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.
Copyright for published works in the USA has been according to a federal copyright statute, since the first U.S. copyright statute in the year 1790. Before the Copyright Act of 1976 became effective on 1 Jan 1978, unpublished works were. protected by state law, known as common-law copyright.