Transcript French Composers

A Look at Contemporary
French Composers
Valentin Verardo
Claude Debussy
1862-1918
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.
“
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.
”
“ ...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 nonfunctional 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 Satie
1866-1925
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
“
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