before his death was the peak of Debussy's art, and many great masterpieces were completed one after another, which made him famous all over the world. He also often played and conducted his own works in European countries. Since I was 50 years old, I have been trapped by cancer and my body is getting weaker and weaker.
1965438+On March 25th, 2008, the German Air Force and artillery launched a spring offensive against Paris, and Debussy died of cancer at his home in Paris. After his death, he was buried in Percy Cemetery, realizing his last wish of "resting among trees and birds", and his wife and daughter were also buried with him.
Main work
By genre time:
orchestral music
Stage works
chamber music
piano music
The first work (1884 ——1900)
piano music
The second painting, 190 1 year-1904, is a mature stage of impressionism, but it also has a gradual formation process.
chorus