Editing Claude Debussy (section)

=== Early works, 1879–1892 ===
{{Listen|type=music|
filename=Clair de lune (Claude Debussy) Suite bergamasque.ogg|title=''Clair de Lune'' (5:04)|description=Composed in 1890, performed by Laurens Goedhart in 2011|
|filename2=Claude_Debussy_-_Première_Arabesque_-_Patrizia_Prati.ogg|title2=''Première Arabesque'' (4:53)|
filename3=Claude_Debussy_-_Deuxième_Arabesque_-_Patrizia_Prati.ogg|title3=''Deuxième Arabesque'' (4:00)|description3=Both [[Arabesque (classical music)|arabesques]] performed in 2016 by Patrizia Prati}}
Debussy's musical development was slow, and as a student he was adept enough to produce for his teachers at the Conservatoire works that would conform to their conservative precepts. His friend [[Georges Jean-Aubry]] commented that Debussy "admirably imitated Massenet's melodic turns of phrase" in the cantata ''[[L'enfant prodigue (Debussy)|L'enfant prodigue]]'' (1884) which won him the Prix de Rome.<ref name= mq/> A more characteristically Debussian work from his early years is ''[[La Damoiselle élue]]'', recasting the traditional form for [[oratorio]]s and cantatas, using a chamber orchestra and a small body of choral tone and using new or long-neglected scales and harmonies.<ref name=mq>Jean-Aubry, Georges. (trans. Frederick H. Martens). [https://www.jstor.org/stable/737879 "Claude Debussy"], ''The Musical Quarterly'', October 1918, pp. 542–554 {{subscription}}</ref> His early ''[[mélodie]]s'', inspired by Marie Vasnier, are more virtuosic in character than his later works in the genre, with extensive wordless ''[[vocalise]]''; from the ''[[Ariettes oubliées]]'' (1885–1887) onwards he developed a more restrained style. He wrote his own poems for the ''Proses lyriques'' (1892–1893) but, in the view of the musical scholar [[Robert Orledge]], "his literary talents were not on a par with his musical imagination".<ref name=ro>Orledge, Robert. [http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199579037.001.0001/acref-9780199579037-e-1846 "Debussy, (Achille-)Claude"], ''The Oxford Companion to Music'', Oxford University Press, 2011, retrieved 21 May 2018 {{subscription}}</ref>

The musicologist [[Jacques-Gabriel Prod'homme]] wrote that, together with ''La Demoiselle élue'', the ''Ariettes oubliées'' and the ''[[Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire]]'' (1889) show "the new, strange way which the young musician will hereafter follow".<ref name="Prod'homme"/> Newman concurred: "There is a good deal of Wagner, especially of ''Tristan'', in the idiom. But the work as a whole is distinctive, and the first in which we get a hint of the Debussy we were to know later – the lover of vague outlines, of half-lights, of mysterious [[Consonance and dissonance|consonances and dissonances]] of colour, the apostle of languor, the exclusivist in thought and in style."<ref name=en/> During the next few years Debussy developed his personal style, without, at this stage, breaking sharply away from French musical traditions. Much of his music from this period is on a small scale, such as the ''[[Two Arabesques]]'', ''[[Valse romantique]]'', ''[[Suite bergamasque]]'', and the first set of ''[[Fêtes galantes (Debussy)|Fêtes galantes]]''.<ref name=en/> Newman remarked that, like [[Frédéric Chopin|Chopin]], the Debussy of this period appears as a liberator from Germanic styles of composition – offering instead "an exquisite, pellucid style" capable of conveying "not only gaiety and whimsicality but emotion of a deeper sort".<ref name=en/> In a 2004 study, Mark DeVoto comments that Debussy's early works are harmonically no more adventurous than existing music by Fauré;<ref>DeVoto (2004), p. xiv</ref> in a 2007 book about the piano works, Margery Halford observes that ''Two Arabesques'' (1888–1891) and "Rêverie" (1890) have "the fluidity and warmth of Debussy's later style" but are not harmonically innovative. Halford cites the popular [[Debussy's Claire de Lune|"Clair de Lune"]] (1890), the third of the four movements of ''Suite Bergamasque'', as a transitional work pointing towards the composer's mature style.<ref name=h12>Halford, p. 12</ref>