Debussy
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Claude Debussy's work had a significant influence on Western music. His ideas transformed the way that musicians approached harmony and tonality. Born in 1862 he began to study at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten. Debussy was influenced by, but later rejected the ideas of the German composer Wagner who is often cited for the destruction of tonality through his chromatic systems.
Debussy's greatest achievements as a composer were his development of texture and timbre and his approach to harmony. Although tonal relationships and harmonic content were of great significance to Debussy he began to create a revolution in the area of pure sound. In his orchestral works he combined different instruments in varying ways that created radical new textures. Debussy's ideas about the ranges that orchestral instruments were capable of were utterly original. In his piano music he began to explore the resonance of the instrument, furthering the developments made by the great piano writers of the nineteenth century such as Chopin and Liszt who had already exploited the full range of the piano through harmony and melody.
Debussy's music was often deemed to be 'impressionistic', because of its thin texture and blurred soft sounds...