Claude Debussy

“Pour le piano”

July 12-17, 2026

Instructors: Michelle Fillion and Bruce Vogt

For Claude Debussy (1862-1918) the piano was a center of his creative life. He began his musical career as a gifted piano prodigy at the Paris Conservatoire in the class of Antoine Marmontel, a one-time Chopin associate. The years of intense academic study soured the young man to the life of a travelling virtuoso, however, and turned him to his primary calling as a composer. Yet his mastery and understanding of the resources of the piano permeated his solo and ensemble piano music and songs as he navigated the transition from late romanticism to early modernism.

Debussy’s aspiration to liberate music from the “barren traditions that stifle it” and create “an open-air art, boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea” challenges the Debussy pianist to capture his free explorations of musical time, harmonic ambiguity, and shifting colors. It also connects him to the work of his French contemporaries and associates in the fields of Symbolist poetry and Impressionist art, and to the world culture that he absorbed in his travels and study. His observation that music is “the space between the notes” is no mere witty aphorism. It calls on us to look beyond the musical score to evoke the images, poetry, and feelings concealed beyond the notation. Essential to this are the specific skills in accentuation, dynamics, and pedaling that go into the “Debussy sound.”

This summer course will meet daily for six sessions of two hours each, and will be shared by musicologist Michelle Fillion and pianist Bruce Vogt. Each class will be devoted to a single topic. It will begin with a presentation by Michelle dealing with selected music in its cultural context, and will be followed by two or three performances of related music by course participants with commentary by Bruce. Topics will include biography, instruments, performance practices, harmony and style, sound painting, and Debussy’s relation to his contemporaries, including Fauré, Ravel, and Satie. The repertoire will be selected to resonate with the music to be performed by class participants.

In order to perform in class, your selected work must be well and thoughtfully prepared at a “masterclass” level. This should not be an occasion to test repertoire in the early stages of preparation or that are beyond you at the present. You will be more likely to be selected if you seek out less frequently performed works. Remember that if five people submit “Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum,” for example, only one person will be selected to play. We may select one or two people to play a work by Fauré, Ravel, or Satie. Please do not submit a long list: two or three options maximum, please.

We will also have one day devoted to four-hand or two-piano repertoire. Please let us know if you don’t have a partner taking the course and we will compile a list of those interested.

If you need some advice in selecting suitable repertoire, feel free to contact either Bruce ([email protected]) or Michelle ([email protected]). We will also be adding a list of possible repertoire to this site early in the new year. Please submit your repertoire proposal of one or two works to Michelle and Bruce by May 15.

Please note that this is not a masterclass, and that not all participants will have an opportunity to perform. Performers will be selected according to the relevance of their piece(s) to the day’s topic.