Claude Debussy's Paris was factionalized, politicized, and litigious. It was against this background of ferment and change--which characterized French society and music from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I--that Debussy re-thought music. This book captures the complexity of the composer's restless personal and artistic identity within the new picture emerging of the musical, social, and political world of fin-de-siecle Paris.

Debussy's setting did not simply mold his style. Rather, it challenged him to define a style and then to revamp it again and again as he situated...