This chapter uses music analysis to understand two different strategies for unfolding musical material from initial ideas, one by Debussy and the other by Schoenberg. This approach considers how pieces might be formed from a small fragment of musical ‘DNA’ for a composer to expand, before looking further to understand this process of ‘unfolding’ are shaped by different aesthetic, cultural and historical conditions.

Debussy’s creative world was deeply enmeshed in the cultural field of the French capital. Steeped in a post-Enlightenment worldview centred on exploration, accumulation of knowledge, and scientific discovery, no aspect of human experience and its habitats was deemed out of bounds in this path to creative accretion. Like many of his contemporaries, Debussy became fascinated by a wealth of new ideas about the world and the human condition that exploded onto the scene during his lifetime. Mysticism and occultism expanded the horizon within which to understand the mind and its creative potential; archaeological discoveries from Greece and Rome brought alive a past that belied the bland classicism so revered only decades earlier; and a rich smorgasbord of historical research – one that encompassed music and its practice – provided new materials from the foreign worlds of medieval, if not mythical, pasts. Over the course of Debussy’s life, these currents were woven together into the conceptual framework that sustained his creative world and that he claimed continually to renew rather than reproduce.

Marcel Dietschy declared, early in his centenary biography La Passion de Claude Debussy, that there was a woman at every crossroads in Debussy’s life. Years later, William Ashbrook and Margaret Cobb chose to omit many of Dietschy’s ‘effusive personal comments’ about the composer’s love life from their updated, more ‘objective’ 1990 translation. In trying to navigate the avenues by which myriad ideas and cultures of dance intersect with that context, a slight reframing of Dietschy’s romantic conceit suggests a useful guiding thread. At a time when musicologists seek to complicate individualistic focus on ‘great men’ with attention to the countless Others who aided their practice, this chapter notes the central role various foreign women played, directly and indirectly, in the dance worlds that impinged upon this compositional œuvre. From the outset, it frames the œuvre against the historical evolution of several overlapping worlds of dance, beginning with Debussy’s first publication, in Moscow in 1880, which was a four-hand arrangement of three characteristic dances from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s first ballet, Le Lac des cygnes (1875–6) – a direct emergence from his youthful sojourns at the piano with Tchaikovksy’s patron Nadezhda von Meck. A few short decades after this, a last work written expressly for dance, the unfinished children’s ballet La Boîte à joujoux of 1913, serves as an illustration of the new possibilities that had by then emerged for the art form.

This chapter explores the fascination with things Japanese (the term japonisme was first coined in 1872), which manifested itself in many ways, not least through the collecting of objets d’art – an obsession of Debussy’s. It will examine other ‘orientalisms’ and the role of the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in promoting them. This chapter intersects with Debussy’s interests in a number of ways. His attendance at the Exposition Universelle was seminal to his future development, not least in alerting him to musical cultures remote from his own. However, whilst we can hear the influence of these experiences in his music, Debussy was also a fanatical collector and browser of shops specialising in exotic products. He would often spend housekeeping money on objects for his collection, much to the despair of his partners. This chapter reflects changing consumption in France.

From what can be inferred from the composer’s correspondence and writings, Debussy was indifferent to political debate. It is noteworthy that the names of politicians are virtually absent from his letters, and that none of the major affairs or terrorist episodes that shook French public opinion are the subject of his public or private writings. This chapter describes France’s volatile politics and the impact of the Prussian invasion, the Commune (1871), the Dreyfus affair, the First World War, and other events that shaped the country. Relations with Germany and the catastrophe of the First World War are discussed. Although Debussy was directly affected by some political events, for example his father’s involvement in the Commune, he comes across as fairly apathetic in his few political pronouncements.

This chapter reflects on the class system and economic background of Debussy’s youth and the implications they had for his education. Given that he received little formal education until he entered the Paris Conservatoire, there is ample opportunity here to assess how typical this background was, or if it was shaped by the parents’ unusual circumstances. Arising out of this, there is a discussion of contemporary conceptions of the family, both at the time of Debussy’s childhood and in the twentieth century, when he became head of a small family and had to cope with the consequences (he apparently coped badly much of the time and resented the demands of family life). Despite his ardent desire to make up for everything he did not have as a child, Debussy struggled to reconcile the demands of his family with his professional aspirations at a time when men were increasingly expected to participate in and enjoy family life. Whether his struggles emanated from his artistic aspirations or his self-centred character, Debussy’s personal and professional choices were undoubtedly shaped by the circumstances of his upbringing and the increasing importance accorded to the family in French society during his lifetime.

Debussy’s operatic aesthetic is defined as much in relation to the traditional genres of French opera as in relation to Wagner or naturalism. His style is built by both assimilation and opposition – the two processes can be simultaneous. The assimilation process, considered as a more or less visible and conscious form of appropriation, is the most commented on in the case of Pelléas et Mélisande: what Wagnerian processes does Debussy retain in his score? How does he integrate earlier styles into his writing? What elements of Russian music may have influenced him? And so on. The opposition process is less often analysed, for it is not confined to the rejection of a work, but hinges on this work by responding negatively to its musical concepts. With Debussy, negation becomes a powerful creative operation. One of the peculiarities of his personality is radicalism, amplified by the search for an ideal and uniqueness. To write is to gradually eliminate the easy solutions, the surplus, the conventions.

Paul Dukas believed that the strongest influence that Debussy came under was that of writers, not composers. Writers were also prominent in his friendship circles, and this chapter outlines the importance of these circles to Debussy’s musical development. So many French composers have been influenced by artists of all types at least as much as by their musical peers, and Debussy was no exception to this. Perhaps surprisingly for someone so personally reserved, his face-to-face encounters with writers were at least as important to him as the time he spent reading their books. But as a collaborator, he was far better at discussing projects than actually completing them: Debussy’s list of projected theatrical works is considerably longer than his list of achievements in this sphere. His personal connections with writers started with the odd coincidence that Debussy’s first piano teacher was Paul Verlaine’s mother-in-law, Antoinette Mauté de Fleurville; her daughter, Mathilde, and the poet lived under her roof when the nine-year-old Debussy studied with her.

In the nineteenth century, French musical activity was mostly structured around opera. It is hard for us to imagine the extraordinary influence it exerted over composers, the press, and consumers of music and performance. It was everywhere, not just in the theatres dedicated to it, but also in concerts and salons, resulting in a truly operatic culture. Piano music, as demonstrated by Liszt, was deeply indebted to opera through reductions, transcriptions, fantasies, variations, and pots-pourris of all sorts. Vocal models also affected the performance and composition of instrumental melodies by many composers. In hyper-centralised France, the heart of this world was Paris in the handful of theatres devoted to opera, which produced most of the original works. The French operatic system functioned with a centre and periphery: there was a producer (the capital) and a multitude of receivers (the provincial towns). This chapter is devoted to Paris’s operatic institutions during Debussy’s lifetime. It broadly considers how they were financed, the ways in which they could make or break composers’ careers, and what was entailed in gaining access to their privileged stages. It also enumerates the differences between the operatic institutions.

Debussy’s extensive vocal music spans his entire career. This chapter places it in the context of the work of Debussy’s contemporaries, focusing on the art of singing as it was practised both in art and popular music. Debussy’s strong predilection for song cycles conceived as triptychs is also discussed at length, and an important comparison drawn with the composer most often linked to Debussy, Maurice Ravel.

In the decades since his death, Debussy has become a cultural icon – a symbol of music’s modernity. He has been immortalised by a monument in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, a museum in his hometown of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and a bust in the Théâtre national de l’Opéra-Comique. His portrait even appeared on a twenty-franc banknote. Over the past few years, Debussy’s stock has only risen. In 2011, New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini ranked him the fifth greatest composer of all time, behind Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert. This chapter ranges widely over many aspects of Debussy’s reputation and legacy.

In recent decades the interest in ‘period performance’ has moved beyond the Classical and early Romantic periods to embrace early twentieth-century composers, including Debussy. Beginning in the 1990s with recordings on pianos with which he would have been familiar, the movement has extended to his works in other genres. This chapter looks briefly at some of the major developments in period recordings of the composer’s piano music, mélodies, and orchestral works. The best of these recordings show that in hearing these pieces on the instruments of his day we may gain new insights into his compositional and scoring choices as well as his own performance practice. In short, hearing performances on these instruments allows us new insights into the composer’s sound-world and also throws potential light on reasons behind some of his compositional choices in particular works.

Although losing more and more ground to German firms in the 1880s, the large French music publishing houses, such as Hartmann, Heugel, Choudens, and Durand, played a predominant role in French musical life by distributing all kinds of music, from the most popular to the most learned, as well as numerous adaptations and transcriptions, for example when an opera or a work was a huge success. Apart from those publishing houses that dominated the French market, the Parisian market was teeming with small publishers. Before being supported by Georges Hartmann in 1894, the young Debussy tried to have his works published by all sorts of publishers, from the most prestigious, such as Durand or Choudens, to the least known, such as Paul Dupont. Jacques Durand was a both a friend and business associate during the latter part of Debussy’s life, for he took over the publishing of Debussy’s music and helped him out in many ways. Their extensive correspondence is consequently revealing.

Following the Franco-Prussian War, Paris regained its former position as an important international cultural centre. This chapter addresses Debussy’s cultural position in relation to the historical framework of the Franco-Russian Cultural Alliance. Within this context, many Russians had already come to Paris around the time of the Exposition Universelle of 1889, including Glazunov, Scriabin, Fokine, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, Stravinsky, and others. The first French concerts of Mussorgsky’s music occurred at the 1878 Exposition Universelle. By 1890, the influence of the Russian ‘Mighty Five’ can be traced in the pentatonic/diatonic modalities of Russian folk music in Debussy’s compositions. The Russian impact is apparent in Debussy’s piano music and it. The chapter offers a relational study of how Debussy’s life and works were connected to the broader web of Parisian and French interactions with the world, with a specific focus on Franco-Russian and Franco-Spanish exchanges.

This chapter discusses the prosperity and independence of women in French society at the fin de siècle. Debussy’s upward social mobility from his humble roots to the bourgeoisie was accompanied by attitudes about women that remained conservative and traditional, as many of his comments about women indicate no acceptance of equality. As a means of situating Debussy’s music within a broader network of concerns and debates about gender at the fin de siècle, this chapter, after an overview of gender relations at the turn of the century, turns its attention to an examination of of published examples women’s critical reactions to Debussy’s music while the composer was still alive.

Unless one had a personal fortune like Ernest Chausson, it was difficult for composers at the end of the nineteenth century to live solely from their profession. Most of the time they supplemented their income through a position at the Paris Conservatoire or in a musical institution, such as the Paris Opéra, or by making a living as a performer. However, Debussy throughout his life did not fall into any of these categories. The comparison with composers who won the Prix de Rome in Debussy’s lifetime is very enlightening in this respect. Reading Debussy’s correspondence might suggest that he was a poorly paid composer who was always short of money. If in the first years of his career he had a difficult time of it, he became, thanks to Pelléas et Mélisande, a famous musician enjoying a comfortable income. A change in lifestyle linked to his remarriage and a difficult divorce, plus the absence of other operas in his catalogue, explain the spiral of indebtedness that kept increasing right up to the end of his life.

During this period consumerism developed apace, so that the society of Debussy’s world closely resembles our own in its fondness for shopping as a form of recreation. This was due in part to growing prosperity, at least amongst the middle classes, and increased leisure time. Fine dining, though hardly new, was also an aspect of growing consumerism. Debussy was a product of his time in his fondness for good food and collecting it. from local dealers. Especially pertinent to Debussy is the manner in which music was consumed as a leisure activity, for he catered for the demand for ‘leisure’ music in his early songs and piano works. Developing rapidly in this period of prosperity and stability was tourism, which Debussy participated in, if not from choice, certainly from the preferences of his wives and mistresses. Understanding this part of Debussy’s environment and appreciating Paris’s centrality on the European map (with many borrowings from Great Britain, including afternoon tea and whisky, both much to Debussy’s taste) throws light on Debussy the man as he negotiated the free time that many periods of inactivity as a musician created.

Debussy numbered himself among the army of critics commenting on Paris’s burgeoning musical life. This chapters sets this criticism and other writing in context by relating the writings to the organs in which they appeared and the causes they often sought to promote. Not only was Debussy an active and often brilliant critic for two periods in his life, he also both benefitted and suffered from critical activity. He even numbered a critic or two among his correspondents and friends. Debussy’s attraction to writing music criticism was largely as a source of income, but his writings left their mark on the imagination of his contemporaries, not least because they contain aspects of his thought and, through his elliptical style, raise and sometimes resolve problems of musical aesthetics.

The arts were loosely defined by a plethora of ‘-isms’ in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. None is more often associated with Debussy than Impressionism. Even recent scholarship is still disposed to position him as an Impressionist composer. Whilst much work has been done to disentangle Debussy from the tag and align him in relation to, among others, Hellenistic paintings (around the time of the Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune [it.]), Symbolist painting, and the English Pre-Raphaelites, it is important to understand what has been intended by the term ‘musical Impressionism’, how it came to be associated with Debussy, and his usually hostile response to being thus categorised.

Wagner’s influence was enormous in the period up to the start of the First World War, and even then it did not disappear altogether. His musical impact on Debussy has been widely explored and discussed, but this chapter surveys the broader context for Wagner in France. His presence is felt in the development of psychoanalysis, the French novel, painting, and, of course, in music. Wagnerism paradoxically challenged France’s sense of identity and yet was used to reinforce the emergence of a distinctly French voice. It is often said that the Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire (1890) – difficult music for both listeners and performers – marked the high water of Wagnerian influence on Debussy’s style, but this chapter shows that it is more compelling to speak of creative manipulation than of imitation.