Although Impressionism and Symbolism are but two of the numerous ‘-isms’ found in Paris in Debussy’s early years, these two movements are invariably associated with him. This chapter defines the symbolist literary style in France and surveys its development through some of its leading figures as well as its diffusion through some of its main institutions (Mallarmé’s salon, cafés, journals, bookstores). The author distinguishes between two phases in Debussy’s creative output: 1882–1902, when French-speaking literary symbolism clearly dominated the composer’s inspiration, and 1902–1917, when he became receptive to a wider range of poetry (especially that of French poets from the 15th to the 17th centuries). Important Debussy landmark pieces inspired by Symbolist writers (mélodies, the orchestral piece Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, and the opera Pelléas et Mélisande) are situated within the context of other musical works equally inspired by the same writers (Fauré, Bonheur, Bréville, Chabrier, Charpentier, Chausson, Duparc, Ravel).

Debussy’s creative world was deeply enmeshed in the cultural field of the French capital. Steeped in a post-Enlightenment worldview centred on exploration, accumulation of knowledge, and scientific discovery, no aspect of human experience and its habitats was deemed out of bounds in this path to creative accretion. Like many of his contemporaries, Debussy became fascinated by a wealth of new ideas about the world and the human condition that exploded onto the scene during his lifetime. Mysticism and occultism expanded the horizon within which to understand the mind and its creative potential; archaeological discoveries from Greece and Rome brought alive a past that belied the bland classicism so revered only decades earlier; and a rich smorgasbord of historical research – one that encompassed music and its practice – provided new materials from the foreign worlds of medieval, if not mythical, pasts. Over the course of Debussy’s life, these currents were woven together into the conceptual framework that sustained his creative world and that he claimed continually to renew rather than reproduce.

Marcel Dietschy declared, early in his centenary biography La Passion de Claude Debussy, that there was a woman at every crossroads in Debussy’s life. Years later, William Ashbrook and Margaret Cobb chose to omit many of Dietschy’s ‘effusive personal comments’ about the composer’s love life from their updated, more ‘objective’ 1990 translation. In trying to navigate the avenues by which myriad ideas and cultures of dance intersect with that context, a slight reframing of Dietschy’s romantic conceit suggests a useful guiding thread. At a time when musicologists seek to complicate individualistic focus on ‘great men’ with attention to the countless Others who aided their practice, this chapter notes the central role various foreign women played, directly and indirectly, in the dance worlds that impinged upon this compositional œuvre. From the outset, it frames the œuvre against the historical evolution of several overlapping worlds of dance, beginning with Debussy’s first publication, in Moscow in 1880, which was a four-hand arrangement of three characteristic dances from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s first ballet, Le Lac des cygnes (1875–6) – a direct emergence from his youthful sojourns at the piano with Tchaikovksy’s patron Nadezhda von Meck. A few short decades after this, a last work written expressly for dance, the unfinished children’s ballet La Boîte à joujoux of 1913, serves as an illustration of the new possibilities that had by then emerged for the art form.

This chapter explores the fascination with things Japanese (the term japonisme was first coined in 1872), which manifested itself in many ways, not least through the collecting of objets d’art – an obsession of Debussy’s. It will examine other ‘orientalisms’ and the role of the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in promoting them. This chapter intersects with Debussy’s interests in a number of ways. His attendance at the Exposition Universelle was seminal to his future development, not least in alerting him to musical cultures remote from his own. However, whilst we can hear the influence of these experiences in his music, Debussy was also a fanatical collector and browser of shops specialising in exotic products. He would often spend housekeeping money on objects for his collection, much to the despair of his partners. This chapter reflects changing consumption in France.

In the nineteenth century, French musical activity was mostly structured around opera. It is hard for us to imagine the extraordinary influence it exerted over composers, the press, and consumers of music and performance. It was everywhere, not just in the theatres dedicated to it, but also in concerts and salons, resulting in a truly operatic culture. Piano music, as demonstrated by Liszt, was deeply indebted to opera through reductions, transcriptions, fantasies, variations, and pots-pourris of all sorts. Vocal models also affected the performance and composition of instrumental melodies by many composers. In hyper-centralised France, the heart of this world was Paris in the handful of theatres devoted to opera, which produced most of the original works. The French operatic system functioned with a centre and periphery: there was a producer (the capital) and a multitude of receivers (the provincial towns). This chapter is devoted to Paris’s operatic institutions during Debussy’s lifetime. It broadly considers how they were financed, the ways in which they could make or break composers’ careers, and what was entailed in gaining access to their privileged stages. It also enumerates the differences between the operatic institutions.

Debussy’s extensive vocal music spans his entire career. This chapter places it in the context of the work of Debussy’s contemporaries, focusing on the art of singing as it was practised both in art and popular music. Debussy’s strong predilection for song cycles conceived as triptychs is also discussed at length, and an important comparison drawn with the composer most often linked to Debussy, Maurice Ravel.

Following the Franco-Prussian War, Paris regained its former position as an important international cultural centre. This chapter addresses Debussy’s cultural position in relation to the historical framework of the Franco-Russian Cultural Alliance. Within this context, many Russians had already come to Paris around the time of the Exposition Universelle of 1889, including Glazunov, Scriabin, Fokine, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, Stravinsky, and others. The first French concerts of Mussorgsky’s music occurred at the 1878 Exposition Universelle. By 1890, the influence of the Russian ‘Mighty Five’ can be traced in the pentatonic/diatonic modalities of Russian folk music in Debussy’s compositions. The Russian impact is apparent in Debussy’s piano music and it. The chapter offers a relational study of how Debussy’s life and works were connected to the broader web of Parisian and French interactions with the world, with a specific focus on Franco-Russian and Franco-Spanish exchanges.

During this period consumerism developed apace, so that the society of Debussy’s world closely resembles our own in its fondness for shopping as a form of recreation. This was due in part to growing prosperity, at least amongst the middle classes, and increased leisure time. Fine dining, though hardly new, was also an aspect of growing consumerism. Debussy was a product of his time in his fondness for good food and collecting it. from local dealers. Especially pertinent to Debussy is the manner in which music was consumed as a leisure activity, for he catered for the demand for ‘leisure’ music in his early songs and piano works. Developing rapidly in this period of prosperity and stability was tourism, which Debussy participated in, if not from choice, certainly from the preferences of his wives and mistresses. Understanding this part of Debussy’s environment and appreciating Paris’s centrality on the European map (with many borrowings from Great Britain, including afternoon tea and whisky, both much to Debussy’s taste) throws light on Debussy the man as he negotiated the free time that many periods of inactivity as a musician created.

Debussy numbered himself among the army of critics commenting on Paris’s burgeoning musical life. This chapters sets this criticism and other writing in context by relating the writings to the organs in which they appeared and the causes they often sought to promote. Not only was Debussy an active and often brilliant critic for two periods in his life, he also both benefitted and suffered from critical activity. He even numbered a critic or two among his correspondents and friends. Debussy’s attraction to writing music criticism was largely as a source of income, but his writings left their mark on the imagination of his contemporaries, not least because they contain aspects of his thought and, through his elliptical style, raise and sometimes resolve problems of musical aesthetics.

The arts were loosely defined by a plethora of ‘-isms’ in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. None is more often associated with Debussy than Impressionism. Even recent scholarship is still disposed to position him as an Impressionist composer. Whilst much work has been done to disentangle Debussy from the tag and align him in relation to, among others, Hellenistic paintings (around the time of the Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune [it.]), Symbolist painting, and the English Pre-Raphaelites, it is important to understand what has been intended by the term ‘musical Impressionism’, how it came to be associated with Debussy, and his usually hostile response to being thus categorised.

Wagner’s influence was enormous in the period up to the start of the First World War, and even then it did not disappear altogether. His musical impact on Debussy has been widely explored and discussed, but this chapter surveys the broader context for Wagner in France. His presence is felt in the development of psychoanalysis, the French novel, painting, and, of course, in music. Wagnerism paradoxically challenged France’s sense of identity and yet was used to reinforce the emergence of a distinctly French voice. It is often said that the Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire (1890) – difficult music for both listeners and performers – marked the high water of Wagnerian influence on Debussy’s style, but this chapter shows that it is more compelling to speak of creative manipulation than of imitation.

In the years around 1900, Paris was home to three major, well-established orchestras, each of which had its loyal patrons. While there were some differences in programming philosophy, concerts of all three ensembles generally featured an eclectic mix of music of different genres and from different eras. The abundance of concert music would have astonished listeners from the years before the Franco-Prussian War, when there was relatively little interest in non-theatrical music, and even less in such music by French composers. This situation changed after L’année terrible, which resulted in much national soul-searching in France and led to a new mood of sobriety. Musically, this was manifested in increased interest in orchestral and chamber music. The Société nationale de musique was founded in 1871 to encourage the production of such ‘pure’ music by French composers. Over the next several decades, it offered a venue where composers could present their latest creations before a select and appreciative audience. Debussy was an active member of the SN after 1888 and some of his most significant works were introduced at its concerts. But because its concerts were generally open only to members and invited guests, the SN had very little impact on public taste. Most new French orchestral music was premiered not at SN concerts, but at those of the orchestral concerts led by Jules Pasedeloup, Édouard Colonne, and Charles Lamoureux, all of whom performed a great deal of music by French composers in the years after the Franco-Prussian War. By the 1890s, however, growing public interest in Wagner’s music and the popularity of music by an earlier generation of French composers let to decreased opportunities for younger French composers. Debussy proved to be a rare exception and, especially after the success of Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, his music appeared frequently on the concerts of all the Parisian orchestral societies.

Since the early 1880s, Paris had become a place where it was possible to be ‘modern’. In the arts, by Modernism we mean a vast movement based on the concept of modernity appealing to the notions of evolution, progress, independence, freedom, and also resistance to certain social and economic change. Modernism in art in the broadest sense will constantly evolve and take many forms. Thus, if Symbolism and Impressionism dominated the Debussyan sphere, many other movements marked the period (1880–1914) and they aroused varied reactions on the composer’s part, ranging from the sincerest interest to the most pronounced rejection. To be interested in Modernism in the world of Debussy is therefore to be as interested in Neo-Impressionism, Fauvism, Orphism, Cubism, Naturalism, and even in Futurism. Art Nouveau (Modern Style) is given its due in this broad context. Debussy was particularly sensitive to the style and possessed a magnificent Art Nouveau lamp by the English firm Benson & Co., which he probably bought at the Siegfried Bing gallery Maison de l’Art Nouveau (Bing was a great proponent of Art Nouveau).

Aside from the ever-dominant Opéra, Parisian musical life came to be liberally enriched with orchestral performances during Debussy’s lifetime. Whilst one or two of the orchestras catered to the ‘pops’ end of public taste, others were important in premiering and promoting works by French composers. They also exhibit the tension and torn loyalties between French and German music, especially the music of Wagner. This chapter describes some of the music composed for orchestra during Debussy’s lifetime and shows how his orchestral works fit into this context. Debussy’s epoch-making orchestral music drew an extensive and sophisticated network of roots from the symphonic repertoire that dominated contemporary concert culture. As exemplified by the Faune, Nocturnes, and La Mer, the composer appealed to a wide range of eminently familiar generic, formal, topical, and rhetorical devices, synthesising, recombining, recontextualising, and reimagining them to suit his own aesthetic priorities

Debussy lived in Paris for most of his life and left it only for short periods, with the exception of his time in Italy after he won the Prix de Rome, which he regarded as a wasted period in his life. In many ways Debussy epitomises the new confidence of the city as a centre of culture and modernity. His life embraced both its old bohemian neighbourhoods and the new, smart boulevards that had replaced much of the medieval city in the years before the Commune. This chapter explores the urban modernisation of the city during the second half of the 19th century and the Belle Époque, the development of cultural infrastructures (from museums to music halls) that transformed Paris into a ‘City of Light’, as well as technological advances that blurred the distinction between art and commodities and exerted influence on the composer’s inspiration.

Debussy was associated with various French composers whose work stylistically spanned nineteenth-century tradition to the twentieth-century avant-garde. This chapter explores his connections with Ernest Guiraud, Ernest Chausson, Camille Saint-Saëns, Gabriel Fauré, Paul Dukas, and Erik Satie. It assesses key issues in each setting. Various relationships are represented here: the student-teacher archetype, less formalised mentorship, peer friendships, the more distant collegial relationship, and sometimes adversarial exchanges. Debussy and these composers engaged with each other in multiple ways; dynamics shifted such that the student became the teacher, a distant figure became a colleague, a peer became a critic. The study of these relationships casts new light on Debussy and the other parties.

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.

Chapter 2 looks at Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu in the context of the Belle Époque as an age characterised by the disintegration of existing hierarchies, norms, and conventions. I start out by considering the novel’s long-lost earliest drafts, Les Soixante-quinze feuillets, to then focus on close readings of a series of encounters between Marcel, Charlus, Albertine, and Andrée. Tact, Proust’s novel suggests, can be interpreted as an egalitarian force, indicating an equilibrium between the people involved. At the same time, it can also be seen as a creator of power imbalance, and a marker of social distinction. This conflict gives rise to a number of questions: Is tact a moral or an amoral category? Where do we draw the line between tact, hypocrisy, and lying? How do we deal with the uncertainty of interpretation as it begins to turn into one of the narrator’s most tantalizing concerns? Drawing on a variety of different theorists of tact (incl. Kant, Schopenhauer, Simmel, Sartre, Gadamer, Hall, Bourdieu, Goffman, Luhmann), I describe Proust’s tact as a paradoxical category that oscillates between autonomy and control, classification and declassification.

Chapter 17 of Earthopolis: A Biography of Our Urban Planet explores the Urban Planet from the bourgeois Belle Époque to World War I and the protest, strikes, and revolutions that followed on the left and the right. It begins in Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Tokyo to show how forces of both revolution and counterrevolution gained strength in an age of apparent bourgeois triumph, and how rival nationalist imperialists and their industrial military industrial complexes, railroads, and new oilfields predisposed Europe toward global war. The chapter also delves into the micro- and macro-geography of the newly renamed city of Petrograd to understand how Bolshevik revolutionaries were able to seize power there and then in Moscow. A wide-ranging survey of general strikes, revolutions, and counterrevolutions follows, showing how anti-capitalist and anti-imperial movements then spread to cities worldwide, followed by ominous resurgences of racist and right-wing forces in the streets of Chicago, Johannesburg, Istanbul, Rome, and Munich.