Claude Debussy’s letters to his publisher document the French composer’s whole professional career and also a musically and politically eventful epoch between the fin de siècle and the First World War. Debussy emerges as a lucid and sometimes waspish and ironic observer of and commentator on the cultural and political circumstances in which he lived and created his works.

Debussy’s letters appear here for the first time in German translation. Commentaries explain backgrounds and contexts. The...