Claude Debussy was born in St. Germain-en-Laye, in 1862. He began learning music when he was nine, and went on to study at the Paris Conservatoire. His teachers there included Ernest Guiraud and César Franck. As winner of the Prix de Rome, Debussy received a scholarship from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1884. It included a four year residence at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome, to further his studies. His letters show that he was often depressed during this period, but he did write four pieces. One of them, the cantata La Damoiselle élue (The Blessed Damozel,1887-88), was described by the Académie as 'bizarre'. However, it was in this piece that some of the characteristics of his later style first emerged.

Debussy's place in music history is very different to Fauré's. In the twentieth century he cleared the path to modernism for both the piano and the orchestra and his influence, evident in the works of figures such as Messiaen and Boulez, is still alive. Essential to an understanding of Debussy is an awareness of his desire for freedom. This, rather than any intellectualised system, provided the basis for his creativity. "It is my love for music that drives me to liberate it from certain sterile, restrictive traditions. It is a free, open-air art, elemental like the wind. It must not become closed." His words say more than any number of learned commentaries on the essence of his art, an art whose spirit is perfectly captured in his piano music.

Antoine Marmontel, another of Debussy's professors at the Conservatoire, once remarked: "He does not like the piano, but he loves music." Debussy was certainly never interested in gratuitous virtuosity, but his love of colour created a new relationship with the piano. Louis Aguettant summed it up best, saying that he "creates a kind of magical pianistic orchestration that transfigures the piano and awakens a thousand tone colours. For the composer's intentions to be realised, the impression must be created of simultaneous levels of sound, a fine balance of values analogous to the works of the most skilled painters." So it is perhaps fitting that Estampes (Prints, 1903) should be the first of an astonishing sequence of piano masterpieces.

The work evokes the atmosphere of different countries, something Debussy was remarkably adept at doing. Pagodes (Pagodas) uses pentatonic scales to conjure up images of China, while La soirée dans Grenade (Evening in Granada) has a distinctly Spanish feel with its insistent habanera rhythm and guitar-like interruptions. Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens under the Rain), meanwhile, is based on two well-known French children's songs. This was not Debussy's only foray into children's music. He wrote Coin des Enfants (Children's Corner, 1908) for his daughter. A favourite of audiences and pianists alike, it shows a gentle side to his nature. The pieces inhabit the same sound-world as Schumann's Kinderszenen and Fauré's Dolly Suite.

The two books of Images (1905-07) are amongst Debussy's most successful works, I think. The 1907 set is generally more impressionistic and elaborate than the 1905 set, and frequently requires the use of three staves to clearly delineate the separate layers of sound. Perhaps more than any other works in Debussy's oeuvre (with the exception of the Études), they demand complete pianism and sensitive musicality. Together with the two books of Préludes (1809-12), which I wrote about in March, they are the finest embodiments of a world in which, to quote Charles Baudelaire, 'perfumes, colours and sounds respond to each other', a world where the senses mingle and which, in terms of visual art, is closer to Symbolism than Impressionism.

Suite Bergamasque (1890), inspired by the rich heritage of French harpsichordists such as Couperin and Rameau, is one of Debussy's most popular early works. The third movement, Clair de lune (Moonlight), has become one of the most famous pieces of music written for the piano. Another popular work is the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, 1894), influenced by the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. In contrast to the large, late-romantic orchestra, Debussy scored it for a smaller ensemble, emphasizing the timbres of the different instruments. Saint-Saëns considered it 'pretty' but lacking any 'style', yet its success established Debussy as one of the leading composers of the era.

Even at the end of his life Debussy continued to look to the future: the twelve Études (Studies, 1915) create a world which, though abstract, is imbued with colour, poetic introspection and ferocious virtuosity. Each addresses a specific technical difficulty, such as repeated notes, ornaments, arpeggios, chromaticism, thirds and octaves. Debussy intended them to be 'a warning to pianists not to take up the musical profession unless they have remarkable hands', and the combination of musical and technical challenges place these pieces within the grasp of only the very best pianists. Fittingly, they are dedicated to the memory of Frédéric Chopin, whose own études are considered some of the most musically expressive in the repertoire.

Anxious Perfection

Debussy died in Paris in 1918, aged fifty six. Maurice Ravel was forty-three at the time, and had twenty years left to live. He was born in 1875 in the Basque town of Ciboure, near Biarritz. His family later moved to Paris, and he began piano lessons at the age of seven before entering the Conservatoire in 1889.  He studied piano with CW de Bériot, counterpoint with André Gédalge and composition with Fauré. Ravel was not a particularly precocious pupil, but he remained at the Conservatoire for sixteen years. During that time he composed and socialised with a group of young avant-garde artists known as the Apaches. The group included Leon-Paul Fargue, M.D. Calvocoressi, Paul Sordes, Maurice Delage and the Catalan virtuoso Ricardo Viñes.

Between 1901 and 1905, Ravel tried in vain to follow in Debussy's footsteps and win the Prix de Rome. He was eventually forbidden from trying again and the ensuing scandal lead to the resignation of another former winner, Conservatoire director Théodore Dubois. Fortunately, Ravel had by then already found his distinctly personal style of composition, a style which was sometimes frowned upon in academic circles because of its unusual harmonies. He is often compared to Debussy, and it's true that the two men both knew and influenced each other. But Ravel was much more a classicist than an impressionist, influenced by the concertos of Mozart and Saint-Saëns. He was also drawn to jazz and music from Spain and Russia.

Unlike Debussy, Ravel showed his talent for the piano at an early age. Charming works such as the Menuet antique (1895) and Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899) betray the benign influence of Chabrier. However, it was Jeux d'eau (Fountains, 1902) that established the individuality of his voice, and he described it as the work that marked his arrival as a composer for the piano. The title's reference to water and the flowing, rippling writing might appear impressionistic, but his genius has far more to it than that, just as the enthralling perfection of his scores defy any perception of him as a coolly precise 'Swiss watchmaker' (as Stravinsky famously quipped). There are deep, dark undercurrents of anxiety, even anguish, in his music.

Sonatine was written in 1903, and Miroirs (Mirrors) shortly afterwards in 1905. The inspiration for the former was a competition sponsored by a fine arts and literary magazine, Weekly Critical Review. It quickly became popular with audiences, and Ravel regularly performed the first two movements on concert tours of Europe and America. The five movements of the piano suite Miroirs are dedicated to different members of the Apaches. Each was intended to manifest the images and ambiences evoked when the dedicatees looked in the mirror, though I think the reflections reveal something of Ravel too. The ghostly Oiseaux tristes, which begins with a lone bird singing its sad song, once again reveals a melancholy side to his nature.

Ravel's greatest composition for the piano, Gaspard de la Nuit (1908, Treasurer of the Night), presents pianists with one of the hardest virtuoso challenges in the repertoire. Based on three poems by the French poet Aloysius, Ravel intended the third movement, Scarbo (which perhaps comes the word scarabée, meaning beetle), to be even more difficult than Balakirev's Islamey. He certainly succeeded, with the frequent crossing of hands and fast moving chordal melodies! Three years later came the suite of eight Valses nobles et sentimentales. His intention here was to pay homage to Schubert, and he later wrote: 'The title sufficiently indicates my intention to compose a succession of waltzes, after Schubert's example.'

By the time of Debussy's death Ravel had already written his final work for solo piano, Le Tombeau de Couperin (1914-17). He was not trying to imitate Couperin, but to pay homage to the Baroque French keyboard suite. The six movements are dedicated to friends who died fighting in World War I. When criticised for composing a light-hearted work for such a sombre subject, Ravel replied: "The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence." (He had served in the war himself, as an ambulance driver.) In 1919 four of the movements were orchestrated, the Prélude, Forlane, Menuet and Rigaudon. Ravel was a brilliant orchestrator, and successfully turned a very pianistic piece into a superb orchestral suite with very few hints of its origins.

In 1932 he was involved in a car accident from which he never fully recovered, and his output reduced dramatically. But he didn't lose his interest in the piano, and shortly before illness put an end to his composing career he wrote two concertos that perfectly embody his conception of the instrument: the three-movement Concerto in G (1929-31) and the Concerto for the Left Hand (1931). Both works contain jazz elements reminiscent of George Gershwin, who he had met in America in 1928. Both, too, had a considerable impact on French music between the two world wars, particularly for a group of French composers known as Les Six. Their music is often seen as a reaction against Impressionism, but I shall tell you their story another day.

UPDATE:

In April Jean-Efflam Bavouzet was awarded the Instrumental prize at this year's BBC Music Magazine Awards, for the third volume in his complete Debussy piano music series. You can read his interview with the magazine here.