7 The 100 Most Influential Musicians of All Time 7to portray subjects like the dreamy nightmarish figures of
this opera who were doomed to self-destruction. Debussy
and his librettist, Maurice Maeterlinck, declared that they
were haunted in this work by the terrifying nightmare tale
of Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher. The style of
Pelléas was to be replaced by a bolder, more highly coloured
manner. In his seascape La Mer (1905) he was inspired by
the ideas of the English painter J. M.W. Turner and the
French painter Claude Monet. In his work, as in his per-
sonal life, he was eager to gather experience from every
region that the imaginative mind could explore.
Late Period
In 1905 Debussy’s illegitimate daughter, Claude-Emma, was
born. He had divorced Lily Texier in 1904 and subsequently
married his daughter’s mother, Emma Bardac. For his
daughter he wrote the piano suite Children’s Corner (1908).
Debussy’s spontaneity and the sensitive nature of his
perception facilitated his acute insight into the child mind,
an insight noticeable particularly in Children’s Corner; in the
Douze Préludes, two books (1910, 1913; “Twelve Preludes”),
for piano; and in the ballet La Boîte à joujoux (1st perf. 1919;
The Box of Toys). In his later years, it is the pursuit of illusion
that marks Debussy’s instrumental writing, especially the
strange, otherworldly Cello Sonata. This noble bass instru-
ment takes on, in chameleon fashion, the character of a
violin, a flute, and even a mandolin.
Evolution of His Work
Debussy’s music marks the first of a series of attacks on
the traditional language of the 19th century. He did not
believe in the stereotyped harmonic procedures of the
19th century, and indeed it becomes clear from a study of