The Life of Debussy

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1. Childhood and musical studies (1862-1884);
2. Roman holiday? (1885-1887);
3. A Bohemian in Paris (1887-1893);
4. Scandals and masterpieces (1894-1901);
5. Idol and victim (1902-1907);
6. Travels and travails (1908-1914);
7. War and last years (1914-1918); Envoi.

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'That great blue Sphinx', Debussy called the sea. Debussy himself was something of a Sphinx: in the early 1890s he was thinking of 'founding a society for musical esotericism', and although, on the surface, most of his music is instantly engaging and accessible, at a deeper level run currents that are dangerous, unpredictable, destructive. In this biography, Roger Nichols considers the life and music of this seminal figure, charting the currents and the whirlpools in which other humans were sometimes unlucky enough to get caught. Debussy's status is such that no modern composer has been able to ignore him, asking, as he does, any number of riddles to which late twentieth-century music is still searching for answers.

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The most revealing and engagingly written single-volume biography of Claude Debussy, by the doyen of French music experts

Roger Nichols has absorbed this greatly expanded range of information and by skilful selection compressed it into less than 170 pages of text

The volume is written with a cool delicacy and precision apt to its subject

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