Episode Details

Claude Debussy composed music of such shimmering beauty that critics called him an Impressionist — a label he hated. Behind the luminous surfaces of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and La Mer lay a man whose personal life was a series of scandals: affairs, abandoned lovers, a wife's attempted suicide, and a second marriage that cost him most of his friendships. The music floated; the man behind it left wreckage.

This episode traces Debussy from his working-class Parisian childhood through the Prix de Rome, the works that reinvented musical harmony, and the personal betrayals that shadowed his creative revolution.

• Debussy's rejection of Germanic musical tradition and the creation of a new French sound
• Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun — the piece that opened the door to modern music
• The wife's suicide attempt, the second marriage scandal, and the friendships he destroyed
• La Mer, Pelleas et Melisande, and the lasting influence on jazz, film scoring, and ambient music