Claude Debussy

Born into a family of small shopkeepers and a prodigious pianist, Claude Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 10. His teachers included Antoine-François Marmontel, Emile Durand, Charles Gounod and César Franck. The Baroness von Mecks, a Russian patron of the arts, engages him. He accompanied Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and met Richard Wagner. Grand Prix de Rome in 1884, he shared the life of the ravishing Gaby Dupont, and became friends with Paul Dukas, Erik Satie, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine and Pierre Louÿs. In Vienna, he meets Johannes Brahms. He married a pretty dressmaker, Lily Texier, divorced her and remarried Emma Bardac, who gave him a daughter, "Chou-Chou". Rather a homebody, refusing to be a star, he died of a particularly painful cancer, while the Germans were bombing Paris.

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