Debussy and His World

Claude Debussy's Paris was factionalized, politicized, and litigious. It was against this background of ferment and change that Debussy rethought his music. This text aims to capture the complexity of the composer's restless personal and artistic identity within the context of fin-de-siecle Paris.

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Claude Debussy's Paris was factionalized, politicized, and litigious. It was against this background of ferment and change - which characterized French society and music from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I -that Debussy re-thought music. This book describes the complexity of the composer's restless personal and artistic identity within the new picture emerging of the musical, social, and political world of fin-de-si cle Paris. Debussy's setting did not simply mold his style. Rather, it challenged him to define a style and then to revamp it again and again as he situated himself simultaneously via the present and the past. These essays trace Debussy's perpetual reinvention, both social and creative, from his earliest to his last works. They explore tensions and contradictions in his best-known compositions and examine lesser-known pieces that reveal new aspects of Debussy's creative appropriation from poetry, painting, and non-Western music. The contributors reveal the extent to which Debussy's personal and professional lives were intertwined and sometimes in conflict. Belonging to no one group or class, but crossing many, Debussy abjured the orthodox.
A maverick who reviled