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.

In the years around 1900, Paris was home to three major, well-established orchestras, each of which had its loyal patrons. While there were some differences in programming philosophy, concerts of all three ensembles generally featured an eclectic mix of music of different genres and from different eras. The abundance of concert music would have astonished listeners from the years before the Franco-Prussian War, when there was relatively little interest in non-theatrical music, and even less in such music by French composers. This situation changed after L’année terrible, which resulted in much national soul-searching in France and led to a new mood of sobriety. Musically, this was manifested in increased interest in orchestral and chamber music. The Société nationale de musique was founded in 1871 to encourage the production of such ‘pure’ music by French composers. Over the next several decades, it offered a venue where composers could present their latest creations before a select and appreciative audience. Debussy was an active member of the SN after 1888 and some of his most significant works were introduced at its concerts. But because its concerts were generally open only to members and invited guests, the SN had very little impact on public taste. Most new French orchestral music was premiered not at SN concerts, but at those of the orchestral concerts led by Jules Pasedeloup, Édouard Colonne, and Charles Lamoureux, all of whom performed a great deal of music by French composers in the years after the Franco-Prussian War. By the 1890s, however, growing public interest in Wagner’s music and the popularity of music by an earlier generation of French composers let to decreased opportunities for younger French composers. Debussy proved to be a rare exception and, especially after the success of Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, his music appeared frequently on the concerts of all the Parisian orchestral societies.

Since the early 1880s, Paris had become a place where it was possible to be ‘modern’. In the arts, by Modernism we mean a vast movement based on the concept of modernity appealing to the notions of evolution, progress, independence, freedom, and also resistance to certain social and economic change. Modernism in art in the broadest sense will constantly evolve and take many forms. Thus, if Symbolism and Impressionism dominated the Debussyan sphere, many other movements marked the period (1880–1914) and they aroused varied reactions on the composer’s part, ranging from the sincerest interest to the most pronounced rejection. To be interested in Modernism in the world of Debussy is therefore to be as interested in Neo-Impressionism, Fauvism, Orphism, Cubism, Naturalism, and even in Futurism. Art Nouveau (Modern Style) is given its due in this broad context. Debussy was particularly sensitive to the style and possessed a magnificent Art Nouveau lamp by the English firm Benson & Co., which he probably bought at the Siegfried Bing gallery Maison de l’Art Nouveau (Bing was a great proponent of Art Nouveau).

Aside from the ever-dominant Opéra, Parisian musical life came to be liberally enriched with orchestral performances during Debussy’s lifetime. Whilst one or two of the orchestras catered to the ‘pops’ end of public taste, others were important in premiering and promoting works by French composers. They also exhibit the tension and torn loyalties between French and German music, especially the music of Wagner. This chapter describes some of the music composed for orchestra during Debussy’s lifetime and shows how his orchestral works fit into this context. Debussy’s epoch-making orchestral music drew an extensive and sophisticated network of roots from the symphonic repertoire that dominated contemporary concert culture. As exemplified by the Faune, Nocturnes, and La Mer, the composer appealed to a wide range of eminently familiar generic, formal, topical, and rhetorical devices, synthesising, recombining, recontextualising, and reimagining them to suit his own aesthetic priorities