The barline is a ubiquitous feature of musical notation. It appears throughout Debussy’s music, just as it does in the music of Mozart and Stravinsky. The barline has myriad functions and can produce diverse responses. It may be an audible component of musical notation or rather the trigger for an audible event or performers may go out of their way to render it inaudible. Debussy’s arabesque-like melodic lines and flowing parallel chords seem to invite the interpreter to overlook the barline and seek cues for agogic stress or accent elsewhere in the notation. However, a tendency on the part of some performers to delay the arrival of the first beat after a barline produces its own form of stress, which may not be supported by duration or accent. This chapter explores changing performance styles, drawing evidence from the earliest recordings of Debussy to the most recent.