Debussy wanted to distance himself from what he considered the emotional excess of the Romantics and instead wanted to write music that, through sound, created an ambience similar to that of the Impressionist painters and Symbolist poets of his day.
All books initially copyrighted in the US from 1964 through 1977 have had their copyrights automatically renewed (by law) and the copyrights are still in force. The initial copyright term was 28 years; the renewal was for 67 more years.
The first federal copyright act, the Copyright Act of 1790 granted copyright for a term of fourteen years from the time of recording the title thereof, with a right of renewal for another fourteen years if the author survived to the end of the first term. The act covered not only books, but also maps and charts.