Early 20th-Century Modernism—Claude Debussy

Overview

The big break with the tonal tradition came with the French composer Claude Debussy, whose music grew from the French language’s proclivity for color, nuance, and blurred sound. Debussy was a stunningly original composer for whom timbre was as important as melody, rhythm, and harmony. His extraordinary Nuages illustrates his conception of timbre as a thematic element, his rejection of conventional major/minor modes in favor of non-traditional pitch collections, and his studied disregard for conventional harmonic practice in favor of a sense of suspended time.