Debussy was born on 22 August 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Seine-et-Oise, on the north-west fringes of Paris. He was the eldest of the five children of Manuel-Achille Debussy and his wife, Victorine, née Manoury. D… See more

In a survey of Debussy's oeuvre shortly after the composer's death, the critic Ernest Newman wrote, "It would be hardly too much to say that Debussy spent a third of his life in the discovery of himself, a third in the free an… See more

The application of the term "Impressionist" to Debussy and the music he influenced has been much debated, both during his lifetime and since. The analyst Richard Langham Smith writes that Impressionism was origina… See more