In Commemoration Of The Centennial Of French Composer Claude Debussy's Death (1862-1918)-The End Of An Era

In Commemoration Of The Centennial Of French Composer Claude Debussy's Death (1862-1918)-The End Of An Era

By Fritz Taylor

I am a child of rock and roll having come of age in the 1950s when names like Elvis, Carl Perkins, Big Joe Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis lit up the firmament, gave meaning to me and what I found out later was to a lot of my generation from places far from Fulton County down in Georgia where Taylors have lived for generations. I was and am still somewhat clueless about classical music, about highbrow music which is somewhat like the right way to put what we thought of such music. (I won’t say the real thing since I don’t want to offend any highbrow types who might peruse this publication. So I was fit to be tied ( I am being polite)  when site manager Greg Green decided I would be the perfect person to have put his name, his good name I will have you know on a commemoration piece in the centennial year of the death of the composer Achille-Claude Debussy over in France in 1918.

Here is Greg’s reasoning though which told me a lot about Greg and will tell you something too. 1918 was also the year that Leonard Bernstein was born and he came up with, or somebody came up with, the bright idea that the pair should be book-ended with Debussy as the end of old time impressionist-etched  classical music favored before World War I (my usual reference point for 1918) and Bernstein’s as the new age aborning take on classical music -for the masses. And with that slight observation I can say no more on this subject. Nor will I.