ABSTRACT

By now it comes as no surprise that much of what may at first strike us as innovative in Debussy’s music was in fact carried out within the framework of historical precedent and established convention. Indeed, tracing the emergence of his personal style from the early works, with their explicit reliance on existing models, to the later works, where the models or conventions are more tacit, is an issue of fundamental musicological importance. Perhaps no composer of this fln-de-siècle era exemplifies more clearly the expressive tension that results from the forging of a creative language that simultaneously works within a received tradition and strives for radical originality.