Editing Claude Debussy (section)

=== Middle works, 1893–1905 ===
[[File:Comoedia illustré L'après-midi d'un faune.jpeg|thumb|upright|alt=drawing in the style of a bas-relief showing two dancers, one as a young woman, one as a faun in semi-human form|Illustration of ''[[Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune|L'après-midi d'un faune]]'', 1910]]
Musicians from Debussy's time onwards have regarded ''[[Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune]]'' (1894) as his first orchestral masterpiece.<ref name=grove/><ref name=en/><ref>Sackville-West and Shawe Taylor, p. 214</ref> Newman considered it "completely original in idea, absolutely personal in style, and logical and coherent from first to last, without a superfluous bar or even a superfluous note";<ref name=en/> [[Pierre Boulez]] observed, "Modern music was awakened by ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune''".<ref>Rolf, p. 29</ref> Most of the major works for which Debussy is best known were written between the mid-1890s and the mid-1900s.<ref name=en/> They include the String Quartet (1893), ''[[Pelléas et Mélisande (opera)|Pelléas et Mélisande]]'' (1893–1902), the ''[[Nocturnes (Debussy)|Nocturnes for Orchestra]]'' (1899) and ''[[La mer (Debussy)|La mer]]'' (1903–1905).<ref name=grove/> The suite ''[[Pour le piano]]'' (1894–1901) is, in Halford's view, one of the first examples of the mature Debussy as a composer for the piano: "a major landmark&nbsp;... and an enlargement of the use of piano sonorities".<ref name=h12/>

In the String Quartet (1893), the gamelan sonorities Debussy had heard four years earlier are recalled in the [[pizzicato]]s and [[Cross-beat|cross-rhythms]] of the [[scherzo]].<ref name=ro/> Debussy's biographer [[Edward Lockspeiser]] comments that this movement shows the composer's rejection of "the traditional dictum that string instruments should be predominantly lyrical".<ref>Lockspeiser, Edward. [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Claude-Debussy "Claude Debussy"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180522050610/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Claude-Debussy |date=22 May 2018 }}, ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', retrieved 21 May 2018</ref> The work influenced Ravel, whose own [[String Quartet (Ravel)|String Quartet]], written ten years later, has noticeably Debussian features.<ref name=n52>Nichols (1977), p. 52</ref> The academic and journalist Stephen Walsh calls ''Pelléas et Mélisande'' (begun 1893, staged 1902) "a key work for the 20th century".<ref name=sw>Walsh (1997), p. 97</ref> The composer [[Olivier Messiaen]] was fascinated by its "extraordinary harmonic qualities and&nbsp;... transparent instrumental texture".<ref name =sw/> The opera is composed in what [[Alan Blyth]] describes as a sustained and heightened [[recitative]] style, with "sensuous, intimate" vocal lines.<ref>Blyth, p. 125</ref> It influenced composers as different as [[Igor Stravinsky|Stravinsky]] and [[Giacomo Puccini|Puccini]].<ref name=sw/>

Orledge describes the ''Nocturnes'' as exceptionally varied in texture, "ranging from the Musorgskian start of 'Nuages', through the approaching brass band procession in 'Fêtes', to the wordless female chorus in 'Sirènes{{'"}}. Orledge considers the last a pre-echo of the marine textures of ''La mer''. ''[[Estampes]]'' for piano (1903) gives impressions of exotic locations, with further echoes of the gamelan in its [[pentatonic]] structures.<ref name=grove/> Debussy believed that since Beethoven, the traditional symphonic form had become formulaic, repetitive and obsolete.<ref name=d49/>{{refn|He described the symphonies of Schumann and Mendelssohn as "respectful repetition"<ref name=d49>Donnellon, p. 49</ref>|group= n}} The three-part, cyclic [[Symphony in D minor (Franck)|symphony by César Franck]] (1888) was more to his liking, and its influence can be found in ''La mer'' (1905); this uses a quasi-symphonic form, its three sections making up a giant [[sonata-form]] movement with, as Orledge observes, a cyclic theme, in the manner of Franck.<ref name=ro/> The central "Jeux de vagues" section has the function of a symphonic [[Musical development|development section]] leading into the final "Dialogue du vent et de la mer", "a powerful essay in orchestral colour and sonority" (Orledge) which reworks themes from the first movement.<ref name=ro/> The reviews were sharply divided. Some critics thought the treatment less subtle and less mysterious than his previous works, and even a step backward; others praised its "power and charm", its "extraordinary verve and brilliant fantasy", and its strong colours and definite lines.<ref>Thompson, pp. 158–159</ref>