Debussy and His World

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 captures 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-siècle Paris.


Debussy's setting did not simply mold his style. Rather, it ...