Why Debussy hated the word 'Impressionism'

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It’s an irony that Claude Debussy hated the word Impressionist – he’s perhaps seen today as the ultimate impressionist, a composer whose music floated away from traditional tonality, evoking summer afternoons, tempestuous seas and the shimmering light of the moon in broad musical brushstrokes. In his short 55 years, Debussy changed the face of classical music as much as, and perhaps arguably even more than that arch atonalist Schoenberg was doing over in Vienna. The important date for Debussy was 1894, the premiere in Paris of his orchestral work Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune, the afternoon of a faun. The 20th century was barely a dot on the horizon, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring almost 20 years in the future. And yet, here was a work that was challenging all ideas of what music could do – in its description of a faun’s failed attempt to seduce a couple of nymphs, against a backdrop of a sultry backdrop of reeds and rushes, Debussy wasn’t simply telling a story – the orchestra became the story, the instruments inhabiting their characters in a way that simply hadn’t been done before. And those shimmering orchestral colours, constantly shifting and melting into one another were a revelation – the ‘awakening of modern music’ as one critic put it. Just eight years later, Debussy was confounding the musical world again with his opera Pelléas et Melisande, with its musical nods to Wagner, but it was anti-Wagner, too: devoid of any perceptible plot, characterisation and with a mysterious score that bends and weaves, escaping the pull of gravity. And Debussy’s experience of a Javanese gamelan orchestra coupled with his love of Japanese art gave his works deeper exotic flavours. Take the piano preludes, and the Cathedrale Engloutie, or Voiles, both with their chiming, modal chords. And just listen to La Mer, Debussy’s great evocation of the sea – with its use of eastern scales and sounds, even if it was written down the road in Eastbourne, of all places.

Was Debussy the most important composer of the 20th century? The arguments are strong – composers such as Messiaen, Stravinsky, Ravel, Bartok and Webern all owed a huge debt to him. And his true greatness was perhaps that despite being a revolutionary, he was able to write music that was approachable and accessible to all audiences. The mark, you could say, of a musical genius.