A Look at Contemporary French ComposersValentin Verardo

Claude Debussy1862-1918

Early Life

Born August 22, 1962 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, located in Central France

Was the oldest of 5 children Moved to Paris is 1867, but moved again, with his mother, to his

paternal aunt's home in Cannes to avoid the Franco-Prussian War There, at the age of 7, he began piano lessons with an Italian violinist At the age of ten, he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he would

spend the next 11 years of his life

Development as a Musician

From the beginning, Debussy was experimental, preferring dissonances and intervals that weren't taught at the Conservatory

He accompanied Nadezhda von Meck, the business woman who financially supported Pyotr Tchaikovsky, during the summers of 1880, '81, and '82

In September of 1880, she sent Debussy's Danse Bohémienne to Tchaikovsky for his perusal, to which he responded, "It is a very pretty piece, but it is much too short. Not a single idea is expressed fully, the form is terribly shriveled, and it lacks unity"

As the winner of the 1884 Prix De Rome, he received a scholarship to attend the Academie des Beaux-Arts, which included a four year residence at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome.

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I am sure the institute would not approve, for, naturally it regards the path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am to enamoured of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas!

Debussy wrote of his want to follow his own way, while attending the Academy in Rome, June, 1885.

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...established a new concept of tonality in European Music.

Rudolph Reti

In regards to Debussy's music

Music

Reti pointed out five important features of Debussy's music Glittering passages and webs of figurations which distract from occasional

absence of tonality Frequent use of parallel chords which are "in essence not harmonies at all, but

rather 'chordal melodies', enriched unisons", described by some writers as non-functional harmonies

Bitonality, or at least bitonal chords Use of the whole-tone and pentatonic scale Unprepared modulations, "without any harmonic bridge."

Musical Pieces

The Deux Arabesques, one of his earliest works, were written in his 20's, as he was already developing his musical identity

The Suite Bergamasque, which contains the Claire de Lune, one of his most popular pieces

His String Quartet in G minor of 1893 was a very important piece, paving the way for more harmonic exploration later in his life, using the Phrygian mode as well as less standard scales, such as the whole tone

The Estampes for piano, written in 1903, meant to give impressions of exotic locations, influenced by Javanese gamelan music

His final two volumes of work for the piano, the Etudes of 1915, interpret similar varieties of style and texture purely as pianistic exercises, and include pieces that develop irregular form to an extreme

Erik Satie1866-1925

Early Life

Satie was born in 1866, at Honfleur, Normandy, in northern France He moved to France at the age of four, but was sent back to Honfleur

with his brother to live with his grandparents after his mother died in 1872

There he received his first music lessons from a local organist In 1878, after his grandmother's death, he returned to Paris with his

brother to live with his father, who remarried a piano teacher shortly after

Development as a musician

In 1879, Satie entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he was quickly labelled untalented by his teachers

His professor of piano at the Conservatoire, Georges Mathias, described his pupil's piano technique as, "insignificant and laborious" and, "worthless"

Emile Decombes called him, "the laziest student at the consevatoire" After being sent home for two and a half years, he was readmitted to the

Conservatoire at the end of 1885 He was unable to make a more favorable impression on his teachers than

he had before, so he took up military service a year later That did not last long, he was discharged within a few months after

deliberately infecting himself with bronchitis

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”Although our information is false, we do not vouch for it.

Erik Satie

Music

He was eccentric and flippant, and sought to strip the pretentiousness and sentimentality from music

This is reflected his some of his pieces, such as the Trois Gnossiennes, which were notated without bar lines or key signatures

Other of his early piano pieces use, at the time, novel chords which reveal him to be a pioneer in harmony

His work was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, surrealism, and repetitive music

Musical Pieces

His ballet, Parade Was scored for typewriters, airplane propellers, sirens, ticker tape, and a

lottery wheel. The word "Surrealism" was used for the first time in Guillaume Apollinaire's

program notes for Parade The Trois Gymnopedies

Satie's best known piano works, show his vision of the piano's strengths, minimalist and abstract.

The mood of the three works is stately and serene, seemingly drifting from one moment to the next.

Each of the three examines a common theme from a different perspective

Sources

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Erik-Satie http://www.britannica.com/biography/Claude-Debussy http://solomonsmusic.net/Satie.htm http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=c&p=a&a=i&ID=753 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Satie