Debussy Piano Collection

Author: Qian Renkang Qian Yiping
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-05-01
Features: Claude Debussy (1862—1918), a French composer, was born near Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Paris. Starting at the age of eight, he studied piano with Madame Mauté de Fleurville, Chopin's student and mother-in-law of Verlaine. In 1873, he entered the Paris Conservatory and studied under Lavignac, Massenet, and Dukas. At the age of seventeen, he was discouraged by his parents from becoming a piano master after failing to win the piano prize, but the following year, he won the first prize in score reading, which allowed him to enter the composition department. He served as a music teacher for two years in the household of Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky's former patron. In 1884, he won the Prix de Rome with "L'évadé." This "lyric scene" and "La Violette" (1888, lyrics translated from Rossetti's) show the influence of Massenet, but in "Printemps" (1886), he reveals a more distinctive style. In his only string quartet (1893) and orchestral prelude "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" (1894, depicting the imagery of a poem by Mallarmé), his musical personality develops even more clearly. In 1899, he married Rosalie (Lili) Tchechereff (they divorced five years later) and became a music critic for the journal "Le Quotidien Musical" in 1901. The twenty-nine pieces selected in this book are generally among the more outstanding and frequently performed works in Debussy's piano compositions, including important works from various periods.