Editing Claude Debussy (section)

=== Late works, 1906–1917 ===
Of the later orchestral works, ''[[Images pour orchestre|Images]]'' (1905–1912) is better known than ''[[Jeux]]'' (1913).<ref name=jp/> The former follows the tripartite form established in the ''Nocturnes'' and ''La mer'', but differs in employing traditional British and French folk tunes, and in making the central movement, "Ibéria", far longer than the outer ones, and subdividing it into three parts, all inspired by scenes from Spanish life. Although considering ''Images'' "the pinnacle of Debussy's achievement as a composer for orchestra", Trezise notes a contrary view that the accolade belongs to the ballet score ''Jeux''.<ref name=t250>Trezise (2003), p. 250</ref> The latter failed as a ballet because of what Jann Pasler describes as a banal scenario, and the score was neglected for some years. Recent analysts have found it a link between traditional continuity and thematic growth within a score and the desire to create discontinuity in a way mirrored in later 20th century music.<ref name=jp>Pasler, Jann. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/746232 "Debussy, ''Jeux'': Playing with Time and Form"], ''19th-Century Music'', Summer 1982, pp. 60–75 {{subscription}}</ref><ref>Goubault, Christian. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/947173 "''Jeux''. Poème dansé by Claude Debussy"], ''Revue de Musicologie'', No 1, 1990, pp. 133–134 (in French) {{subscription}}</ref> In this piece, Debussy abandoned the [[whole-tone]] scale he had often favoured previously in favour of the [[octatonic scale]] with what the Debussy scholar [[François Lesure]] describes as its tonal ambiguities.<ref name=grove/>
{{Listen|type=music|header=Pieces from first book of ''Préludes'' (1909–1910)|
filename=The Girl with the Flaxen Hair.ogg|title= ''La fille aux cheveux de lin''|description=Performed by Mike Ambrose|
filename2=La Cathédrale engloutie - Claude Debussy - performed by Ivan Ilic.ogg|title2=''La cathédrale engloutie''|description2=Performed by Ivan Ilic}}
Among the late piano works are two books of ''[[Préludes (Debussy)|Préludes]]'' (1909–10, 1911–13), short pieces that depict a wide range of subjects. Lesure comments that they range from the frolics of minstrels at Eastbourne in 1905 and the American acrobat "General Lavine" "to dead leaves and the sounds and scents of the evening air".<ref name=grove/> ''[[En blanc et noir]]'' (In white and black, 1915), a three-movement work for two pianos, is a predominantly sombre piece, reflecting the war and national danger.<ref>Wheeldon (2009), p. 44</ref> The ''[[Études (Debussy)|Études]]'' (1915) for piano have divided opinion. Writing soon after Debussy's death, Newman found them laboured – "a strange last chapter in a great artist's life";<ref name=en/> Lesure, writing eighty years later, rates them among Debussy's greatest late works: "Behind a pedagogic exterior, these 12 pieces explore abstract intervals, or – in the last five – the sonorities and timbres peculiar to the piano."<ref name=grove/> In 1914 Debussy started work on a planned set of [[six sonatas for various instruments]]. His fatal illness prevented him from completing the set, but those [[Cello Sonata (Debussy)|for cello and piano]] (1915), flute, viola and harp (1915), and violin and piano (1917 – his last completed work) are all concise, three-movement pieces, more [[diatonic]] in nature than some of his other late works.<ref name=grove/>

''[[Le Martyre de saint Sébastien]]'' (1911), originally a five-act musical play to a text by [[Gabriele D'Annunzio]] that took nearly five hours in performance, was not a success, and the music is now more often heard in a concert (or studio) adaptation with narrator, or as an orchestral suite of "Fragments symphoniques". Debussy enlisted the help of [[André Caplet]] in orchestrating and arranging the score.<ref>Orledge, Robert. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/960380 "Debussy's Orchestral Collaborations, 1911–13. 1: Le martyre de Saint-Sébastien"], ''The Musical Times'', December 1974, pp. 1030–1033 and 1035 {{subscription}}</ref> Two late stage works, the ballets ''[[Khamma (ballet)|Khamma]]'' (1912) and ''[[La boîte à joujoux]]'' (1913), were left with the orchestration incomplete, and were completed by [[Charles Koechlin]] and Caplet, respectively.<ref name=grove/>