Claude Debussy was the French composer whose impressionist harmony, built on whole-tone scales, parallel chords, and blurred tonal centers, broke from 19th-century classical convention and reshaped how 20th-century composers thought about color and ambiguity in music. Pieces like 'Clair de Lune' became touchstones for musicians well outside classical music, including Brazilian bossa nova composers who absorbed his harmonic language secondhand through jazz and popular song.

the sound in question

1905

Clair de LuneClaude Debussy