Debussy: a painter in sound - Hardcover

A beautifully written study, mercifully free of academic jargon ... [Walsh] combines delicacy of perception, refinement of expression and quiet persistence, in a way not so far from the great composer himself. (Daily Telegraph)

A lucid and elegant introduction to the French revolutionary ... ''a genius that is without precedent in western music since Monteverdi''. A mighty bow to draw, you may think, but long before the end of this excellent book the reader may well be won over to that view. (The Times)

A lively yet learned new biography ...an enjoyable and impressive achievement. (Economist)

Published to mark the centenary of the composer's death, Debussy: A Painter in Sound concentrates on what truly matters. Walsh is one of our most insightful writers on music, and his judgment always illuminates what it touches.... (Spectator)

'In the wake of his magisterial studies of Stravinsky and Mussorgsky, [Stephen Walsh] has published this wonderfully warm, wise and witty book about the greatest French composer of the modern era. As a comprehensive and integrated survey of Debussy's life and work, it could hardly be bettered.' (Rupert Christiansen Literary Review)

Praise for Musorgsky and His Circle

Stephen Walsh is as good a guide as you could want ... his writing sound, sharp-witted and musically insightful ... Brilliant.

(Sunday Telegraph)

Praise for Musorgsky and His Circle

A fascinating story of rival ideological factions and vendettas ... Stephen Walsh has told this story superbly in a consistently gripping narrative ... Only someone with the deepest knowledge and understanding could write so lucidly, sympathetically and convincingly. I confidently predict that this wonderful book will be among the pick of the year.'

(Classical Music Magazine)

Praise for Musorgsky and His Circle

A magisterial new study of one of the most melancholy chapters of musical history ... It constructs a richly detailed and absorbing saga of a remarkable cultural phenomenon.

(Rupert Christiansen Literary Review)

Compelling ... Walsh [pulls] Debussy's compositions into the heart of this biography, treating them as the essential register of emotional and intellectual existence. (Kathryn Hughes Guardian BOOKS OF THE YEAR)

'Debussy was music's quietest revolutionary. Most of his work takes place within the range of quiet to almost inaudible, and the sounds slip down so easily you forget how radical they were. Walsh's beautifully written study sets out to prove that, far from being decadent or evasive, Debussy's art is actually as tightly disciplined as Bach's or Brahms's.' (Telegraph Summer Reads)

Claude Debussy was that rare creature, a composer who reinvented the language of music without alienating the majority of music lovers. He is the modernist everyone loves. How did he manage this? Was it through the association of his music with visual images, or was it simply that, by throwing out the rule book of the Paris Conservatoire where he studied, his music put beauty of sound above the spiritual ambitions of the German tradition from which those rules derived. Stephen Walsh's thought-provoking biography, told partly through the events of Debussy's life, and partly through a critical discussion of his music, addresses these and other questions about one of the most influential composers of the early twentieth century.