A ‘Velvet Revolution’ — Alex Ross On Claude Debussy

“Debussy accomplished something that happens very rarely, and not in every lifetime: he brought a new kind of beauty into the world. … His influence proved to be vast, not only for successive waves of twentieth-century modernists but also in jazz, in popular song, and in Hollywood. When both the severe [Pierre] Boulez and the suave Duke Ellington cite you as a precursor, you have done something singular.”