For more than two centuries, many members of the Debussy—or de Bussy— clan lived within a rather narrow triangle of Burgundy, circumscribed by Benoisey, Semur, and Montbard. This was in the Auxois, a highly distinctive region of Burgundy, where the peasants had the reputation of being “reserved, stubborn, inherently individualistic, rather xenophobic,” readily anticlerical while remaining attached to religious traditions, and having a proclivity for jokes and banter. From the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Debussys had settled there, as farmers or winegrowers, but the farthest back we can trace the direct lineage of Achille-Claude is to Benoisey, that is, to the sixth generation (see the family tree on p. 12). The first family member to give up the plow was Pierre (identified as Pierre I on the family tree), who left his birthplace around 1760 to settle down as a farrier at Semur-en-Auxois. Just before 1800, his son, who had the same first name, took the decisive step of leaving the Burgundian region and settling in Paris as a locksmith.

Claude-Alexandre, the grandfather of our composer, was born in 1812. He practiced his trade as a carpenter in the capital, after having been a wine merchant for a few years in Montrouge, where Manuel-Achille, who would become Claude's father, was born in 1836. It is rather by chance that Achille-Claude Debussy was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. His parents had settled in that town shortly after they were wed on 30 November 1861, and they were to leave it two years later. Among such ancestors, the presence of a musician is difficult to explain.

There is no mystery about the family's origins. As they stemmed from the purest peasant stock, their becoming modest craftsmen or small shopkeepers could hardly be described as moving up in society. In any case, there was not even the faintest glimmer of a family member awakening to an artistic calling, even taking into account the fact that Manuel-Achille enjoyed going to see Ferdinand Herold's Le pré aux clercs or Gaetano Donizetti's La fille du régiment and that he had a “natural penchant” for music. We should mention, however, that one of the paternal uncles of the composer, Jules-Alexandre (1849–1907), emigrated to England after the war of 1870 and practiced the profession of “artist musician” in Manchester.