Wagner's music dramas and aesthetic writings galvanized the cultural life of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna in the fin-de-siècle. Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg were two leading composers that matured during the polemical epoch following Wagner's death. Each incorporated Wagnerian elements into his own works but later sought to separate from Wagner's example. We can see and hear the intensity of their compositional struggles and attempted schism from Wagner in their 1902 operatic and 1903 symphonic tone poem settings of Pelléas et Mélisande (1892) by Belgian Symbolist writer Maurice Maeterlinck. This comparison of Debussy's and Schoenberg's Pelléas settings examines how the composers position themselves in relation to the Wagnerian tradition. Why was each composer drawn to Maeterlinck's play at the same time in different musical capitals? How did Maeterlinck's play offer each young composer a way to develop his own compositional style, and how did this respond to Wagner?
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