Claude Debussy

Achille-Claude Debussy (August 22, 1862 – March 25, 1918) was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he is considered one of the most prominent figures working within the field of Impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions.[1] Debussy is not only among the most important of all French composers; he was also a central figure in all European music at the turn of the twentieth century. His music is noted for its sensory component and how it is not often formed around one key or pitch. Oftentimes Debussy's work reflected the activities or turbulence in his own life. Debussy's music virtually defines the transition from late-Romantic music to twentieth century modernist music. In French literary circles, the style of this period was known as Symbolism, a movement that directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant.
Debussy's private life was turbulent. He cohabited in Paris with Gabrielle Dupont for nine years before marrying her friend Rosalie Texier, a fashion model, in 1899. Although Texier was affectionate, practical, straightforward, and well-liked by Debussy's friends and associates, he became increasingly irritated by her intellectual limitations and lack of musical sensitivity.
As a result he left Texier in 1904 for Emma Bardac, the wife of a Parisian banker and the mother of one of his students. In contrast to Texier, Bardac was a sophisticate, a brilliant conversationalist, and an accomplished singer. The distraught Texier, like Dupont before her, attempted suicide with a pistol. The scandal obliged Debussy and Bardac (already carrying his child) to flee to Eastbourne, England, (where he completed his symphonic suite La Mer) until the hysteria subsided and the legal entanglements resolved. The couple were eventually married in 1908.
Their child, a daughter (and the composer's only child), was named Claude-Emma, more affectionately known as Chouchou, the dedicatee of Debussy's Children's Corner suite. Claude-Emma outlived her father by scarcely a year, succumbing to the diphtheria epidemic of 1919.