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Claude Debussy music biography continued...

France. He began taking piano lessons at age seven and entered the Paris Conservatory in Paris, France, at the age of ten. His instructors and fellow students acknowledged that he was talented, but they thought some of his attempts to create new sounds were strange. In 1880 Nadezhda von Meck, who had helped support Russian composer Peter Tchaikovsky, hired Debussy to teach her children piano. He traveled to Italy and Austria with her and her family and spent parts of the next two years at her estate in Russia. In 1884 Debussy won the Prix de Rome, a competition for composers, for his cantata, The Prodigal Son. After returning to Paris, Debussey saw Javanese gamelan performed at the World Expositon of 1989. This orchestra, with its variety of bells, gongs, and xylophones, produced a series of soft effects and rhythms that Debussy loved. Their influence was evident in his early masterpieces-- Ariettes oubliées (1888), Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1892), and the String Quartet (1893). Debussy's first large-scale piece of his mature period, the Nocturnes for orchestra (1893-99), was produced while he was working on his only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande (1894-1902), based on a play by Maurice Maeterlinck. The publicity surrounding the first performance of Pelléas in 1902 made Debussy the most controversial musical figure in France, as the response was either strongly positive or negative. Whatever the reaction, it was clear Debussy had discovered his own distinct musical language.



During his later years, the emergence of other composers also led to declining interest in Debussy's works. His ballet Jeux, was all but forgotten after Igor Stravinsky's ballet Rite of Spring came out a few weeks later. Debussy admired Stravinksy's work and even used some of its elements in his own compositions, including En blanc et noir (1915) and the Études (1915). When Debussy composed these works, he was already suffering from terminal cancer. He completed only three of a planned group of six pieces "for various instruments" (1915-17) before dying in Paris on March 25, 1918. He left behind a legacy of innovation that classical music lovers admire to this day.