Debussy is a modern of the moderns; and, moreover, he has led music into a new path. Debussy is, however, but one of a group of French musicians who, for the last thirty or forty years, have been developing French music more according to the traditional taste of their nation than it had been since the days of Rameau. In fact, these musicians have carried music back to its fountain head; and we may say that the same spirit that characterized the works of the _trouvères_ of the Fifteenth Century (music such as is being played by King René’s musicians in our frontispiece); the same spirit that was expressed in the music of the French Renaissance; the same spirit that was heard in the operas and ballets of Lully and Rameau lives again, though in a new form. Of all these modern French composers—Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel, Albert Roussel, Emmanuel Chabrier, Vincent d’Indy, Ernest Chausson, Henri Duparc, Paul Dukas, Florent Schmitt, Déodat de Séverac, and Ernest Satie—Claude Debussy is the leading spirit; and, perhaps, the greatest genius. Claude Achille Debussy was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in 1862. He entered the Conservatory in Paris at the age of twelve and studied under Albert Lavignac, Marmontel, Durand, and Guiraud. In 1884 he took the _prix de Rome_; and from the Eternal City he went to Russia. On his return to Paris he became one of the frequent guests at those famous _soirées_ of Mallarmé, where painters, poets, sculptors, and musicians gathered. His piano works, songs, instrumental pieces, and orchestral compositions, such as _L’Après midi d’un faune_, were admired by many persons on their first hearing; but his audience was comparatively small until the opera of _Pelleas et Mélisande_ made him known throughout the world. Here was an entirely new idea in music. The Orchestra did not annotate, nor emphasize the actions of the persons on the stage, but it became a soft, melodious atmosphere, a delicious web of harmony enfolding the entire work. It was like nothing that had ever been written. [Illustration: DEBUSSY _Photograph taken in Paris_] One idea of Debussy’s in orchestral writing is to get the greatest effect with the simplest means. To produce these effects Debussy employs many old scales and harmonic chords. His instrumentation, therefore, seems diaphanous, ethereal, and suffused with delicate, opalescent colors. He is in sympathy with the _impressionists_ in painting and the _symbolists_ in poetry. The fluid quality of his music lends itself to the description of water. His works are full of the sound of water—the sea, fountains, and silvery rain falling upon dim gardens. He creates a sense of mystery and atmospheric beauties as no one else has ever done. In the _Afternoon of a Faun_: