ABSTRACT
Claude Debussy has been described as a 'natural hedonist and voluptuary'. Julie McQuinn's view that 'Debussy's experience of the world around him was an erotic one', despite its generalization, is probably uncontentious. Debussy's language was addressed to an image of feminine beauty deeply indebted to the type developed and idolized by the Pre-Raphaelites. The Pre-Raphaelites' desire to break from the aesthetics of their Romantic antecedents is not unlike Debussy's own concern to distance himself from the teleology and hyperbole of Romantic musical style. The themes of the erotic Muse and seduction by Pan's flute overtly resurface in Debussy's music in the settings of selections from Pierre Louys's Chansons de Bilitis. Debussy is imputing symbolic status to certain lines and chords, which stand for 'music' and the desired 'Other', in an erotically charged language 'heard' in an imaginary landscape. Debussy's recourse to an expanded cadential six-four chord at its climactic return is a high Romantic musical gesture.
