Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a quintessentially French composer, pianist and music critic whose own revolutionary music ushered in many of the stylistic changes of the 20th Century. Debussy is universally identified as the chief proponent of musical “Impressionism,” but he did not approve of that label and the associations he felt it harbored. But since his death the term, as applied to music, has been redefined almost exclusively around the characteristics of some of Debussy's most famous pieces, such as Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and La mer ("The Sea"), so whatever negative connotations "Impressionism" once may have had have since evaporated.
Clair de lune (arranged for flute and piano)
Just as Chopin's writing for the piano has influenced almost every piano piece written since, Debussy's body of piano music has had a similar effect on the works of his successors. But in 1890, when Clair de lune (Moonlight) and the other pieces in Debussy's Suite bergamasque were originally composed, Debussy was only beginning to develop a style that later would alter the fabric of Western music. The Suite was not actually published until 1905, and it is very likely that Debussy revised the music to reflect some of the stylistic changes that had developed in the meantime, but Clair de lune was conceived in the Late Romantic language Debussy inherited. Regardless, it remains one of the best-known and loved piano solos in the world. And, like Bach's Sheep may Safely Graze, and Schubert's Serenade, Clair de lune is equally effective in any of a vast array of arrangements as it is in its original form.
Petite suite
Debussy's Petite suite ("Little Suite") for piano 4-hands, was composed in 1889, and most likely was intended originally for performances in private salons rather than the concert hall. The first of the four movements, En Bateau ("Onboard Boat"), was inspired by a poem of the same title by Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), whereas the final movement, Ballet, is a jaunty dance.
Petite Suite : Ballet (arr. for clarinet choir is by Russell Howland)
The Ballet is the fourth and final movement of Debussy's Petite Suite (1889), originally for piano, 4-hands. This arrangement for clarinet choir is by Russell Howland (1908-1995), who was a professor of woodwinds at the University of Michigan before moving to the state college in Fresno, California, in 1948, where he earned inclusion in the California Music Educators Association's Hall of Fame in 1975.
--Music @ Main, April 8, 2009 (UNF Clarinet Choir)
Préludes (Selections)
Debussy was a great fan of Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) and he even edited a French edition of the Polish composer’s piano music for publication. Debussy proved himself to be a true successor of Chopin in writing for the piano, and his 24 Préludes, composed between 1909 and 1913 and grouped into two books of 12 each, may be regarded as a tribute to the Pole. Like Chopin, Debussy continued a Baroque tradition with his Préludes while expanding the harmonic language and piano technique of his contemporaries in ways previously unimagined.
Pour le Piano (published 1901) likewise hearkens back to the formal traditions of the Baroque, with a Sarabande dance movement sandwiched between a toccata-like Prélude and the actual Toccata of the the final movement, a virtuoso tour de force. But the suite’s harmonic language, using whole-tone scales and parallel 7th and 9th chords, as well as its effervescent piano figurations, clearly identified it as something entirely new.
--Intermezzo Sunday Concerts, March 18, 2007 (Gary Smart, piano)
Music @ Main 3/24/2010: Nocchiero & Biernacki
Debussy’s hauntingly beautiful Romance was the second of two songs for voice and piano published in 1891 as Deux romances. The transcription is by legendary cellist Gregor Piatigorsky (1903-1976), called “the greatest string player of all time,” who became principal cellist first of the Bolshoi Theater at age 15 and then of the Berlin Philharmonic at age 18.
--Music @ Main 12/14/2009: Linda Minke & Edith Moore-Hubert
Sonata in G Major for Violin and Piano (1917)
Allegro vivo — Intermède, fantasque et léger — Finale: Très animé
In 1915 he began composing what he announced would be a series of six sonatas for various instrumental combinations, but he was only able to complete three of them before his death from cancer. The Violin Sonata, composed in 1917 after the disease had begun to take it’s toll, was Debussy’s last completed work. While the lush harmonies echo his previous compositions, the sparser textures and simpler formal structure anticipate aspects of the “neoclassical” style that became popular in the years following Debussy’s death.
--Intermezzo Sunday Concerts,June 1, 2008 (Huls Clark Duo)