New Delhi: Celebrating the 151th birthday of French composer Claude Debussy, Google has posted an animated doodle on its homepage, which features a riverside scene. The lights on the houses by the riverside turn off and on synchronised to the piano strings playing Claude Debussy's 'Clair de lune'. On his 151st birth anniversary, we bring you the top 10 interesting facts about him:
1. He grew up in a poverty-stricken suburb of Paris but then came under the the patronage of a Russian millionairess.
2. It is said that Claude Debussy was argumentative and experimental from the start.
3. He fell in love with a beautiful young wife of an architect, who was also a singer and his love for her inspired many of his early musical compositions. The 'Clair de lune' played on the Google doodle is a composition from Claude Debussy's early period.
4. Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard described Claude Debussy as a "hedonist" of sound.
5. Debussy was admired and appreciated for his "deep intensity, soft sensuality and incredible precision".
6. "He adored food, women and he adored music, and when you hear his music you hear sounds that are incredibly well put together and highly inspiring," Aimard said.
7. Debussy was granted a state scholarship Grand Prix de Rome to pursue his creative work and was given a three-year stay at the Villa Medici in Rome, but finding the life there too magnificent for his liking he fled from there after two years and returned to Paris.
8. Claude Debussy's works were influenced by Richard Wagner, Aleksandr Borodin and Modest Mussorgsky.
9. Following the birth of his daughter, Debussy moved to England to avoid the scandal and subsequently married his daughter's mother. During that period he wrote a piano suite Children's Corner for his daughter.
10. Claude Debussy died from rectal cancer on March 25, 1918 in Paris.
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