This year marks the centenary of the death of one of the most influential composers of the 20th century, Claude Debussy. Pianist Una Hunt joined Sean Rocks to celebrate the life and work of a trailblazer who refused to play by the rules.
"I think he was already a rebel when he was at the Paris Conservatoire. I think they already thought he was a bit off the wall."
Of his unmistakable style, Una said,
"He paints a picture. I think he's very painterly… He felt he was much more in tune with literature and poetry, particularly the symbolist poets. Those were the people that were a big influence on him and yet, I think he was a strange little man probably as well. I think there's an awful lot of impressionism in his music whether he liked it or not!"
While his compositions took music into whole new direction and caused waves all over the European scene, his personal life was no less dramatic.
"It was all very turbulent. I mean for instance he was having double relationships then he went off with his girlfriend's friend and he eventually married her because she said she was going to commit suicide if he didn't marry her. Then he hooked up with a woman called Emma Bardac, she was the wife of a successful banker. They went away on holiday to Jersey together. When he came back he told his wife that he was leaving her and she very publically tried to shoot herself. She did shoot herself with a revolver in the Place de la Concorde however she survived with the bullet lodged in her vertebrae for the rest of her life."
The ensuing scandal lost Debussy a lot of friends but out of the relationship came his greatest love, his daughter Claude-Emma.
"His little daughter was born then that October. She was known then as Chouchou and in fact, she was probably the person that he loved most in his entire life. She was the dedicatee of his fantastic Children's Corner suite which I'm sure you know so well."
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