Claude-Achille Debussy was music’s quietest revolutionary. Most of the great upheavals in the art of music have been noisy. Think of Monteverdi with his clattering stile concitato evoking the sounds ...

In the western suburbs of Paris 150 years ago today, a boy was born to an unassuming couple, proprietors of a china shop who had no great taste for music. But that little boy felt otherwise, and grew ...

Chromatic third-relations, understood not merely as chromatic mediants (and submediants) but as a more comprehensive array of chromatic arpeggiations, constitute an essential element in Debussy's ...

Composer Claude Debussy was not a natural at the piano. At first, he struggled to learn to love the instrument. But as he continued to write piano music, Debussy started trying new things, new sounds.

Claude Debussy is increasingly regarded as the most important composer of the twentieth century, even though he died before the end of World War I. This year, the 150 th anniversary of his birth, more ...

Musical composition is based on a ruse. Ten seconds of music can hide 10 weeks of anguished pen-work. One lively theme can sit on the grave of 20 erased precursors. The ruse of writing points to a key ...

A few weeks ago, a new recording of Claude Debussy and Jean-Philippe Rameau works by Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson arrived in the mail courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon. I wondered at the pairing ...

Achille-Claude Debussy (22nd August 1862 – 25th March 1918) was a French composer. He was one of the most important figures in music at the turn of the last century; his music represents the ...

Claude Debussy is increasingly regarded as the most important composer of the twentieth century, even though he died before the end of World War I. This year, the 150 th anniversary of his birth, more ...