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- set gChapters = ["INTRO", "LIFE AND WORK"]
- set gArticles = [["Partwork"], ["pic", "cutting", "cutting", "cutting", "cutting"]]
- set gDates = [[], [0, "The Times, Feb 18, 1913", "The Times, July 15, 1911", "The Times, June 26, 1913", "The Times, March 27, 1918"]]
- set gName = getat(["Debussy"],1)
- @[]#THE RUSSIAN BALLET AND THE FAUN#A REFLECTION ON DEBUSSY#DEBUSSY'S "GAMES" OPENS IN LONDON#A GREAT FRENCH MUSICIAN IS DEAD
- Debussy always hated clumsiness and bulk in music - and in all other things. As a schoolboy he was teased by his fellow-pupils because he would only eat the daintiest and most expensive chocolates#"A pupil with a considerable gift for harmony, but desperately careless". (From Debussy's Conservatoire report for 1879)#In 1887 the twenty-five-year-old Debussy visited Vienna and is said to have met Brahms,who invited him to dinner and took him to the Court Opera to see Bizet's Carmen#"...a flabby nonchalant body, pale, matt complexion, vivacious black eyes under heavy drooping lids, enormous, strangely indented forehead, over which straggled a long lock of curly hair, and a general appearance of ardour and concentration..." (From a description of Debussy in the 1890s)#Debussy had a patriotic suspicion of German music and its influence on French style: "Might it not be a good thing," he said, "if the French could have a music of their own - if possible without sauerkraut?"#Debussy was a nervous and fanatical perfectionist. When the "Fantasie" (1889) was in rehearsal for its first performance, he snatched the music from the player's music stands and cancelled the première because he wanted to make some last-minute alterations#At the Paris International Exhibition of 1889 Debussy was enthralled by the subtle and highly-organised music played in the Javanese Village by a gamelan, a traditional Javanese orchestra comprising mostly gongs, metallophones and xylophones#"Just as modern poetry surely took root in certain of Baudelaire's poems, so one is justified in saying that modern music was awakened by L'après midi d'un faune." (composer Pierre Boulez)#Debussy did not like conducting. Once in London he got lost in the middle of a performance of his own piece "Fêtes", and tried to stop the music. But the orchestra knew the piece well and carried on playing, soliciting rapturous applause from the audience#The hostility aroused at the first hearing of "Pelléas et Méllisande" was fuelled by the choice of the young Scottish soprano Mary Garden to play Méllisande, whose imperfect French accent was not to the Parisian public's liking#Debussy had no illusions about taking art 'to the people'. He considered that art "was absolutely useless to the populace", and wrote "instead of spreading art amongst the public, I would suggest founding a Society of Musical Esotericism."#"Don't forget I'm a lazy composer, and often take weeks to decide on one chord in preference to another." Debussy#The idea for "La Mer" (The Sea, 1903) came to Debussy while he was staying with his wife's parents miles from the sea in Burgundy, drawing, he said, on "memories, which are worth more than reality, whose beauty deadens thought"#Part of "La Mer" was written in Jersey in the Channel Islands, and was scored in the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, Sussex.#Debussy composed the piano suite "Children's Corner" (1908) for his daughter Chou-Chou. Three of the pieces were musical pictures of her favourite toys: her elephant Jimbo, her doll and her golliwog. She outlived her father by only a year#The tone of Debussy's piano playing was notoriously soft. He played "as if the keys were being attracted to the finger-tips, rising as if drawn by a magnet."#"He spoke in a soft voice, unaffectedly, and slowly, as if seeking the right word. He loved luxury, but a refined kind of unostentatious luxury. He loved order, clarity."(Pasteur Valléry-Radot, 1938)#Debussy had a number of Persian cats, most of them had the same name: Line. Three of the cats died by falling from his window#Debussy liked to surround himself with Japanese prints and delicate antiques. He loved green things: carpet, curtains, trousers and jackets#Debussy said of himself: "If he is not making music, Debussy has no reason for existing. I have no hobbies; the only thing I've ever been taught is music..."
