Claude Debussy

Achille-Claude Debussy (August 22, 1862 – March 25, 1918) was a composer of European classical music. He developed the style commonly referred to as Impressionist music. Debussy's music represents the transition from late-romantic music to 20th century music.

Musical style

Claude Debussy is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. His harmonies, considered radical in his day, were influential to almost every major composer of the 20th century.

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Rudolph Réti points out these features of Debussy's music which "established a new concept of tonality in European music":

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• Frequent use of long pedal points
• Glittering passages and webs of figurations which distract from occasional absence of tonality
• Frequent use of parallel chords which are "in essence not harmonies at all, but rather 'chordal melodies', enriched unisons."
• Bitonality, or at least bitonal chords
• "Use of the whole-tone scale."
• Unprepared modulations, "without any harmonic bridge."

He concludes that Debussy's achievement was the synthesis of monophonic based "melodic tonality" with harmonies, albeit different from those of "harmonic tonality". (Reti, 1958)

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