__NOTOC__ Year 1891 (MDCCCXCI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Tuesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar.

Events of 1891

January–March

: Hawaii, Queen Lili'Uokalani.]]

January 1 – Paying of old age pensions begins in Germany.

January 16 – The Chilean Civil War breakes out.

January 20 – Jim Hogg becomes the first native Texan to be governor of that state.

January 29 – Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii.

January 31 – The Portuguese republican revolution breaks out in the northern city of Porto.

February 14 – In the FA Cup Quarter Final, a goal is deliberately stopped by handball on the goal line. An Indirect free kick is awarded, since the Penalty kick was proposed that year but not implemented. This event probably changes public opinion on the penalty kick, which was seen as 'an Irishman's motion' before (see William McCrum).

February 15 – AIK is founded.

February 21 – Springhill, Nova Scotia suffers a serious mining disaster.

March 3 – The International Copyright Act of 1891 is passed by the Fifty-first United States Congress.

March 9–March 12 – A powerful storm off England's south coast sinks 14 ships.

March 14 – In New Orleans, a lynch mob storms the Old Parish Prison and lynches 11 Italians arrested but found innocent of the murder of Police Chief David Hennessy.

March 15 – Jesse W. Reno patents the first escalator at Coney Beach.

March 17 – The British steamship SS Utopia sinks in the inner harbor of Gibraltar, killing 564.

April–June

: Tchaikovsky opens "Carnegie"]]

April 1 – The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago.

May – Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claims to be the Promised Messiah (The second coming of Jesus) and the Mahdi awaited in Islam.

May 1 – Troops fire on a workers' May Day demonstration in support of the 8-hour workday in Fourmies, France, killing 9 and wounding 30.

May 1 – The first Fascio dei lavoratori (Workers League) is founded by Giuseppe De Felice Giuffrida in Catania (Sicily).

May 5 – The Music Hall in New York (now known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance, with maestro Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.

May 11 – Otsu Incident: Czarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich of Russia survives an assassination attempt while visiting Japan.

May 15 – Pope Leo XIII issues the encyclical Rerum Novarum, resulting in the creation of many Christian Democrat Parties throughout Europe.

May 20 – Thomas Alva Edison's prototype kinetoscope is first displayed at Edison's Laboratory, for a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs.

May 31 N.S. (May 19 O.S.) – In the area of Kuperovskaya fold in Vladivostok, a ceremony marking the grand laying of the Trans-Siberian Railroad is carried out and a service on this occasion is held. Czarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich (future emperor Nikolai II) takes part in this ceremony.

June 16 – John Abbott becomes Canada's third prime minister.

June 21 – First long-distance transmission of alternating current by the Ames power plant near Telluride, Colorado by Lucien and Paul Nunn.

: Edison's kinetoscope.]]

July–September

August 27 – France and Russia conclude a defensive alliance.

September 14 – The first penalty kick is awarded in a football (soccer) match; John Heath scores it for the Wolverhampton Wanderers.

September 28 – The C.A. Peñarol is founded in Montevideo under the name of the CURCC (Central Uruguay Railway Cricket Club).

October–December

October 1 – In California, Stanford University opens its doors.

October 27 – An 8.0 earthquake strikes the village of Utsuzumi in rural Gifu, Japan, killing over 7,000 across the region and creating a 3-meter-tall surface fault that is still visible.

November 28 – The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers was organized.

Stanford University opens its doors.]]

Undated

Brahmin teacher and nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak begins agitation for Indian home Rule.

New Scotland Yard becomes the HQ of the London Metropolitan Police.

Eugène Dubois makes the first discovery of Homo erectus fossils in the Dutch colony of Java.

James Naismith invents basketball.

The Tobacco Protest occurs in Iran.

Oba Ovonramwen seizes the throne of Benin.

The Australian Labor Party is founded.

Seattle University is established.

Drexel University is founded as the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry.

The Auckland University Students' Association is founded.

Maria Skłodowska (later Marie Curie) enters the Sorbonne University.

Nikola Tesla invents the Tesla coil.

Skansen is established as the world's first open air museum by Artur Hazelius on the island of Djurgården in Stockholm, Sweden.

15.6 million people live in cities of 20,000 or more in England and Wales. Cities of 20,000 or more account for 54% of the total English population.

Births

January–June

January 1 – Charles Bickford, American actor (d. 1967)

January 7 – Zora Neale Hurston, Harlem Renaissance writer (d. 1960)

January 8 – Walther Bothe, German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics (d. 1957)

January 22 – Antonio Gramsci, Italian Communist writer and politician (d. 1937)

January 27 – Ilya Ehrenburg, Russian writer (d. 1967)

February 9 – Ronald Colman, English actor (d. 1958)

February 11 – J.W. Hearne, English cricketer (d. 1965)

February 17 – Abraham Fraenkel, German-born Israeli mathematician and recipient of the Israel Prize (d. 1965)

February 21 – Sean Heuston, Irish rebel (d. 1916)

February 27 – David Sarnoff, Russian-born American broadcasting pioneer (d. 1971)

March 10 – Sam Jaffe, American actor (d. 1984)

March 19 – Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States (d. 1974)

March 24 – Rudolf Berthold, German fighter pilot (d. 1920)

March 29 – Yvan Goll, French lyricist and dramatist (d. 1950)

April 2 – Max Ernst, German painter (d. 1976)

April 7 – Ole Kirk Christiansen, founder of the Lego group (d. 1958)

April 13 – Nella Larsen, American novelist (d. 1964)

April 15 – Wallace Reid, American actor (d. 1923)

April 17 – George Adamski, Polish-born alleged UFO traveler (d. 1965)

April 23 – Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet composer (d. 1953)

May 7 – Harry McShane, Scottish socialist (d. 1988)

May 15

* Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian writer (d. 1940)

* Fritz Feigl, Austrian-born chemist (d. 1971)

May 16 – Richard Tauber, Austrian tenor (d. 1948)

May 18 – Rudolf Carnap, German philosopher (d. 1970)

May 19 – Oswald Boelcke, German World War I pilot (d. 1916)

May 22 – Eddie Edwards, American jazz trombonist (d. 1963)

May 23 – Pär Lagerkvist, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)

May 24 – William F. Albright, American archeologist and Biblical scholar (d. 1971)

June 3 – Jim Tully, vagabond, pugalist, noted American writer (d. 1947 heart disease)

June 9 – Cole Porter, American composer and songwriter (d. 1964)

June 20 – John A. Costello, second President of Ireland (d. 1976)

June 21 – Hermann Scherchen, German conductor (d. 1966)

June 28 – Esther Forbes, American Writer (d. 1967)

June 30 – Man Mountain Dean, American professional wrestler (d. 1953)

July–December

July 2 – Karin Kock-Lindberg, Swedish politician (d. 1976)

July 5 – John Howard Northrop, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1987)

July 27 – Jacob van der Hoeden, Dutch-Israeli veterinary scientist (d. 1968)

July 29 – Bernhard Zondek German-born Israeli gynecologist, developer of first reliable pregnancy test (d. 1966)

August 2 – Viktor Maksimovich Zhirmunsky, Russian literary historian, linguist (d. 1971)

August 21 – Emiliano Mercado del Toro, Puerto Rican, longest-lived war veteran ever and last verified person born in 1891 (d. 2007)

August 25 – David Shimoni, Russian-born Israeli poet and writer (d. 1956)

September 3 – Bessie Delany, African American physician and author (d. 1995)

September 12 – Pedro Albizu Campos, advocate of Puerto Rican independence (d. 1965)

September 14 – William F. Friedman, American cryptographer (d. 1969)

September 16

* Karl Dönitz, President of Germany (d. 1980)

* Stephanie von Hohenlohe, Austrian-born German World War II spy (d. 1972)

* Julie Winnefred Bertrand, Canadian supercentenarian (d. 2007)

September 26 – Charles Munch, French conductor and violinist (d. 1968)

September 28 – Myrtle Gonzalez, American film and stage actress (d. 1918)

October 12 – Fumimaro Konoe, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1945)

October 20 – James Chadwick, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)

October 24 – Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic (d. 1961)

November 10 – Carl Stalling, American musician (d. 1972)

November 14 – Frederick Banting, Canadian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1941)

November 15

* Vincent Astor, American philanthropist (d. 1959)

* Erwin Rommel, German field marshal (d. 1944)

November 28 – Gregorio Perfecto, Filipino jurist & politician (d. 1949)

December 9 – Maksim Bahdanovič, Belarussian poet (d. 1917)

December 10 – Nelly Sachs, German writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970)

December 14 – Katherine MacDonald, American silent screen actress (d. 1956)

December 17 – Hu Shi, Chinese liberal (d. 1962)

December 26 – Henry Miller, American writer (d. 1980)

Deaths

January–June

January 5 – Emma Abbott, American opera singer (b. 1849)

January 16 – Léo Delibes, French composer (b. 1836)

January 21 – Calixa Lavallée, Canadian composer (b. 1842)

February 14 – William Tecumseh Sherman, American Civil War General (b. 1820)

March 15

* Théodore de Banville, French writer (b. 1823)

* Sir Joseph Bazalgette, English civil engineer (b. 1819)

March 29 – Georges Seurat, French painter (b. 1859)

April 2 – Ahmed Vefik Pasha, Turkish statesman (b. 1823)

April 7 – P. T. Barnum, American showman (b. 1810)

April 9 – George Cavendish-Bentinck, British Conservative politician (b. 1821)

April 24 – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Prussian field marshal (b. 1800)

April 25 – Nathaniel Woodard, educationalist (b. 1811)

May 8 – Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Russian-born author and theosophist (b. 1831)

June 6 – John A. Macdonald, first Prime Minister of Canada (b. 1815)

July–December

July 4 – Hannibal Hamlin, Vice President of the United States (b. 1809)

August 12 – James Russell Lowell, American poet and essayist (b. 1819)

August 14 – Sarah Childress Polk, First Lady of the United States (b. 1803)

August 29 – Pierre Lallement, French inventor of the bicycle (b. 1843?)

September 7 – Lorenzo Sawyer, 9th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California (b. 1820)

September 11 – Antero de Quental, Portuguese poet (b. 1842)

September 15 – Ivan Goncharov, Russian author (b. 1812)

September 28 – Herman Melville, American novelist (b. 1819)

October 6

* Charles I of Württemberg (b. 1823)

* Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish nationalist leader (b. 1846)

October 15 – Gilbert Arthur a Beckett, English writer (b. 1837)

October 23 – Ambrosius of Optina, Russian Orthodox saint (b. 1812)

November 6 – J. Gregory Smith, Vermont governor (b. 1818)

November 10 – Arthur Rimbaud, French poet (b. 1854)

December 5 – Pedro II, Brazilian deposed emperor (b. 1826)

December 31 – Samuel Ajayi Crowther, 1st African Anglican bishop; linguist and legendary missionary (b. 1809)

References

Name	Taylor Green
Team	Milwaukee Brewers
Number	--
Position	Third baseman
Birthdate	November 02, 1986
Birthplace	Comox, British Columbia
Bats	Left
Throws	Right

Taylor Green (born November 2, 1986, in Comox, British Columbia) is a minor league baseball third baseman in the Milwaukee Brewers organization.

Career

College

Green attended Mark R. Isfeld High School in Courtenay, British Columbia and played high school baseball for the Parksville Royals of the British Columbia Premier Baseball League. He went on to play two years of collegiate baseball at Cypress College, where he was named a First Team Orange Empire Conference All-Star and Junior College 1st Team All-American.

Professional

Green was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in the 25th round (745th pick) of the 2005 Major League Baseball Draft. He made his professional debut playing for the Rooke League Helena Brewers in 2006. He was promoted to the Class A West Virginia Power in 2007. That season, in which he had a .327 batting average, 14 home runs, and 86 RBI, Green was named the Brewers Organization Player of the Year. He also made the mid and post-season South Atlantic League All-Star teams. Baseball America selected him as a "Low Class A 3B All-Star".

After the 2007 season, he was named to Team Canada's Baseball World Cup team that participated in the 2007 World Cup in Taipei, Taiwan. The team qualified for a spot in the 2008 Summer Olympics, but Green did not make the team.

In 2008, he played for the Class A-Advanced Brevard County Manatees. He was selected for the mid and post-season Florida State League (FSL) All-Star teams, and finished second in the FSL Home Run Derby. Green split the 2009 season between the Class A Wisconsin Timber Rattlers and the Double-A Huntsville Stars. His entire 2010 season was played with Huntsville.

References

MiLB.com profile

Category:1986 births Category:Living people Category:Helena Brewers players Category:West Virginia Power players Category:Brevard County Manatees players Category:Wisconsin Timber Rattlers players Category:Huntsville Stars players

Name	Henry Valentine Miller
Birthdate	December 26, 1891
Birthplace	Yorkville, Manhattan, New York City
Deathdate	June 07, 1980
Deathplace	Pacific Palisades, California, United States
Occupation	Writer, painter
Genre	Erotic literature, Surrealism, Novel
Spouse	Beatrice Sylvas Wickens (1917–1928) June Miller (1928–34) Janina Martha Lepska (1944–52) Eve McClure (1953–1960) Hiroko Tokuda (1967–1977)

Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring. He also wrote travel memoirs and essays of literary criticism and analysis.

Biography

Miller was born to tailor Heinrich Miller and Louise Marie Neiting, in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, New York City, of German Catholic heritage. As a child he lived at 662 Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, known in that time (and referred to frequently in his works) as The Fourteenth Ward. As a young man, he was active with the Socialist Party (his "quondam idol" was the Black Socialist Hubert Harrison). He briefly—for only one semester—attended the City College of New York. Although he was an exceptional scholar, he was willing neither to be anchored nor to submit to the traditional college system of education.

His first wife was Beatrice Sylvas Wickens, whom he married in 1917. During 1928-29, Miller spent several months in Paris with his second wife, June Edith Smith (June Miller). The next year he moved to Paris unaccompanied, and he continued to live there until the outbreak of World War II. Although Miller had little or no money the first year in Paris, things began to change with the meeting of Anais Nin who would go on to pay his entire way through the 1930s including the rent for the beautiful and modern apartment at 18, villa Seurat. Anaïs Nin became his lover and financed the first printing of Tropic of Cancer in 1934 with money from Otto Rank.

In the fall of 1931, Miller was employed by the Chicago Tribune (Paris edition) as a proofreader, thanks to his friend Alfred Perlès who worked there. Miller took this opportunity to submit some of his own articles under Perlès name, since only the editorial staff were permitted to publish in the paper in 1934. This period in Paris was highly creative for Miller, and during this time he also established a significant and influential network of authors circulating around the Villa Seurat. One author who became a lifelong friend was the young British author Lawrence Durrell. Durrell, who lived in Corfu, invited Miller out to Greece, a visit which Miller describes vividly in The Colossus of Maroussi. Miller's correspondence with Durrell was later published. During the Paris period he was also influenced by the French Surrealists.

His works contain detailed accounts of sexual experiences, and his books did much to free the discussion of sexual subjects in American writing from both legal and social restrictions. He continued to write novels that were banned in the United States on the grounds of obscenity. Along with Tropic of Cancer, his Black Spring (1936) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939) were smuggled into his native country, building Miller an underground reputation. One of the first acknowledgments of Henry Miller as a major modern writer was by George Orwell in his 1940 essay Inside the Whale, where he wrote:

In 1940, he returned to the United States, settling in Big Sur, California, and continued to produce vividly written works that challenged contemporary American cultural values and moral attitudes. He spent the last years of his life at his home in 444 Ocampo Drive, Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California.

While Miller was establishing his base in Big Sur, the 'Tropics' books, still banned in the USA, were being published in France by the Obelisk Press and later the Olympia Press. There they were acquiring a slow and steady notoriety among both Europeans and the various enclaves of American cultural exiles. As a result, the books were frequently smuggled into the States, where they would prove to be a major influence on the new Beat generation of American writers (most notably Jack Kerouac) some of whom would adopt stylistic and thematic principles found in Miller's oeuvre.

The publication of Miller's Tropic of Cancer in the United States in 1961 led to a series of obscenity trials that tested American laws on pornography. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Grove Press, Inc., v. Gerstein, citing Jacobellis v. Ohio (which was decided the same day in 1964), overruled the state court findings of obscenity and declared the book a work of literature; it was one of the notable events in what has come to be known as the sexual revolution. Elmer Gertz, the lawyer who successfully argued the initial case for the novel's publication in Illinois, became a lifelong friend of Miller's. Volumes of their correspondence have been published.

In addition to his literary abilities, Miller was a painter and wrote books about his work in that field. He was a close friend of the French painter Grégoire Michonze. He was also an amateur pianist.

After his move to Pacific Palisades, he held innumerable dinner parties for a host of famous guests. His cook and caretaker was a young artist's model called Twinka Thiebaud who later wrote a book of his evening chats: Reflections published by Capra Press in 1981. (This book is being extensively rewritten for republication in 2011.)

During the last four years of his life, Miller held an ongoing correspondence of over 1500 letters with Brenda Venus, a young and vivacious Playboy playmate, actress and dancer. An article detailing their affair ran in a special edition of Playboy in 1996. The article called her Miller's "twilight muse" during the bedridden final years of his life.

Before his death, Miller filmed with Warren Beatty for his film Reds. He spoke of his remembrances of John Reed and Louise Bryant as part of a series of 'witnesses'. The film was released eighteen months after Miller's death.

Miller died in Pacific Palisades in 1980. After his death, he was cremated and his ashes scattered off Big Sur.

Miller's papers were donated to the UCLA Young Research Library Department of Special Collections. The Henry Miller Art Museum at Coast Gallery in Big Sur, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and UCLA all hold a selection of Miller's watercolors, as did The Henry Miller Museum of Art in Omachi City in Nagano, Japan, before closing in 2003. A portion of the correspondence between the Grove Press and Henry Miller are currently housed in the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University. Special Collections at the University of Victoria holds a significant collection of Miller's manuscripts and correspondences, including the corrected typescript for Max and Quiet Days in Clichy, as well as Miller's lengthy correspondence with Alfred Perlès.

Works

Moloch or, This Gentile World, written in 1927, not published until 1992 (by the Estate of Henry Miller). ISBN 0-8021-3372-X

Crazy Cock, written 1928–1930, not published until 1960. ISBN 0-8021-1412-1

Tropic of Cancer, Paris: Obelisk Press, 1934.

What Are You Going to Do about Alf?, Paris: Printed at author's expense, 1935.

Aller Retour New York, Paris: Obelisk Press, 1935.

Black Spring, Paris: Obelisk Press, 1936. ISBN 0-8021-3182-4

Max and the White Phagocytes, Paris: Obelisk Press, 1938.

Tropic of Capricorn, Paris: Obelisk Press, 1939. ISBN 0-8021-5182-5

Henry Miller's Hamlet Letters, Vol. I, with Michael Fraenkel, Santurce, Puerto Rico: Carrefour, 1939. ISBN 0-8095-4058-4

* Vol. II, with Michael Fraenkel, New York: Carrefour, 1941.

* Vol. I complete New York: Carrefour, 1943.

The Cosmological Eye, New York: New Directions, 1939. ISBN 0-8112-0110-4

The World of Sex, Chicago: Ben Abramson, Argus Book Shop, 1940.

* Oneworld Classics 2007 ISBN 978-1-84749-035-3

Under the Roofs of Paris (originally published as Opus Pistorum), New York: Grove Press, 1941.

The Colossus of Maroussi, San Francisco: Colt Press, 1941. ISBN 0-8112-0109-0

The Wisdom of the Heart, New York: New Directions, 1941. ISBN 0-8112-0116-3

Sunday after the War, New York: New Directions, 1944.

Semblance of a Devoted Past, Berkeley, Calif.: Bern Porter, 1944.

The Plight of the Creative Artist in the United States of America, Houlton, Me.: Bern Porter, 1944.

Echolalia, Berkeley, Calif.: Bern Porter, 1945.

Henry Miller Miscellanea, San Mateo, Calif.: Bern Porter, 1945.

Why Abstract?, with Hilaire Hiller and William Saroyan, New York: New Directions, 1945. ISBN 0-8383-1837-1

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, New York: New Directions, 1945. ISBN 0-8112-0106-6

Maurizius Forever, San Francisco: Colt Press, 1946.

Remember to Remember, New York: New Directions, 1947. ISBN 0-8112-0321-2

Into the Night Life, privately published 1947

The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder, New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1948.

Sexus (Book One of The Rosy Crucifixion), Paris: Obelisk Press, 1949. ISBN 0-87529-173-2

The Waters Reglitterized, San Jose, Calif.: John Kidis, 1950. ISBN 0-912264-71-3

The Books in My Life, New York: New Directions, 1952. ISBN 0-8112-0108-2

Plexus (Book Two of The Rosy Crucifixion), Paris: Olympia Press, 1953. ISBN 0-8021-5179-5

Quiet Days in Clichy, Paris: Olympia Press, 1956. ISBN 0-8021-3016-X
London: Oneworld Classics, 2007. ISBN 978-1-84749-036-0

Recalls and Reflects, New York: Riverside LP RLP 7002/3, 1956

The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud, New York: New Directions, 1956. ISBN 0-8112-0115-5

A Devil in Paradise, New York: New Directions, 1956. ISBN 0-8112-1244-0

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, New York: New Directions, 1957. ISBN 0-8112-0107-4

The Red Notebook, Highlands, N.C.: Jonathan Williams, 1958.

Reunion in Barcelona, Northwood, England: Scorpion Press, 1959.

Nexus (Book Three of The Rosy Crucifixion), Paris: Obelisk Press, 1960. ISBN 0-8021-5178-7

To Paint Is to Love Again, Alhambra, Calif.: Cambria Books, 1960.

Watercolors, Drawings, and His Essay "The Angel Is My Watermark," Abrams, 1962.

Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, New York: New Directions, 1962. ISBN 0-8112-0322-0

Just Wild about Harry, New York: New Directions, 1963. ISBN 0-8112-0724-2

Greece (with drawings by Anne Poor), New York: Viking Press, 1964.

Insomnia or The Devil at Large, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1974. ISBN 0-385-9037-4

Book of Friends, 1976

Sextet, New Directions, 1977. ISBN 0811218007

My Bike and Other Friends, 1978

Joey, 1979

Opus Pistorum, New York: Grove Press, 1983. ISBN 0-394-53374-7

Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus, 1997. (ISBN 0-688-02816-0)

Films

Miller was portrayed by Fred Ward in the 1990 movie Henry & June, and by Rip Torn in the 1970 film adaptation of Tropic of Cancer. In the 1970 Jens Jørgen Thorsen adaptation of Quiet Days in Clichy, the Miller-based character of 'Joey' was played by the late Paul Valjean. Claude Chabrol's 1990 adaptation of the same novel saw Andrew McCarthy play the Miller role as "Henry Miller" himself. Miller was also featured in the documentary Henry Miller Is Not Dead that featured music by Laurie Anderson. Miller appeared as an interviewee in Warren Beatty's film Reds.

Criticism

Feminist activist Kate Millett has criticized Miller for his depiction of female characters. In her 1970 work Sexual Politics, analyzed Miller alongside D.H. Lawrence and Norman Mailer, finding that each tends to assume a male audience, objectifying female characters in the process. While reasserting Miller's importance as a novelist, Millett cast doubt upon his status as an icon of sexual freedom, concluding, "Miller is a compendium of American sexual neuroses, and his value lies not in freeing us from such afflictions, but in having had the honesty to express and dramatize them" (p. 295). Norman Mailer came to Miller's defense in The Prisoner of Sex in 1971. According to Martin B. Duberman, writing for The New Republic on November 27, 1976, Miller ought to be rescued from both Mailer and Millett.

References

Further reading

Smith, J. Y. (June 9, 1980). "Author Henry Miller Dies; Famed for Two 'Tropic' Books". The Washington Post, C3.

Mailer, Norman (1976). "Genius and Lust: a journey through the major writings of Henry Miller"

Winslow, Kathryn (1986). "Henry Miller: full of life"

Dearborn, Mary V. (1991). "The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller"

Jong, Erika (1993). "The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller"

Brassaï (2002). "Henry Miller, Happy Rock"

Anderson, Christiann (March 2004). "Henry Miller: Born to be Wild"

Durrell, Lawrence, editor, The Henry Miller Reader, New Directions Publishing, 1969 ISBN 0811201117

External links

Henry Miller Online by Dr. Hugo Heyrman a tribute

Henry Miller at Internet Movie Database

Grove/Atlantic, Inc. is the US Publisher of Tropic of Cancer (novel) and Tropic of Capricorn (novel)

Henry Miller A Personal Collection

Henry Miller collection at University of Victoria, Special Collections

Miller Related Links

An Interview with Henry Miller on Folkways Records

Henry Miller Memorial Library

Narrative Detours: Henry Miller and the Rise of New Critical Modernism

Miller quotes online

Kenneth Rexroth on Miller

Dinner with Henry Miller, a video from UBUWEB

Miller reading excerpts of his books

Tropic of Cancer, a song

Henry Miller's Art Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin

Henry Miller correspondence and other archival collections at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Special Collections Research Center

Category:American anarchists Category:Anarchist writers Category:Anarchist artists Category:American erotica writers Category:American essayists Category:American expatriates in France Category:American memoirists Category:American novelists Category:American tax resisters Category:American writers of German descent Category:Writers from New York Category:1891 births Category:1980 deaths

Name	Erik Satie
Birth name	Erik Alfred Leslie Satie
Birth date	May 17, 1866
Birth place	Honfleur, French Empire
Death date	July 01, 1925
Death place	Paris, France
Occupation	Pianist, Composer
Partner	Suzanne Valadon

Éric Alfred Leslie Satie (17 May 1866 – Paris, 1 July 1925) was a French composer and pianist. Starting with his first composition in 1884, he signed his name as Erik Satie.

Satie was introduced as a "gymnopedist" in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies. Later, he also referred to himself as a "phonometrician" (meaning "someone who measures sounds") preferring this designation to that of a "musician", after having been called "a clumsy but subtle technician" in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911.

In addition to his body of music, Satie also left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the dadaist 391 to the American top culture chronicle Vanity Fair. Although in later life he prided himself on always publishing his work under his own name, in the late nineteenth century he appears to have used pseudonyms such as Virginie Lebeau and François de Paule in some of his published writings.

Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde. His work was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music, and the Theatre of the Absurd.

Life and work

From Normandy to Montmartre

Erik Satie was born at Honfleur, and his home there is now open to the public. His youth was spent alternating between Honfleur, Basse-Normandie, and Paris. When he was four years old, his family moved to Paris, his father (Alfred), having been offered a translator's job in the capital. After his mother (born Jane Leslie Anton, who was born in London to Scottish parents) died in 1872, he was sent, together with his younger brother Conrad, back to Honfleur, to live with his paternal grandparents. There he received his first music lessons from a local organist. When his grandmother died in 1878, the two brothers were reunited with their father in Paris, who remarried (a piano teacher) shortly afterwards. From the early 1880s onwards, Alfred Satie started publishing salon compositions (by his new wife and himself, among others).

In 1879 Satie entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he was soon labeled untalented by his teachers. Georges Mathias, his professor of piano at the Conservatoire, described his pupil's piano technique in flatly negative terms, "insignificant and laborious" and "worthless". Émile Descombes called him "the laziest student in the Conservatoire". Years later Satie related that Mathias, with great insistence, told him that his real talent lay in composing. After being sent home for two and a half years, he was readmitted to the Conservatoire at the end of 1885, but was unable to make a much more favourable impression on his teachers than he had before, and, as a result, resolved to take up military service a year later. However, Satie's military career did not last very long; within a few weeks he left the army through deceptive means.

In 1887 Satie left home to take lodgings in Montmartre. By this time he had started what was to be an enduring friendship with the romantic poet Patrice Contamine, and had had his first compositions published by his father. He soon integrated with the artistic clientèle of the Le Chat Noir Café-cabaret, and started publishing his Gymnopédies. Publication of compositions in the same vein (Ogives, Gnossiennes, etc.) followed. In the same period he befriended Claude Debussy. He moved to a smaller room, still in Montmartre (rue Cortot N° 6), in 1890. By 1891 he was the official composer and chapel-master of the Rosicrucian Order "Ordre de la Rose-Croix Catholique, du Temple et du Graal", led by Sâr Joséphin Péladan, which led to compositions such as Salut drapeau!, Le fils des étoiles, and the Sonneries de la Rose+Croix.

By mid-1892 he had composed the first pieces in a compositional system of his own making (Fête donnée par des Chevaliers Normands en l'honneur d'une jeune demoiselle), had provided incidental music to a chivalric esoteric play (two Prélude du Nazaréen), had had his first hoax published (announcing the premiere of Le bâtard de Tristan, an anti-Wagnerian opera he probably never composed), and had broken with Péladan, starting that autumn with the Uspud project, a "Christian Ballet", in collaboration with Contamine de Latour. While the comrades from both the Chat Noir and Miguel Utrillo's Auberge du Clou sympathised, a promotional brochure was produced for the project, which reads as a pamphlet for a new esoteric sect.

Satie and Suzanne Valadon, an artists' model and artist in her own right, and a long-time friend of Miguel Utrillo (and mother of Maurice Utrillo), began an affair early in 1893. After their first night together, he proposed marriage. The two did not marry, but Valadon moved to a room next to Satie's at the Rue Cortot. Satie became obsessed with her, calling her his Biqui, and writing impassioned notes about "her whole being, lovely eyes, gentle hands, and tiny feet". During their relationship, Satie composed the Danses gothiques as a kind of prayer to restore peace of mind, and Valadon painted a portrait of Satie, which she gave to him. After six months she moved away, leaving Satie broken-hearted. Afterwards, he said that he was left with "nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness". It is believed this was the only intimate relationship Satie ever had. and two years later, after he'd composed the two first sets of Pièces froides in 1897, to Arcueil, a suburb some five kilometers from the centre of Paris. During this period he re-established contact with his brother Conrad for numerous practical and financial matters, disclosing some of his inner feelings in the process. The letters to Conrad made it clear that he had set aside any religious ideas.

From 1899 on Satie started making money as a cabaret pianist, adapting over a hundred compositions of popular music for piano or piano and voice, adding some of his own. The most popular of these were Je te veux, text by Henry Pacory; Tendrement, text by Vincent Hyspa; Poudre d'or, a waltz; La diva de l'"Empire", text by Dominique Bonnaud/Numa Blès; Le Picadilly, a march; Légende californienne, text by Contamine de Latour lost, but the music later reappears in La belle excentrique; and many more, many of which have been lost. In his later years Satie would reject all his cabaret music as vile and against his nature, but for the time being, it was an income.

Only a few compositions that Satie took seriously remain from this period: Jack-in-the-box, music to a pantomime by Jules Dépaquit (called a "clownerie" by Satie), Geneviève de Brabant, a short comic opera on a serious theme, text by Lord Cheminot, The Dreamy Fish, piano music to accompany a lost tale by Lord Cheminot, and a few others that were mostly incomplete, hardly any of them staged, and none of them published at the time.

Both Geneviève de Brabant and The Dreamy Fish have been analysed by Ornella Volta as containing elements of competition with Claude Debussy, of which Debussy was probably not aware, Satie not making this music public. Meanwhile, Debussy was having one of his first major successes with Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, leading a few years later to ‘who-was-precursor-to-whom’ debates between the two composers, in which Maurice Ravel would also get involved.

In October 1905 Satie enrolled in Vincent d'Indy's Schola Cantorum to study classical counterpoint while still continuing his cabaret work. Most of his friends were as dumbfounded as the professors at the Schola when they heard about his new plan to return to the classrooms, especially as d'Indy was an admiring pupil of Saint-Saëns, not particularly favoured by Satie. Satie would follow these courses at the Schola, as a respected pupil, for more than five years, receiving a first (intermediate) diploma in 1908. Some of his classroom counterpoint-exercises, such as the Désespoir agréable, were published after his death. Another summary, of the period prior to the Schola, also appeared in 1911: the Trois morceaux en forme de poire, which was a kind of compilation of the best of what he had written up to 1903.

Something that becomes clear through these published compilations is that Satie did not so much reject Romanticism and its exponents like Wagner, but that he rejected certain aspects of it. From his first composition to his last, he rejected the idea of musical development, in the strict definition of this term: the intertwining of different themes in a development section of a sonata form. As a result, his contrapuntal and other works were very short; the "new, modern" Fugues do not extend further than the exposition of the theme(s). Generally, he would say that he did not think it permitted that a composer take more time from his public than strictly necessary. Also Melodrama, in its historical meaning of the then popular romantic genre of "spoken words to a background of music", was something Satie avoided. His 1913 Le piège de Méduse could be seen as an absurdistic spoof of that genre.

In the meantime, other changes had also taken place: Satie had become a member of a radical socialist party, and had socialised with the Arcueil community: Amongst other things, he'd been involved in the "Patronage laïque" work for children. He also changed his appearance to that of the 'bourgeois functionary' with bowler hat, umbrella, etc. He channeled his medieval interests into a peculiar secret hobby: In a filing cabinet he maintained a collection of imaginary buildings, most of them described as being made out of some kind of metal, which he drew on little cards. Occasionally, extending the game, he would publish anonymous small announcements in local journals, offering some of these buildings, e.g. a "castle in lead", for sale or rent.

1912–1925

, 1913]] From this point, things started to move very quickly for Satie. First, starting in 1912, there was the success of his new humorous miniatures for piano; he was to write and publish many of these over the next few years (most of them premiered by the pianist Ricardo Viñes). His habit of accompanying the scores of his compositions with all kinds of written remarks was now well established so that a few years later he had to insist that these not be read out during performances. He had mostly stopped using barlines by this time. In some ways these compositions were very reminiscent of Rossini's compositions from the final years of his life, grouped under the name Péchés de vieillesse.

But the real acceleration in Satie's life did not come so much from the increasing success of his new piano pieces. In fact, it was Ravel who (perhaps unwittingly) triggered something that was to become a characteristic of Satie's remaining years and part of each progressive movement that manifested itself in Paris over the following years. These movements succeeded one another rapidly, at a time in which Paris was seen as the artistic capital of the world, and the beginning of the new century appeared to have set many minds on fire.

In 1910 the "Jeunes Ravêlites", a group of young musicians around Ravel, proclaimed their preference for Satie's earlier work (from before the Schola period), reinforcing the idea that Satie had been a precursor of Debussy. At first Satie was pleased that at least some of his works were receiving public attention, but when he realised that this meant that his more recent work was overlooked or dismissed, he looked for other young artists who related better to his more recent ideas, so as to have better mutual support in creative activity. Thus young artists such as Roland-Manuel, and later Georges Auric, and Jean Cocteau, started to receive more of his attention than the "Jeunes".

As a result of his contact with Roland-Manuel, Satie again began publicising his thoughts, with far more irony than he had done before (amongst other things, the Mémoires d'un amnésique and Cahiers d'un mammifère).

With Jean Cocteau, whom he had first met in 1915, Satie started work on incidental music for a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (resulting in the Cinq grimaces). From 1916, he and Cocteau worked on the ballet Parade, which was premiered in 1917 by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets russes, with sets and costumes by Pablo Picasso, and choreography by Léonide Massine. Through Picasso Satie also became acquainted with other cubists, such as Georges Braque, with whom he would work on other, aborted, projects.

With Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, and Germaine Tailleferre Satie formed the Nouveaux jeunes, shortly after writing Parade. Later the group was joined by Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud. In September 1918, Satie — giving little or no explanation — withdrew from the Nouveaux jeunes. Jean Cocteau gathered the six remaining members, forming the Groupe des six (to which Satie would later have access, but later again would fall out with most of its members).

From 1919 Satie was in contact with Tristan Tzara, the initiator of the Dada movement. He became acquainted with other artists involved in the movement, such as Francis Picabia (later to become a Surrealist), André Derain, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Hugo and Man Ray, among others. On the day of his first meeting with Man Ray, the two fabricated the artist's first readymade: The Gift (1921). Satie contributed writing to the Dadaist publication 391. In the first months of 1922 he was surprised to find himself entangled in the argument between Tzara and André Breton about the true nature of avant-garde art, epitomised by the failure of the Congrès de Paris. Satie originally sides with Tzara, but manages to maintain friendly relations with most players in both camps. Meanwhile, an "Ecole d'Arcueil" had formed around Satie, with young musicians like Henri Sauguet, Maxime Jacob, Roger Désormière and Henri Cliquet-Pleyel.

Finally he composed an "instantaneist" ballet (Relâche) in collaboration with Picabia, for the Ballets Suédois of Rolf de Maré. In a simultaneous project, Satie added music to the surrealist film Entr'acte by René Clair, which was given as an intermezzo for Relâche.

Death

After years of heavy drinking, Satie died on 1 July 1925, from cirrhosis of the liver. At the time of his death no one else had ever entered his room in Arcueil since he had moved there 27 years earlier. After his burial, Satie's friends discovered compositions that were totally unknown or which were thought to have been lost. These were found behind the piano, in the pockets of the velvet suits, and in other odd places, and included the Vexations, Geneviève de Brabant, and other unpublished or unfinished stage works, The Dreamy Fish, many Schola Cantorum exercises, a previously unseen set of "canine" piano pieces, and several other piano works, many untitled. Some of these works would be published later as more Gnossiennes, Pièces froides, Enfantines, and Furniture music.

Media

Recordings and arrangements

;Piano works Recordings of Satie's piano works have been released by Cristina Ariagno, Jean-Pierre Armengaud, Aldo Ciccolini, Claude Coppens (live recording), Reinbert de Leeuw, Eve Egoyan, Philippe Entremont, Frank Glazer, Olof Höjer, Michel Legrand, Jacques Loussier, Anne Queffélec, Bill Quist, Pascal Rogé, João Paulo Santos, Yuju Takahashi, Branka Parlić, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Daniel Varsano, among others.

;Orchestral and vocal

A recording of historical importance is probably Erik Satie, Les inspirations insolites, re-issued by EMI as a 2-CD set, containing among other pieces: Geneviève de Brabant (in a version before Contamine's text had been recovered), Le piège de Méduse, Messe des pauvres, etc.

Many other recordings exist: Parade/Relâche (Michel Plasson / Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse), Satie: Socrate [etc.] (Jean-Paul Fouchécourt / Ensemble), and recordings of songs, e.g., by Anne-Sophie Schmidt.

;Arrangements in popular music

* In 1968, Blood Sweat & Tears released their second album, which included an adaptation of Erik Satie's Trois Gymnopédies (arranged by Dick Halligan) which they titled as Variations on a Theme by Erik Satie (First and Second Movements). Its instrumentation consisted only of flutes, an acoustic guitar and a triangle and the song's length was 2:35. In 1969, Halligan received a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Performance for "Variations On A Theme By Erik Satie" from the album Blood, Sweat & Tears.

* In 1980, Gary Numan's 7-inch "We Are Glass" featured "Trois Gymnopedies (First Movement)" on the B-side.

* In 1999, electronic music act Plaid's CD "Restproof Clockwork" included a track called "Tearisci" which is an uncredited version of Satie's "Pièces Froides, No. 2: Danses De Travers: III. Encore".

* In 2000, ex-Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett released the album, "Sketches of Satie", performing Satie's works on acoustic guitar, with contributions by his brother John on flute.

* Frank Zappa was also a devoted fan of Satie, incorporating many elements into both his rock and orchestral works.

* The English electronic duo Isan recorded versions of the three Gymnopédies for a 2006 7-inch single, "Trois Gymnopedies" on the Morr Music record label.

See also

Ambient music

Dada

Impressionist music

List of compositions by Erik Satie

Surrealism

References

Sources

In English, unless indicated:

Writings by Satie:

A Mammal's Notebook: Collected Writings of Erik Satie (Serpent's Tail; Atlas Arkhive, No 5, 1997) ISBN 0-947757-92-9 (with introduction and notes by Ornella Volta, translations by Anthony Melville, contains several drawings by Satie)

Correspondence presque complète: Réunie, établie et présentée par Ornella Volta (Paris: Fayard/Imes, 2000; 1265pp) ISBN 2-213-60674-9 (an almost complete edition of Satie's letters, in French)

Books on Satie:

Davis, Mary E., Erik Satie. Reaktion Books - Critical Lives. June 2007. ISBN 9781861893215

Alan Gillmor|Gillmor, Alan M., Erik Satie (Twayne Pub., 1988, reissued 1992; 387pp) ISBN 0-393-30810-3

Myers, Rollo H., Erik Satie. (Dover Publications, New York 1968.) ISBN 0-486-21903-8

Orledge, Robert, Satie Remembered (London: Faber and Faber, London, 1995)

Orledge, Robert, Satie the Composer Cambridge University Press: 1990; 437pp — in the series Music in the Twentieth Century [ed.] Arnold Whittall) ISBN 0-521-35037-9

Templier, Pierre-Daniel (translated by Elena L. French and David S. French), Erik Satie (The MIT Press, 1969, reissued 1971) ISBN 0-262-70005-0 and (New York: Da Capo Press, 1980 reissue) ISBN 0-306-76039-8. Note: Templier extensively consulted Conrad, Erik Satie's brother, when writing this first biography that appeared in 1932. The English translation was, however, criticised by John Cage; in a letter to Ornella Volta (25 May 1983) he referred to the translation as disappointing compared to the formidable value of the original biography.

Volta, Ornella and Simon Pleasance, Erik Satie (Hazan: The Pocket Archives Series, 1997; 200pp) ISBN 2-85025-565-3

Volta, Ornella, transl. Michael Bullock, Satie Seen Through His Letters (Marion Boyars, 1989) ISBN 0-7145-2980-X

Whiting, Steven, Satie the Bohemian: from Cabaret to Concert Hall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999; 596pp). A fully researched account of Satie's musical career in what then was regarded as popular music.

Other:

Satie Home page — Niclas Fogwall's website dedicated to Satie

External links

;Information and listening

Biography and photos

UbuWeb's Erik Satie pages – including an Erik Satie Primer and downloadable recordings

About Erik Satie – The eccentric Impressionist French composer and musician

Erik Satie at Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Three Gymnopedies by Eric Satie

erik-satie.com Website dedicated to the musician, with blog, timeline, gallery, biography

;Scores

Public domain scores Satie's Scores + Audio

www.kreusch-sheet-music.net Free Scores by Satie

Satie's Scores — by the Mutopia Project

Category:1866 births Category:1925 deaths Category:20th-century classical composers Category:French people of Scottish descent Category:Cabaret Category:Dada Category:Fin de siècle Category:French classical pianists Category:French composers Category:Neoclassical composers Category:People from Calvados Category:Schola Cantorum de Paris alumni Category:Blue plaques Category:Les six

Name	deadmau5
Landscape	deadmau5
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	Joel Thomas Zimmerman
Alias	Halcyon441, Deadmau5
Born	January 05, 1981
Origin	Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
Genre	Progressive House, Electro House, Neo-trance, House, Dubstep, Grimecore, New Wave
Occupation	DJ, Producer, Remixer songwriter
Years active	2005 - present
Label	Mau5trap Recordings, Ultra Records, Ministry of Sound Australia, SongBird, Play Records. Play Digital, WeWillDoo, EMI Records, Ministry of Sound, Virgin Records
Associated acts	Chris Lake Kaskade Moguai Melleefresh Billy Newton-Davis Wolfgang Gartner BSOD (w/ Steve Duda) WTF? (w/ Tommy Lee, Steve Duda, DJ Aero) nfrmn pre-deadmau5
Url
Notable instruments	Nord Lead 2x, Moog Little Phatty, Voyager RME, Ableton, Allen & Heath Xone 3D, Allen & Heath Xone 4D, Lemur Input Device, Ableton Live 8, Monome 256, Reaktor, Cubase, Kaossilator, Nuendo, Native Instruments Maschine

Joel Thomas Zimmerman (born January 5, 1981), better known by his stage name Deadmau5 (stylized as deadmau5; pronounced "dead mouse"), is a Canadian progressive, electro, and house producer based in Toronto, Ontario. Although Deadmau5 classes himself as having no genre, his extensive discography includes tracks such as "Arguru" and "Not Exactly", which have been included in compilation albums such as , MixMag's Tech-Trance-Electro-Madness (mixed by deadmau5 himself), and on Armin van Buuren's A State of Trance radio show. His debut album, Get Scraped, was released in 2006, followed by others in the next few years.

As well as his own extensive solo back catalogue, deadmau5 is recognised for his work alongside numerous other DJs and producers, such as Kaskade, MC Flipside, Rob Swire of Pendulum, Skrillex, and Steve Duda under the BSOD alias.

He was nominated for a Grammy in 2009 for his remix of the track "The Longest Road" by Morgan Page featuring Lissie in the category of "Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical"

deadmau5 won a Juno Award for Dance Recording of the Year in 2010 for the album For Lack of a Better Name.

He is known for often performing in a titular costume head which he originally created while learning to use a 3D program, which resembles a mouse head.

On October 27, 2010, DJ Magazine announced the results of their annual Top 100 DJ Poll, placing deadmau5 at #4, up two spots from the previous year.

History

2008

deadmau5 received two nominations for the Juno Award for Dance Recording of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2008 for a track with Billy Newton-Davis and Melleefresh. He did not win an award for Melleefresh's "After Hours" song, but he won the award for Newton-Davis' "All U Ever Want". He was also named "Producer of 2007" by DJ magazine's 2007 Top 100 winner Armin van Buuren, and by runner up Tiësto. In 2008, he placed #11 in the DJ Magazine Top 100 poll, tying Infected Mushroom (2006) for the highest new entry in the poll's history, showing deadmau5's fast rise to prominence. On May 1, 2008, deadmau5 became the most awarded DJ/producer of the Beatport Music Awards. He was named "Best Progressive House Artist" by Beatport. (In 2009, Beatport also awarded deadmau5 the most awards that year, winning first place in both of his nominations, as well as being given the "Greatest House DJ Ever" award, two years in a row). He also had a radio station dedicated to him in for the Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) portable gaming consoles, as well as the iPhone.

His album, Random Album Title, was released electronically in September 2008 via Ultra Records in the United States and Ministry of Sound in the United Kingdom and Europe. Physical copies of the album were released in November 2008.

In the United States, deadmau5's collaboration with Kaskade, "Move for Me," reached #1 on Billboard magazine's Hot Dance Airplay chart in its September 6, 2008 issue.

2009

In 2009, he was nominated for Grammy Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical ("The Longest Road" [deadmau5 Remix] by Morgan Page featuring Lissie). Since then, deadmau5 has seen three of his tracks, all collaborations ("Move for Me" and I Remember with Kaskade; "Ghosts N Stuff" with Rob Swire) reach number-one on Billboard's Hot Dance Airplay chart, making him the only Canadian on that chart to achieve that status (he is also the third Canadian to top that chart, following Deborah Cox and Nelly Furtado, both with one a piece).

In 2009, he was the best-selling artist on Beatport with more than 30,000 digital downloads with his singles "Not Exactly," "Faxing Berlin," and "Ghosts N Stuff."

deadmau5 headlined the Dance Arena on July 10, 2009, at the Oxegen Festival in Ireland. He also headlined LovEvolution in San Francisco, California on October 3. He played at Belsonic in Belfast, Northern Ireland on August 28, at the Leeds, Reading, and Creamfields Festivals on August 29 and 30 in the Lock Up/Dance Tent/Mixmag stage, drawing a large crowd at each of the events. He has performed on BBC Radio 1 multiple times, which include an Essential Mix set on August 19, 2008, and a shared set with Pete Tong live at the Warehouse Project in Manchester on October 11, 2008. He played back to back shows that were broadcast via BBC Radio1 live from Ibiza on August 31 and September 1, 2009. deadmau5 was offered and accepted to play another set live on New Year's 2010 along with Justice, Eric Clapton, and Plump DJs.

Information on his album For Lack of a Better Name was posted on his official MySpace page. ::''“On September 22, 2009 (U.S only, rest-of-world release October 5) deadmau5 launches his brand new mix album, the Grammy-nominated, Juno Award-winning electronic music sensation who has racked up more than 5,000,000 hits on MySpace will unleash his second album for ULTRA Records — titled 'For Lack of a Better Name' — and then set off on a massive fall tour throughout North America.

In the fall of 2009, deadmau5's performances were recorded and made available for sale immediately following the concert on USB wristband flash drives.

::On For Lack of a Better Name, the follow-up to his critically acclaimed 2008 debut Random Album Title, deadmau5 takes a different turn by incorporating various styles of music into multi-blocks of songs. The album will include "Ghosts N Stuff", featuring Pendulum's Rob Swire”.

2010

deadmau5 performed at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia on February 19, 2010, during the live medal presentations in men’s luge doubles and biathlon (women’s 15-km individual and men’s 20-km individual). His track "Moar Ghosts N Stuff" was aired on national TV throughout the United States when it was played over loudspeakers during Hannah Kearney's gold-medal run in women's moguls.

In March 2010, deadmau5 was nominated for four International Dance Music Awards, and won a further three, including Best Artist (Solo) and Best American DJ (see complete list below).

The next studio album by deadmau5, announced as his first "artist album," is scheduled for release in May. A song from the album titled "Some Chords" has been released via his YouTube account. The album has since been delayed.

In June 2010, Beatport announced the winners of their annual Beatport Music Awards, awarding deadmau5 Best Electro House Artist, Best Progressive House Artist, and "most influential, relevant and forward-thinking person in electronic music over the past 12 months." deadmau5 also performed live at the Electric Daisy Carnival's Kinetic Fields section in Exposition Park, Los Angeles on June 25, 2010.

His third studio album, titled 4x4=12, was released on December 6, 2010 in the United Kingdom and December 7, 2010 in the United States. The singles "Some Chords," "Animal Rights," and "Sofi Needs a Ladder" have been released and will feature on the album.

A short while after he released 4x4=12, he stated that would be releasing a new album some time in 2011 and wouldn't release any material as singles

DJ Hero 2

deadmau5 is a playable avatar within the forthcoming DJ Hero 2 video game being released in the last quarter of 2010. Additionally, one of the initially revealed tracks is a mashup between deadmau5's "Ghosts N Stuff" with Lady Gaga's "Just Dance."

Personal

Name origin

The name "deadmau5" started when Zimmerman found a dead mouse in his computer while he was replacing his video card. He talked with people in chat rooms and he became known as "that dead mouse guy" and since his username was too long, he shortened "Dead Mouse" to deadmau5.

Health

On 30 July 2010 at the in Washington, D.C., deadmau5 collapsed on stage, suffering from exhaustion and vomiting. deadmau5's set was cut short as he was rushed to a hospital, and his collapse also led to the cancellation of the nine shows following the event.

Controversies

Rivalry with Marcus Schossow

In December 2007, Marcus Schossow, Maor Levi and Dj Eco created a project named Deadrat6 as a joke on deadmau5, claiming his tracks sound alike.

Comment about DJs

In an October 2008 interview with the Irish Daily Star, deadmau5 was quoted as follows: ::“It puts me to fucking sleep, to be quite honest; I don’t really see the technical merit in playing two songs at the same speed together and it bores me to fucking tears and hopefully, with all due respect to the DJ type that will fucking go the way of the dinosaur, I'd like them to dis-a-fucking-pear! It's so middle man, they’re like fucking lawyers! You need them, but they’re fucking cunts. God bless them, they’re my number one customer right, so I’m not gonna go dis every fucking DJ. But to say you become this massive, "up on a podium" performer by playing other peoples productions, at the same speed as someone else's productions and fading between the two of them, I don’t get it...”

Zimmerman apologized for this comment on November 4, 2008. He explained that the interview was bad, and that it did not express his opinion about DJs correctly:

::"Let me start by admitting…. I did not grow up in the EDM scene. I don't consider my career to be about “being a DJ”. I don't have “DJ roots”. I never had any intention of becoming a DJ, and my conception of “DJ’s” in general from this standpoint has always been being forced into some nightclub when I would have rather stayed home, and watch some dude mash the “play / stop” button and occasionally move a pitch slider. Love it or hate it... that’s just been my conception of the traditional “DJ”. Mind you, I'm not a total fucking idiot, and I recognize talent when I see it... and there are many talented DJ’s out there for sure. In my eyes, those would be the individuals who utilize technology to deliver the music in ways that are both skillful and innovate, more-so than my vision of the “play/stop/pitch” DJ. To me, the club is about “the party”; the people make the night; the DJ obviously needs to use that to his advantage, it’s give and take."

DirtyCircuit

In 2008, an artist called DirtyCircuit claimed to have been threatened with legal action after using a sample called "LP_Faxing Berlin C_128bpm" that came bundled with FL Studio, and to which deadmau5 claimed copyright. The sample was a direct clip of a full bar of the song. Deadmau5 provided a "Demo Track" which came bundled with FL Studio, along with several loop samples. The case caused a slight discomfort among the users of FL Studio, and some have pointed out potential inconsistencies in the EULA of the software.

Discography

CD Albums

Random Album Title (2008)

For Lack of a Better Name (2009)

4x4=12 (2010)

Digital Releases

Get Scraped (2006)

Vexillology (2006)

Project 56 (2008)

EP's

Everything Is Complicated (2007)

Full Circle (2007)

Compilations

It Sounds Like (2009)

For Lack Of A Better Album Title (2010)

DJ Friendly Mix Albums

At Play (2008)

At Play 2 (2009)

At Play 3 (2010)

Recognitions

Awards

; Juno Awards

2008 Dance Recording of the Year for "All U Ever Want" with Billy Newton-Davis.

2009 Dance Recording of the Year for "Random Album Title".

2010 Dance Recording of the Year, "For Lack of a Better Name".

; Beatport Music Awards

2008 Best Electro House Artist.

2008 Best Progressive House Artist.

2008 Best single for "Not Exactly".

2008 Best remix, 3rd place for Burufunk vs. Carbon Community - "Community Funk" (Deadmau5 Remix).

2009 Best Electro House Artist.

2009 Best Progressive House Artist.

; DJmag.com Top 100 DJs Poll

2008 Highest new entry, voted 11th best DJ.

2009 Voted 6th best DJ.

2010 Climbs two places to 4th best DJ

; International Dance Music Awards (IDMA)

2010 Best Artist (Solo)

2010 Best American DJ

2010 Best Electro Track for "Ghosts 'N' Stuff"

Nominations

2008 Juno Dance Recording of the Year for "After Hours" with Melleefresh

2008 Beatport Music Awards Best Remix of 2007, won as Third Best Remixs 2007 for Burufunk and Carbon Community's "Community Funk" (Deadmau5 Remix).

2009 Grammy Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical ("The Longest Road" (Deadmau5 Remix) by Morgan Page featuring Lissie)

2009 Juno Dance Recording of the Year for "Move For Me" with Kaskade

2009 Juno Dance Recording of the Year for Random Album Title

2010 International Dance Music Award for Best Progressive/Tech Track for "Strobe"

2010 International Dance Music Award for Best Global DJ

2010 International Dance Music Award for Best Producer

2010 International Dance Music Award for Best Video for "Ghosts 'N' Stuff" (Directed by Colin O'Toole)

References

External links

Artist Site at Ultra Records

Category:Canadian house musicians Category:Canadian electronic musicians Category:Canadian DJs Category:Juno Award winners Category:Remixers Category:Musicians from Toronto Category:Ableton Live users Category:1981 births Category:Living people Category:Ultra Records artists

banknote, 1997]] Claude-Achille Debussy () (August 22, 1862 – March 25, 1918) was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was 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. Debussy is among the most important of all French composers, and a central figure in European music of the turn of the 20th century. He was made Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1903.

His music is noted for its sensory component and how it is not often formed around one key or pitch. Often Debussy's work reflected the activities or turbulence in his own life. His music virtually defines the transition from late-Romantic music to 20th 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.

Biography

Early life and studies

Claude Debussy was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, August 22, 1862, the eldest of five children. His father, Manuel-Achille Debussy, owned a shop where he sold china and crockery, and his mother, Victorine Manoury Debussy, was a seamstress. They moved to Paris in 1867. In 1870, his pregnant mother sought refuge from the Franco-Prussian war with a paternal aunt of Claude's in Cannes and it was here that he began piano lessons when he was seven years old with an elderly Italian violinist named Cerutti; his lessons were paid for by his aunt. In 1871, the young Debussy gained the attention of Marie Mauté de Fleurville, who claimed to have been a pupil of Frédéric Chopin, and Debussy always believed her, although there is no independent evidence that she was. His talents soon became evident, and in 1872, at age ten, Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he spent eleven years. During his time there he studied composition with Ernest Guiraud, music history/theory with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, harmony with Émile Durand, piano with Antoine François Marmontel, organ with César Franck, and solfège with Albert Lavignac, as well as other significant figures of the era. He also became lifelong friend of fellow student and noted pianist Isidor Philipp. After Debussy's death, many pianists sought out Philipp for advice on playing his music.

From the start, though clearly talented, Debussy was also argumentative and experimental, and he challenged the rigid teaching of the Academy, favoring instead dissonances and intervals which were frowned upon at the time. Like Georges Bizet, Debussy was a brilliant pianist and an outstanding sight reader, who could have had a professional career as such had he so wished. The pieces he played in public at this time included sonata movements by Beethoven, Schumann and Weber; and Chopin - the Ballade No. 2, a movement from the Piano Concerto No. 1, and the Allegro de concert, a relatively little-known piece but one requiring an advanced technique (it was originally intended to be the opening movement of a third piano concerto).

During the summers of 1880, 1881, and 1882 Debussy accompanied the wealthy patroness of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Nadezhda von Meck, as she traveled with her family in Europe and Russia. The young composer's many musical activities during these vacations included playing four-hand pieces with von Meck at the piano, giving her children music lessons, and performing in private concerts with some of her musician friends. Despite von Meck's closeness with Tchaikovsky, the Russian master appears to have had little or no effect on Debussy. In September 1880 she sent Debussy's Danse bohémienne for Tchaikovsky's perusal. A month later Tchaikovsky wrote back to her, "It is a very pretty piece, but it is much too short. Not a single idea is expressed fully, the form is terribly shriveled, and it lacks unity". Debussy did not publish the piece; the manuscript remained in the von Meck family, and it was sold to B. Schott's Sohne in Mainz, and published by them in 1932. More influential was Debussy's close friendship with Madame Vasnier, a singer he met when he began working as an accompanist to earn some money. She and her husband gave Debussy emotional and professional support. Monsieur Vasnier introduced him to the writings of influential French writers of the time, which gave rise to his first songs, settings of poems by Paul Verlaine, his former teacher Mme. Mauté de Fleurville's son-in-law.

As the winner of the 1884 Prix de Rome with his composition L'enfant prodigue, he received a scholarship to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which included a four-year residence at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome, to further his studies (1885–1887). According to letters to Madame Vasnier, perhaps in part designed to gain her sympathy, he found the artistic atmosphere stifling, the company boorish, the food bad, and the monastic quarters "abominable". Neither did he delight in the pleasures of the "Eternal City", finding the Italian opera of Donizetti and Verdi not to his taste. Debussy was often depressed and unable to compose, but he was inspired by Franz Liszt, whose command of the keyboard he found admirable.

In June 1885, Debussy wrote of his desire to follow his own way, saying, "I am sure the Institute would not approve, for, naturally it regards the path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamoured of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas."

Debussy finally composed four pieces that were sent to the Academy: the symphonic ode Zuleima, based on a text by Heinrich Heine; the orchestral piece Printemps; the cantata La damoiselle élue (1887–1888), which was criticized by the Academy as "bizarre"; and the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra. The third piece was the first in which stylistic features of Debussy's later style emerged. The fourth piece was heavily based on César Franck's music and Debussy withdrew it. The Academy chided him for "courting the unusual" and hoped for something better from the gifted student. Even though Debussy works showed the influence of Jules Massenet, Massenet concluded, "He is an enigma."

In his visits to Bayreuth in 1888-9, Debussy was exposed to Wagnerian opera, which had a lasting impact on his work. Richard Wagner had died in 1883 and the cult of Wagnerism was still in full swing. Debussy, like many young musicians of the time, responded positively to Wagner's sensuousness, mastery of form, and striking harmonies, but ultimately Wagner's extroverted emotionalism was not to be Debussy's way either. Wagner's influence is evident in La damoiselle élue and the 1889 piece Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire|Baudelaire. Other songs of the period, notably the settings of Verlaine—Ariettes oubliées, Trois mélodies, and Fêtes galantes—are all in a more capricious style. Around this time, Debussy met Erik Satie, who proved a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to composition and to naming his pieces. During this period, both musicians were bohemians enjoying the same cafe society and struggling to stay afloat financially.

During 1889, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, Debussy heard Javanese gamelan music. Although direct citations of gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, or ensemble textures have not been identified in any of Debussy's compositions, the equal-tempered pentatonic scale appears in his music of this time and afterward.

Private life

Debussy's private life was often turbulent. At the age of 18 he began an eight-year affair with Blanche Vasnier, wife of a wealthy Parisian lawyer. The relationship eventually faltered following his winning of the Prix de Rome and obligatory incarceration in the eponymous city.

On his permanent return to Paris in 1889, he began a tempestuous nine-year relationship with Gabrielle ('Gaby') Dupont, a tailor's daughter from Lisieux, with whom he cohabited on the Rue Gustave Doré. During this time he also had an affair with the singer Thérèse Roger, to whom he was briefly engaged.

He left Dupont for her friend Rosalie ('Lily') Texier, a fashion model whom he married 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. In 1904, Debussy was introduced to Emma Bardac, wife of Parisian banker Sigismond Bardac, by her son Raoul, one of his students. In contrast to Texier, Bardac was a sophisticate, a brilliant conversationalist, and an accomplished singer. Debussy soon abandoned Texier; distraught, like Dupont before her, she attempted suicide, shooting herself in the chest while standing in the Place de la Concorde. She survived, although the bullet remained lodged in her vertebrae for the rest of her life.

The scandal obliged Debussy and Bardac (already carrying his child) to elope to England, via Jersey, in April 1905. The couple ultimately settled at the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne, where Debussy was to complete his symphonic suite La mer, and celebrate his divorce from Texier on August 2, 1905. Claude and Emma returned to Paris that autumn in time for the birth of their child, a daughter (and the composer's only child), Claude-Emma, on 30 October. More affectionately known as 'Chouchou', Claude-Emma was the dedicatee of Debussy's Children's Corner suite; she outlived her father by scarcely a year, succumbing to the diphtheria epidemic of 1919. Her parents were eventually married in 1908, their troubled union enduring until Debussy's death in 1918. Interestingly, Emma Bardac's earlier daughter Hélène, known as Dolly, was also immortalised in music, in the Dolly Suite by Gabriel Fauré, Emma's lover at the time (1897).

Death

Claude Debussy died of rectal cancer in Paris on March 25, 1918 , in the midst of the aerial and artillery bombardment of the city during the Spring Offensive of World War I. The funeral procession made its way through deserted streets to Père Lachaise cemetery as shells from the German guns ripped into his beloved city. At this time, the military situation in France was desperate, and circumstances did not permit the honour of a public funeral or ceremonious graveside orations. It was just eight months before France would celebrate victory. Debussy's body was reinterred shortly afterwards in the small Cimetière de Passy sequestered behind the Trocadéro; his wife and daughter are buried with him.

Musical style

Rudolph Réti points out these features of Debussy's music, which "established a new concept of tonality in European music": # Glittering passages and webs of figurations which distract from occasional absence of tonality; # Frequent use of parallel chords which are "in essence not harmonies at all, but rather 'chordal melodies', enriched unisons"; # Bitonality, or at least bitonal chords; # Use of the whole-tone and pentatonic scale; # Unprepared modulations, "without any harmonic bridge." He concludes that Debussy's achievement was the synthesis of monophonic based "melodic tonality" with harmonies, albeit different from those of "harmonic tonality".

The application of the term "impressionist" to Debussy and the music he influenced is a matter of intense debate within academic circles. One side argues that the term is a misnomer, an inappropriate label which Debussy himself opposed. In a letter of 1908, he wrote "I am trying to do 'something different'--an effect of reality...what the imbeciles call 'impressionism', a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by the critics, since they do not hesitate to apply it to Turner, the finest creator of mysterious effects in all the world of art." The opposing side argues that Debussy may have been reacting to unfavorable criticism at the time, and the negativity that critics associated with impressionism. It can be argued that he would have been pleased with application of the current definition of impressionism to his music.

List of works

List of compositions by Claude Debussy by category.

List of compositions by Claude Debussy by Lesure Numbers

Early works

, 1893]] Beginning in the 1890s, Debussy developed his own musical language largely independent of Wagner's style, colored in part from the dreamy, sometimes morbid romanticism of the Symbolist Movement. Debussy became a frequent participant at Stéphane Mallarmé's Symbolist gatherings, where Wagnerism dominated the discussion. In contrast to the enormous works of Wagner and other late-romantic composers, however, around this time Debussy chose to write in smaller, more accessible forms. The Deux Arabesques is an example of one of Debussy's earliest works, already developing his musical language. Suite bergamasque (1890) recalls rococo decorousness with a modern cynicism and puzzlement. This suite contains one of Debussy's most popular pieces, Clair de Lune. Debussy's String Quartet in G minor (1893) paved the way for his later, more daring harmonic exploration. In this work he utilized the Phrygian mode as well as less standard scales, such as the whole-tone, which creates a sense of floating, ethereal harmony. Debussy was beginning to employ a single, continuous theme and break away from the traditional A-B-A form, with its restatements and amplifications, which had been a mainstay of classical music since Haydn.

Influenced by Mallarmé, Debussy wrote one of his most famous works, the revolutionary Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, truly original in form and execution. In contrast to the large orchestras so favoured by late-romanticism, Debussy wrote this piece for a smaller ensemble, emphasizing instrumental colour and timbre. Despite Mallarmé himself, and colleague and friend Paul Dukas having been impressed by the piece, it was controversial at its premiere. Prélude subsequently placed Debussy into the spotlight as one of the leading composers of the era.

Middle works

The three Nocturnes (1899), include characteristic studies in veiled harmony and texture as demonstrated in Nuages; exuberance in Fêtes; and whole-tones in Sirènes. Contrasting sharply with Wagnerian opera, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande premiered in 1902, after ten years of work. It would be his only complete opera. Based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, the opera proved to be an immediate success and immensely influential to younger French composers, including Maurice Ravel. These works brought a fluidity of rhythm and colour quite new to Western music.

La Mer (1903–1905) essays a more symphonic form, with a finale that works themes from the first movement, although the middle movement, Jeux de vagues, proceeds much less directly and with more variety of colour. Again, the reviews were sharply divided. Some critics thought the treatment to be less subtle and less mysterious than his previous works and even a step backward. Pierre Lalo complained "I neither hear, nor see, nor feel the sea". Others extolled its "power and charm", its "extraordinary verve and brilliant fantasy", and its strong colors and definite lines.

During this period Debussy wrote much for the piano. The set of pieces entitled Pour le piano (1901) utilises rich harmonies and textures which would later prove important in jazz music. His first volume of Images pour piano (1904–1905) combine harmonic innovation with poetic suggestion: Reflets dans l'eau is a musical description of rippling water; Hommage à Rameau, the second piece, is slow and yearningly nostalgic. It takes as its inspiration a melody from Jean-Philippe Rameau's Castor et Pollux.

The evocative Estampes for piano (1903) give impressions of exotic locations. Debussy came into contact with Javanese gamelan music during the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. Pagodes is the directly inspired result, aiming for an evocation of the pentatonic structures employed by the Javanese music. Debussy wrote his famous Children's Corner Suite (1908) for his beloved daughter, Claude-Emma, whom he nicknamed Chouchou. The suite recalls classicism—the opening piece Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum refers to Muzio Clementi's collection of instructional piano compositions Gradus ad Parnassum, as well as a new wave of American ragtime music. In the popular final piece of the suite, Golliwogg's Cakewalk, Debussy also pokes fun at Richard Wagner by mimicking the opening bars of Wagner's prelude to Tristan und Isolde.

The first book of Préludes (1910), twelve in total, proved to be his most successful work for piano. The Preludes are frequently compared to those of Chopin. Debussy's preludes are replete with rich, unusual and daring harmonies. They include the popular La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair) and La Cathédrale Engloutie (The Engulfed Cathedral). Debussy wanted people to respond intuitively to these pieces and so he placed the titles at the end of each one in the hope that listeners would not make stereotype images as they listened.

Larger scaled works included his orchestral piece Iberia (1907), began as a work for two pianos, a triptych medley of Spanish allusions and fleeting impressions and also the music for Gabriele d'Annunzio's mystery play Le martyre de Saint Sébastien (1911). A lush and dramatic work, written in only two months, it is remarkable in sustaining a late antique modal atmosphere that otherwise was touched only in relatively short piano pieces.

During this period, as Debussy gained more popularity, he was engaged as a conductor throughout Europe, most often performing Pelléas, La Mer, and Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. He was also an occasional music critic to supplement his conducting fees and piano lessons. Debussy avoided analytical dissection and attempts to force images from music, "Let us at all costs preserve this magic peculiar to music, since of all the arts it is most susceptible to magic." He could be caustic and witty, sometimes sloppy and ill-informed. Debussy was for the most part enthusiastic about Richard Strauss and Stravinsky, worshipful of Chopin, Bach and Mozart, and found both Liszt and Beethoven geniuses who sometimes lacked "taste". He also admired the works of Charles-Valentin Alkan. Schubert and Mendelssohn fared much worse, the latter being described as a "facile and elegant notary".

Late works

Debussy's harmonies and chord progressions frequently exploit dissonances without any formal resolution. Unlike in his earlier work, he no longer hides discords in lush harmonies. The forms are far more irregular and fragmented. These chords that seemingly had no resolution were described by Debussy himself as "floating chords", and were used to set tone and mood in many of his works. The whole tone scale dominates much of Debussy's late music.

His two last volumes of works for the piano, the Études (1915) interprets similar varieties of style and texture purely as pianistic exercises and includes pieces that develop irregular form to an extreme as well as others influenced by the young Igor Stravinsky (a presence too in the suite En blanc et noir for two pianos, 1915). The rarefaction of these works is a feature of the last set of songs, the Trois poèmes de Mallarmé (1913), and of the Sonata for flute, viola and harp (1915), though the sonata and its companions also recapture the inquisitive Verlainian classicism.

With the sonatas of 1915–1917, there is a sudden shift in the style. These works recall Debussy's earlier music, in part, but also look forward, with leaner, simpler structures. Despite the thinner textures of the Violin Sonata (1917) there remains an undeniable richness in the chords themselves. This shift parallels the movement commonly known as neo-classicism which became popular after Debussy's death. Debussy planned a set of six sonatas, but this plan was cut short by his death in 1918 so that he only completed three (cello, flute-viola-harp and violin sonatas).

The last orchestral work by Debussy, the ballet Jeux (1912) written for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, contains some of his strangest harmonies and textures in a form that moves freely over its own field of motivic connection. At first Jeux was overshadowed by Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, composed in the same year as Jeux and premiered only two weeks later by the same ballet company. Decades later, composers such as Pierre Boulez and Jean Barraqué pointed out parallels to Anton Webern's serialism in this work. Other late stage works, including the ballets Khamma (1912) and La boîte à joujoux (1913) were left with the orchestration incomplete, and were later completed by Charles Koechlin and André Caplet, who also helped Debussy with the orchestration of Gigues (from Images pour orchestre) and Le martyre de St. Sébastien.

The second set of Preludes for piano (1913) features Debussy at his most avant-garde, where he utilizes dissonant harmonies to evoke specific moods and images. Debussy consciously gives titles to each prelude that amplify the preludes’ tonal ambiguity and dissonance. He utilizes scales such as the whole tone scale, musical modes, and the octatonic scale in his preludes that exaggerate this tonal ambiguity, making the key of each prelude almost indistinguishable at times. The second book of Preludes for piano represents Debussy’s strong interest in the indefinite and esoteric.

Although Pelléas was Debussy's only completed opera, he began several opera projects which remained unfinished, his fading concentration, increasing procrastination, and failing health perhaps the reasons. He had finished some partial musical sketches and some unpublished libretti for operas based on Poe's The Devil in the Belfry (Le diable dans le beffroi, 1902-?1912) and The Fall of the House of Usher (La chute de la maison Usher, 1908–1917) as well as considered projects for operas based on Shakespeare's As You Like It and Joseph Bedier's La Legende de Tristan.

Further plans, such as an American tour, more ballet scores, and revisions of Chopin and Bach works for re-publication, were all cut short by the outbreak of World War I and the onset of colorectal cancer, which required morphine injections to relieve the pain. Debussy underwent one of the first colostomy operations ever performed in December 1915, but this achieved only a temporary respite and occasioned him considerable frustration; he was to liken dressing in the morning to "all the labours of Hercules in one".

Mathematical structuring

Given that Debussy's music is apparently so concerned with mood and colour, one may be surprised to discover that, according to Howat, many of his greatest works appear to have been structured around mathematical models even while using an apparent classical structure such as sonata form. Howat suggests that some of Debussy's pieces can be divided into sections that reflect the golden ratio, frequently by using the numbers of the standard Fibonacci sequence. Sometimes these divisions seem to follow the standard divisions of the overall structure. In other pieces they appear to mark out other significant features of the music. The 55 bar-long introduction to 'Dialogue du vent et la mer' in La Mer, for example, breaks down into 5 sections of 21, 8, 8, 5 and 13 bars in length. The golden mean point of bar 34 in this structure is signalled by the introduction of the trombones, with the use of the main motif from all three movements used in the central section around that point. It can be inferred that from the Russians “Debussy acquired his taste for ancient and oriental modes and for vivid colorations, and a certain disdain for academic rules.” Although it is not known what it is meant by this statement, one can observe in his music a careful use of orchestral, textural, and harmonic 'shading'.

Influence on later composers

Claude Debussy is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. His harmonies, considered radical in his day, were influential to almost every major composer of the 20th century, especially the music of Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen, Béla Bartók, Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, and the minimalist music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass as well as the influential Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. He also influenced many important figures in Jazz, most notably George Gershwin, Bill Evans, George Shearing, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Herbie Hancock and Jimmy Giuffre. Furthermore, he had a profound impact on contemporary soundtrack composers such as John Williams because Debussy's colorful and suggesting style translated easily into an emotional language for use in motion picture scores. In 1999, The Art of Noise released a concept album titled "The Seduction of Claude Debussy". The group blended the music of Debussy with drum and bass, opera, hip hop, jazz, and narration, and described the album as "the soundtrack to a film that wasn't made about the life of Claude Debussy". In 2000, the band released Reduction, a limited-edition album composed mainly of outtakes from this album.

Leopold Stokowski, in an article, pointed out the identification of composers including Debussy with the music of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, providing an inspiration for non-contrapuntal music.

Media

Eponyms

Claude Debussy has posthumously given his names to a number of discoveries. These include:

Debussy Heights, a heights at Ravel Peak which was discovered in 1960;

Debussy, an impact crater on Mercury which was discovered in 1969;

4492 Debussy, a main belt asteroid which was discovered in 1988.

Recordings

Debussy participated in a handful of recordings, made in 1904, with soprano Mary Garden. He also made some piano rolls for Welte Mignon in 1913.

References

Sources

Further reading

Lücke, Hendrik (2005): Mallarmé - Debussy. Eine vergleichende Studie zur Kunstanschauung am Beispiel von „L'Après-midi d'un Faune“. (= Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, Bd. 4). Dr. Kovac, ISBN 3-8300-1685-9.

James Ross, "Pelléas et Mélisande: The 'Nouveau Prophete'?", Crisis and Transformation: French Opera, Politics and the Press (Oxford University D.Phil. Thesis, 1998), pp. 164–208.

R.S. Parks : The Music of Claude Debussy (New Haven, 1989)

R.L. Smith, ed.: Debussy Studies (Cambridge, 1997)

R. Nichols : The Life of Debussy (Cambridge, 1998)

M. Baigent : The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail (G.B 1983)

External links

Claude Debussy Catalogue chronologique

Documentary film about Claude Debussy

Music scores

Public domain scores Debussy's Scores + Audio

www.kreusch-sheet-music.net Free Scores by Debussy

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