Claude Achille Debussy Debussy, Claude Achille (klôd äshēlˈ
dəbüsēˈ) [key], 1862–1918, French composer, exponent of musical
impressionism. He studied for 11 years at the Paris
Conservatory, receiving its Grand Prix de Rome in 1884 for his
cantata L'Enfant Prodigue. After traveling in Europe and Russia,
Debussy settled down in Paris in 1887 and devoted himself to
composing for the rest of his life. In his music he developed a
new fluidity of form and explored unusual harmonic relationships
and dissonances. By making use of the whole-tone scale, instead
of the traditional scale of Western music, he achieved new
nuances of mood and expression, as in his famous tone poem
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune ( Prelude to the Afternoon of
a Faun, 1894). Inspired by a pastoral poem of Mallarmé, it is
one of Debussy's most sensuous and evocative orchestral works,
lending itself perfectly to ballet. Other outstanding orchestral
pieces are his Nocturnes (1899) and La Mer ( The Sea, 1905). His
piano works exploit to the ut