More on our birthday composer, Claude Debussy! This blog is fabulous – go check it out!
Today marks the 151st anniversary of Claude Debussy’s birth. Classical music historian Harold C. Schonberg describes him as “the greatest of the musical Impressionists” and I couldn’t agree more. Each piece of his that I call to mind is just like the watery, delicate brushstrokes of a Monet painting.
Debussy was brilliant, and scoffed at his old-school predecessors. “I am more and more convinced,” he said, “that music, by its very nature, is something that cannot be cast into a traditional and fixed form. It is made up of colors and rhythms. The rest is a lot of humbug invented by frigid imbeciles riding on the backs of the Masters- who, for the most part, wrote almost nothing but period music. Bach alone had an idea of the truth.”
C’est la vérité, Monsieur! His description of music as “colors” sings to me. “Frigid imbeciles” is also delightful.
As always, the…
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