Concert Programs

Composer · Impressionist

Claude Debussy

1862–1918 · French

Claude Debussy, born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1862 to a family of modest means, entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten and spent the next decade exasperating his professors with chords that broke every rule. He won the Prix de Rome in 1884, endured (resentfully) the obligatory residence at the Villa Medici in Rome, and then set about quietly dismantling the foundations of nineteenth-century music. With the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894), the opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), and La Mer (1905), he created a new musical language, built on colour, atmosphere, and suggestion rather than Germanic development, that made him the single most influential composer of the early twentieth century. Critics called the style ‘impressionism,’ borrowing the term from painting; Debussy himself detested the label, insisting he was striving for precision, not haze. He died in Paris in March 1918, while the city was under German bombardment in the final year of the First World War.

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Wiener PhilharmonikerBerliner PhilharmonikerLondon Symphony OrchestraRoyal Concertgebouw Orchestra

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Sources 1

  1. Claude Debussy, Wikipedia Cited in Fables, a Lost Spring, and a Mermaid’s Tale. Accessed 30 September 2026.