Claude Debussy

France, 1888–1918

French composer (1862-1918) whose use of whole-tone and modal harmony and emphasis on timbre moved away from German Romantic structure. His work is generally described as musical Impressionism.

MusicRoots documents 3 artists who influenced Claude Debussy and 20 artists Claude Debussy influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.

Who influenced Claude Debussy?

• Modest Mussorgsky — Mussorgsky was the harmonic and dramatic model Debussy discovered through the opera Boris Godunov.
• Richard Wagner — Wagner's chromatic harmony was something Debussy both absorbed in his youth and later consciously pushed away from.
• Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina — Hearing Palestrina's Holy Week music, Debussy exclaimed 'that is music!'; the unhurried modal lines feed the choral writing of his own sacred and a cappella pieces.

Which artists did Claude Debussy influence?

• George Gershwin — Debussy's harmony was the classical colour Gershwin poured into American vernacular material.
• Igor Stravinsky — Debussy was the decisive influence on the harmonic language of early Stravinsky.
• Edgard Varèse — Debussy was a personal mentor to the young Varèse and opened him to the world of timbral expression.
• Béla Bartók — 'It was Debussy's music which first showed me the possibility of liberating myself from the tyranny of the major-minor key system.' — Bartók's own words.
• Burt Bacharach — The French impressionists shaped Bacharach's harmony — Debussy's colour among the classical influences behind his lush, unexpected chords.
• Django Reinhardt — Later in his career Django drew on the French impressionists — Debussy, Ravel and Fauré — the harmonic colour behind his more ambitious compositions.
• Antonio Carlos Jobim — Debussy's floating, chromatic harmony is the classical half of bossa nova - Jobim set it against samba rhythm.
• Heitor Villa-Lobos — Debussy was the harmonic and colouristic model that shaped Villa-Lobos's formative period in Paris.
• Luigi Russolo — Debussy's harmonic freedom was cited by Russolo as part of the movement toward an expanded sonic palette that fed his noise manifesto.
• Edison Denisov — Denisov greatly admired Debussy — the French clarity and colour at the heart of his sound; he later orchestrated Debussy's unfinished opera Rodrigue et Chimène.
• Arthur Lourié — Debussy's harmony was the other pole of Lourié's early language, alongside Scriabin.
• Olivier Messiaen — Messiaen said the score of Pelléas et Mélisande, given to him at age ten, was 'the decisive influence of my life'.
• Witold Lutosławski — Lutosławski named Debussy among his formative masters — the French sense of colour and form beneath his textures.
• Ryuichi Sakamoto — Debussy was Sakamoto's lifelong touchstone: 'Asian music heavily influenced Debussy, and Debussy heavily influenced me' - a circle he was conscious of closing.
• Toru Takemitsu — Debussy was the decisive influence on Takemitsu's harmonic language - the colour, ambiguity and love of timbre that let him write Western music with Japanese ears.
• Isao Tomita — Debussy was Tomita's favourite composer and the subject of his breakthrough, Snowflakes Are Dancing - the tone paintings rebuilt entirely on synthesizers.
• Martin Denny — Denny, classically trained, drew his harmonic colour from the impressionists — Debussy's whole-tone haze under the birdcalls.
• Les Baxter — The lush impressionist harmony of Baxter's mood music descends from Debussy — the tone-colour palette beneath the exotica.
• Bill Evans — The impressionist harmony that gave Evans his voicings, and the reason a jazz trio started sounding like chamber music.
• Carl Ruggles — One of the three European modernists behind Ruggles's harmony.