Contemporaries and Influences

To attempt to understand where a composer might have gotten ideas for his or her compositions one must look the people that surround the composer. Claude Debussy was influenced by some of the great composers that preceded him and influenced those that came after him. Names like Wagner, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and Smetana, were things that he would have heard growing up as a child. This would have had a major impact on the way that he thought of music. Then at the other end of the spectrum are composers like Poulenc, Milhaud, and Hindemith. Also the composers that he might have had direct relations with could have had a major influence on his writings. For instance it would be very possible that he knew and had contact with composers like Ravel, Faure, Bartok, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky. This would have been a major influence on any composer. Debussy also accredited Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, and Mussorgsky, which he adored, as some of his main influences.

One of the strongest connections that might be made between composers is

Debussy and Ravel. This could be partly because of the fact that they were both Parisian composers during the same time period. One of the main things that connects the two composers is the use of pedal point effect, which Debussy modeled after Ravel’s Sites Auriculaires for La soiree dans Grenede. One of the connections that they also shared was the critic Pierre Lalo who repeatedly made comments about how related their music was to each other. This in turn led to Ravel writing a letter to the critic, which later was published, stating the fact that Ravel did not base his music off of Debussy’s, his music was original, and gave the reasons why.

In France there was a very strong feeling toward being patriotic in the way that one would compose, the interesting thing was that Debussy modeled a good portion of his works off of the Austro-Hungarian styles. One of the main influences in Debussy’s life was Richard Wagner. It was said that Debussy knew all of his works and proved it by playing Tristan by memory. One of the other ties that he had with Wagner was the ability for orchestration. Some of the compositions, La damoiselle élue and the Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire, were Wagnerian in style, but later pieces like Recueillement, Le jet d'eau, and Pelléas were very much influenced by Wagner. A couple other composers that Debussy made reference to that were of the non-Parisian ideal were Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Another of the strong influences that he had was traveling with Mme. Von Meck who was once Tchiakovsky’s patrons.

After he had abandoned his ties to the Wagnerian style of orchesration, he went to an Exposition in 1898. There Debussy had his first taste of gamelan music for Java and Bali. This stlye of composition was exotic and was picked up by many of the composers of the time. Debussy used the harmonies throughout many of his works. Using scales like the whole-tone and pentatonic. These contemporary composers that had created the music of the gamelan effected Debussy in a profound way. The harmonies that he used in his compositions, like Nocturnes, are directly related to those of the gamelan.

Altogether the composers of his time did have an effect on the way that he wrote his music. Wagner and Rimsky-Korsakov with their method of orchestration, Ravel with his use of pedal point, and the musicians from Bali and Java with their exotic harmonies, are all part of the way that Debussy orchestrated and composed.

Russ Meier 2/23/04