Debussy, Claude
Debussy, Claude (1862–1918),French composer who was greatly influenced by literature and whose music has had an enormous impact on all successive generations of composers. Among Debussy's best‐known works are songs set to poetry by Banville, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Verlaine. Two of his songs are based on fairy tales, ‘La Fille aux cheveux de lin’ (‘The Girl with the Flaxen Hair’), and ‘La Belle au bois dormant’ (‘Sleeping Beauty’). Debussy also had close ties to many of the writers of his time, such as Louÿs and Maeterlinck, and collaborated with them on many projects. The most famous of these, his opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), adapts a Maeterlinck play whose vague medieval decor is reminiscent of fairy tales. He contemplated but never completed several other projects based on fairy‐tale motifs, including...
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