Unlike operatic and orchestral music, chamber music, in common with song, thrived in the salons and the Société nationale. It was a rich period for chamber-music composition, with many works establishing a distinctively French style for genres like the string quartet (just as the French symphony came to distinguish itself from German models). Debussy was at his least idiosyncratic in his one published string quartet, which may be seen as an attempt to conform to expectations, at least in some aspects of the genre. Late in life he chose to distil the most personal features of his style in six chamber works, which pay tribute to remote French traditions, even though only three of these works were completed. The chapter concludes with a consideration of some of the attempts to complete Debussy’s incomplete set of six sonatas, of which he lived to complete only three.

This chapter explores the few opportunities for the education of a budding musician in Debussy’s France. These were primarily private teachers, especially piano teachers, and admission to the Paris Conservatoire (or regional conservatoires). The ultimate prize for the aspiring composer was the Prix de Rome, which could be crucial to the advancement of compositional careers. Debussy’s early education with a private piano teacher, Antoinette Mauté de Fleurville, was critical for his later development; indeed, he praised her playing and supported the claim that she was a pupil of Chopin. He went on to spend a decade at the Paris Conservatoire, where in many ways he trod water, at least until his success in the Prix de Rome. Even then, however, the winning of the coveted prize failed to launch his career in the way it helped others.

The separation of composer and performer that is now so common in musical performance was only slowly emerging in Debussy’s time. Debussy was a highly capable pianist and many might have and expected him to perform his music in. However, unlike most of his contemporaries, Debussy felt little inclination to perform, so there is a separation between his composing activities and the performance of his works. Singers played an intimate and important role in Debussy’s life, not just as executants of his music but also as lovers and for the last years of his life as his wife. His view of singers was telling, both in those he admired and those he disliked. Debussy also enjoyed close working relationships with a handful of instrumentalists and conductors some of whom came to consult with him or at least play for him. Discussion of Debussy’s attitude to performers reveals a composer who relied heavily on the innate musicality of his interpreters and who retained many aspects of the Romantic tradition in his approach to performance.

Now referred to nostalgically as the Belle Époque, late-nineteenth-century Paris was a paradise for all those who loved a night out on the town. As contemporary tourist guidebooks promised, one could enjoy the city’s bustling street life and lively cafés, revel in its raucous balls and unruly dance halls, be dazzled by the latest music-hall acts and dreamy romantic comedies, and delight in any number of spectacular theatrical extravaganzas. Debussy was a night owl, well acquainted with Parisian nightlife. His favourite haunts included café-concerts and cabarets, operetta theatres and music halls, band concerts and the circus. Like many of his contemporaries, he not only sought amusing diversions in these eclectic and adrenaline-charged establishments but was also inspired by the whimsical fantasies and sensual delights they offered. This chapter offers a glimpse into the popular venues and novelties that Debussy discovered on his nighttime perambulations through Paris, providing a window into the world of popular entertainment that coloured many of his works.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in France a multiplatformed staging ground took shape for a wide variety of undertakings in music composed prior to 1750. Churches, schools, universities, private salons, select societies, major concert halls, and even opera houses became sites for performances of music dating from the Middle Ages to the Baroque. Sometimes, the repertoire of centuries past served as a point of focus for discussions about religion; at other times, it provided a vehicle for unabashedly secular, virtuosic performances. Choral performances in particular could as easily allow talented socialites to exert cultural influence as facilitate bonding among male workers. Through it all, the revival of early music provided the nation with a sense of artistic ancestry that could be summoned to shape notions of a collective musical identity, or even difference. This chapter shows how Debussy intersected with these powerful currents in his music, including his relationship to the music of the Ancien Régime in the form of Rameau.

To illuminate the notion of ‘totality’ in Wagner’s conception of the ‘total art work’ or Gesamtkunstwerk, this chapter invokes Schopenhauer’s claim that ordinary life is like a phantasmagoria or dream – a claim that epitomises his interpretation of Kant’s theory of knowledge. The chapter associates the notion of a phantasmagoria with that of a dream, and the latter with the nineteenth-century conception of the unconscious, in particular as presented in Freud’s characterisation of dreams as multidimensional semantic expressions. Wagner’s operas are accordingly considered to be phantasmagorias in this dream-associated sense. Wagner is often appreciated as a forefather of modernism, but by recognising the phantasmagoric, semantically-multidimensional quality of his operas he can be seen further as a forefather of postmodernism.

This chapter explores the Hegelian context of Wagner‘s works by considering the theoretical texts authored by Wagner in advance of and in preparation for his music-dramatical works. The focus is on the philosophical foundations of The Ring of the Nibelung in the politico-philosophical works Wagner wrote in the context of the Dresden uprising of 1849, in which he took part. The first section reviews the extent and import of Wagner’s theoretical writings, including State and Revolution (1849), The Artwork of the Future (1850) and Opera and Drama (1852). The second section examines the philosophical background of the Ring of the Nibelung, moving from the overt influence of Feuerbach and Schopenhauer to its deeper shaping by Hegel‘s philosophy of world history. Special consideration is given to the agreement between Hegel and Wagner in their civico-political understanding of Greek tragedy, especially Sophocles’ Theban plays, Oedipus the King and Antigone.

This chapter provides an outline of Wagner’s relationship with German-language musical criticism of his time from two related angles, i.e. Wagner as the subject and the object of musical criticism. First, I summarise the emergence of professional musical criticism in the 1700s and 1800s, dependent on aesthetic and societal changes, and assess the latest status of relevant source material, which proves problematic both in case of a reliable critical edition of Wagner’s own writings as well as the availability and completeness of nineteenth-century reviews of Wagner’s works. I then proceed to sketching Wagner’s early music reviews of the 1830s and 1840s and discuss his changing attitude towards criticism in general, before tracing broader trends and shifts in critical debates around 1848 as related to Wagner. Finally, I propose the need for a more fine-grained analysis of certain key topics of nineteenth-century musical criticism in terms of ‘camps’ and ‘party lines’.