Claude Debussy Honored With Google Doodle For His ‘Clair De Lune’

Classical music French composer Claude Debussy is honored with a doodle by Google today for his famous piece “Clair de Lune.”

August 22 marks the musician’s 151th birthday anniversary, and Google has decided this warrants a special doodle, which is actually a video of a moonlit riverside scene through what appears to be a French city.

This is the third movement in the piano sonata “Clair de Lune,” which translates into moonlight, and is one of Debussy’s best known pieces of work and most recognized.

The scene in the doodle continues to Debussy’s music and shows two people who meet and share a red umbrella, which stands out in the dark of night, only illuminated by the moonlight.

Achille-Claude Debussy was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France on August 22, 1862, the eldest of five children. The family moved to Paris in 1867, but, in 1870, due to the Prussian-Franco War, they found refuge in the coastal city of Cannes, where his aunt had a home.

At age 7, Debussy began taking piano lessons, paid by his aunt, with an Italian violinist. In 1871, 9-year-old Claude caught the eye of a former student of world renowned violinist Frederic Chopin.

By the time he was 10-years-old it was apparent that he was not your ordinary piano student and in 1872 he enrolled in the Paris Conservatory, where he would spend the next 11 years of his life.

Claude Debussy/Wikipedia

During his stay at the Conservatory he studied composition, music history and theory, harmony, and piano, with many significant music figures of those times.

Debussy and another French composer, Maurice Ravel, are considered the most prominent musicians of the Impressionist Era.

Other important work include “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune” (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, 1894), the opera “Pelléas et Mélisande”, and “La Mer” (The Sea).

Today’s Google doodle honoree, Claude Debussy died of colon cancer in Paris on March 18, 1918.