Debussy

At the 1889 Paris Exposition he heard a Javanese gamelan, and the experience changed his thinking about scales and resonance. He hated being called an Impressionist — 'a term invented by imbeciles' — but the label followed him all his life.

What he actually did was loosen the rope of functional harmony: whole-tone scales, parallel chords, sevenths and ninths that never resolve, so that harmony stops being about where it is going and becomes a question of colour. Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune was premiered in 1894, and Boulez said modern music begins with that flute solo. In the piano works the pedal is one of the principal instruments; many effects in the Images and the Préludes exist only while the resonance is being held.