Editing Claude Debussy (section)

=== Musical idiom ===
[[File:Debussy's chords for Guiraud.png|thumb|alt=musical score showing a sequence of 22 different chords, each with 3, 4 or 5 notes|upright=1.0|Improvised chord sequences played by Debussy for Guiraud<ref>Nadeau, Roland. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3395721 "Debussy and the Crisis of Tonality"], ''Music Educators Journal'', September 1979, p. 71 {{subscription}}; and Lockspeiser, Appendix B</ref>]] [[File:Chords from dialogue with Ernest Guiraud.wav|thumb|Chords from dialogue with Ernest Guiraud]]Debussy wrote "We must agree that the beauty of a work of art will always remain a mystery [...] we can never be absolutely sure 'how it's made.' We must at all costs preserve this magic which is peculiar to music and to which music, by its nature, is of all the arts the most receptive."<ref name=n198010>Nichols (1980), p. 310</ref>

Nevertheless, there are many indicators of the sources and elements of Debussy's idiom. Writing in 1958, the critic [[Rudolph Reti]] summarised six features of Debussy's music, which he asserted "established a new concept of tonality in European music": the frequent use of lengthy [[pedal point]]s – "not merely bass pedals in the actual sense of the term, but sustained 'pedals' in any voice"; glittering passages and webs of figurations which distract from occasional absence of tonality; frequent use of [[parallel chord]]s which are "in essence not harmonies at all, but rather 'chordal melodies', enriched unisons", described by some writers as non-functional harmonies; bitonality, or at least [[bitonal]] chords; use of the [[Whole-tone scale|whole-tone]] and [[pentatonic scale]]s; and [[unprepared modulation]]s, "without any harmonic bridge". Reti concludes that Debussy's achievement was the synthesis of monophonic based "melodic tonality" with harmonies, albeit different from those of "harmonic tonality".<ref>Reti, pp. 26–30</ref>

In 1889, Debussy held conversations with his former teacher Guiraud, which included exploration of harmonic possibilities at the piano. The discussion, and Debussy's chordal keyboard improvisations, were noted by a younger pupil of Guiraud, Maurice Emmanuel.<ref name=Nichols1980/> The chord sequences played by Debussy include some of the elements identified by Reti. They may also indicate the influence on Debussy of [[Erik Satie|Satie]]'s 1887 ''[[Sarabandes (Satie)|Trois Sarabandes]]''.<ref>Taruskin (2010), pp. 70–73.</ref> A further improvisation by Debussy during this conversation included a sequence of whole tone harmonies which may have been inspired by the music of [[Mikhail Glinka|Glinka]] or [[Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov|Rimsky-Korsakov]] which was becoming known in Paris at this time.<ref>Taruskin (2010), p. 71.</ref> During the conversation, Debussy told Guiraud, "There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law!" – although he also conceded, "I feel free because I have been through the mill, and I don't write in the [[fugue|fugal]] style because I know it."<ref name=Nichols1980>Nichols (1980), p. 307</ref>