Introduction

We're taking a brief detour from Mahler 2 today to discuss Debussy's legendary Afternoon of a Faun, a piece written in the same year as Mahler's 2nd symphony. It's easy to forget how revolutionary this piece was at the time, but composers from Stravinsky to Schoenberg to Boulez to Messiaen were galvanized by this 10 minute masterpiece which Boulez said "breathed new life into the art of music." This is a piece that changed musical history for good, and today we'll find out exactly why it had such an impact.