Abstract
This paper describes Claude A. Debussy’s compositional approach by extracting the distinctive technical features principally of his early piano works, and explores their development through a comparison with ‘La Fille aux cheveux de lin’ and ‘La danse de Puck’ from Préludes, Book 1. In this context, we elucidate how Debussy moved away from traditional tonality, what he aimed to express, and the techniques he employed to achieve this. The paper also focuses on key features such as ‘parallel chords maintaining consistent resonance’, the ‘sound structures with a limited number of notes’, and Debussy’s use of bi/poly-tonality/modality in his innovations. Finally, we argue that these new techniques compensate for the expressive space lost in moving away from tonality, offering a different dimension of musical expression.
