ABSTRACT
The death of Hector Berlioz in 1869 marked a significant turning point in the history of French music. Despite its apparent incompatibility with the concurrent reawakening of interest in French music, Wagnerisme was a dominant issue in the musical life of the French capital before the Great War. As the head of a new school of composition Claude Debussy was declared the 'revolutionary' to Vincent d'Indy's 'reactionary', the composer of 'vertical' to d'Indy's 'horizontal' music, of 'musique sensorielle' to d'Indy's 'musique cerebrale', and the exponent of Conservatoire training, introducing an element of musical politics into a purely musical debate. The debt to both the literary and musical strands of French Wagnerisme can be detected in Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande, despite the composer's earnest attempts to shake off the 'ghost of old Klingsor' during the composition of his opera. With the appearance of Pelleas et Melisande, Debussy suddenly became the centre of attention.
