Chie Yoshinaka, violinist
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Claude Debussy's Birthplace

7/13/2014

2 Comments

 
 In 1862 a great French impressionism composer was born in St-Germain-en-Laye, a suburb of Paris. His birth house is now a museum (and the town’s tourist info center: 38, rue au Pain). Debussy is one of my most favorite composers and while I was in Paris I had to go visit this museum.

 It was just about a 20 minute train ride from the center of Paris (RER A1 to the end of  the line) and was very accessible.  

The town has a castle called Château-Vieux, which Louis VI built in the 12th century. Louis XIV was born in St-Germain-en-Laye and he loved this castle.
 Now, back to the topic; here is the museum/tourist info center! It's within a five-minute walk from the train stop and the castle.
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Debussy’s parents had a ceramic store here and the family lived here until Claude was two years old. The museum offers his personal belongings.
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His family portraits and his own walking cane
His concert attire when he conducted
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Collection of Asian art (French impressionism was influenced by Asian art) and other personal belongings
His manuscripts; you see how neatly he wrote? You can tell a lot about each composer by looking at their manuscripts.
His death mask
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And apparantly he was obsessed with frogs! There were two big frog figurines in the museum.
Picture
2 Comments
Nick Rastegar
7/13/2014 06:29:33 am

Looks like you could actually read his manuscripts, unlike Beethoven!

Reply
Chie Yoshinaka
7/13/2014 08:14:41 pm

That's true -- I almost mentioned Beethoven's handwriting in this post as a comparison :-) Great minds think alike!

Reply



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