7 Claude Debussy 7

mid-20th-century music that the earlier harmonic methods

were being followed in an arbitrary, academic manner.

Debussy’s inquiring mind similarly challenged the tradi-

tional orchestral usage of instruments. He rejected the

traditional dictum that string instruments should be pre-

dominantly lyrical. The pizzicato scherzo from his String

Quartet (1893) and the symbolic writing for the violins in

La Mer, conveying the rising storm waves, show a new con-

ception of string colour. Similarly, he saw that woodwinds

need not be employed for fireworks displays; they provide,

like the human voice, wide varieties of colour. Debussy

also used the brass in original colour transformations. In

fact, in his music, the conventional orchestral construction,

with its rigid woodwind, brass, and string departments,

finds itself undermined or split up in the manner of the

Impressionist painters. Ultimately, each instrument

becomes almost a soloist, as in a vast chamber-music

ensemble. Finally, Debussy applied an exploratory approach

to the piano, the evocative instrument par excellence.

In his last works, the piano pieces En blanc et noir (1915;

In Black and White) and in the Douze Études (1915; “Twelve

Études”), Debussy had branched out into modes of com-

position later to be developed in the styles of Stravinsky

and the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. It is certain

that he would have taken part in the leading movements

in composition of the years following World War I. His

life, however, was tragically cut short by cancer.

Sergey Rachmaninoff

(b. March 20 [April 1, New Style], 1873, Oneg, near Semyonovo,

Russia—d. March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills, Calif., U.S.)

C

omposer Sergey Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff was the

last great figure of the tradition of Russian

Romanticism and a leading piano virtuoso of his time. He