Debussy
CLAUDE ACHILLE, French composer, born at St. Germainen-Laye, Aug. 22, 1862. Educated at the Paris Conservatoire, winning the grand DECADE prix de Rome in 1884 with a cantata, "L'Enfant Prodigue." From Rome he sent a setting of Rossetti's Blessed Damozel, which was refused by the Institut because of its excessive modernity of style. The rebuff only made him the more determined to adhere to his convictions. His most important compositions are: a "prelude symphonique" to Mallarmé's Afternoon of a Faun; orchestral pieces, "Clouds," "Fêtes," and "Sirens"; settings for poems of Verlaine and Baudelaire; a piano suite, "Images"; and his chief work, a lyric drama on Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande, given at Paris, April 30, 1902, and performed with remarkable success at the Manhattan Opera House, New York, Feb. 19, 1908.
Among his other compositions may be mentioned "The Sea," "Spring," "Three Nocturnes," "Prose Lyrics," etc. He died in 1918.
DECADE (dek'ad) is sometimes used for the number 10 or for an aggregate of 10. The books of Livy's Roman History are divided into decades. In the French Revolution, decades, each consisting of 10 days, took the place of weeks in the division of the year. The term is now usually applied to an aggregate of 10 years.