“I love music too much to speak of it otherwise than
passionately.” 
DEBUSSY

“Art is always progressive; it cannot return to the past,
which is definitely dead.  Only imbeciles and cowards look
backward.  Then—­Let us work!”

          
                                                                                        DEBUSSY

It is difficult to learn anything of the boyhood and youth of this rare French composer.  Even his young manhood and later life were so guarded and secluded that few outside his intimate circle knew much of the man, except as mirrored in his music.  After all that is just as the composer wished, to be known through his compositions, for in them he revealed himself.  They are transparent reflections of his character, his aims and ideals.

Only the barest facts of his early life can be told.  We know that he was born at Saint Germain-en-Laye, France, August 22, 1862.  From the very beginning he seemed precociously gifted in music, and began at a very early age to study the piano.  His first lessons on the instrument were received from Mme. de Sivry, a former pupil of Chopin.  At ten he entered the Paris Conservatoire, obtaining his Solfege medals in 1874, ’75, and ’76, under Lavignac; a second prize for piano playing from Marmontel in 1877, a first prize for accompanying in 1880; an accessory prize for counterpoint and fugue in 1882, and finally the Grande Prix de Rome, with his cantata, “L’Enfant Prodigue,” in 1884, as a pupil of Guirand.

Thus in twelve years, or at the age of twenty-two, the young musician was thoroughly furnished for a career.  He had worked through carefully, from the beginning to the top, with thoroughness and completeness, gaining his honors, slowly, step by step.  All this painstaking care, this overcoming of the technical difficulties of his art, is what gave him such complete command and freedom in using the medium of tone and harmony, in his unique manner.

While at work in Paris, young Debussy made an occasional side trip to another country.  In 1879 he visited Russia, where he learned to know the music of that land, yet undreamed of by the western artists.  When his turn came to go to Rome, for which honor he secured the prize, he sent home the required compositions, a Symphonic Suite “Spring,” and a lyric poem for a woman’s voice, with chorus and orchestra, entitled “La Demoiselle Elue.”

From the first Claude Debussy showed himself a rare spirit, who looked at the subject of musical art from a different angle than others had done.  For one thing he must have loved nature with whole souled devotion, for he sought to reflect her moods and inspirations in his compositions.  Once he said:  “I prefer to hear a few notes from an Egyptian shepherd’s flute, for he is in accord with his scenery and hears harmonies unknown to your treatises.  Musicians too seldom turn to the music inscribed in nature.  It would benefit them more to watch a sunrise than to listen to a performance of the Pastorale Symphony.  Go not to others for advice but take counsel of the passing breezes, which relate the history of the world to those who can listen.”