François Lesure's legacy of Debussy scholarship is breathtaking in its scope and impact. His lifelong passion for Debussy's music and creative development manifested itself in numerous activities and publications, including his painstaking assemblage of thousands of letters written by and to the composer; his founding and oversight of a complete and critical edition of Debussy's works; his publication of Debussy's music criticism; his organization of exhibitions devoted to the composer; and his launch of the Cahiers Debussy, a journal devoted to Debussy scholarship.

Claude Debussy: A Critical Biography is Lesure's magnum opus. As director of the département de la Musique at the Bibliothèque nationale de France for nearly twenty years, he was in a unique position to study primary materials that were often unavailable to other scholars. Situated at the hub of Debussy research, he fostered and absorbed the pathbreaking work of many other experts in the field. His critical biography of Debussy thus consolidates sources and scholarship that advance our knowledge and understanding of the composer and his works far beyond any other biography to date. At last, the present English translation makes this seminal work accessible to the wide audience it deserves.

Lesure himself acknowledges his debt to earlier biographers of Debussy, including Léon Vallas, Marcel Dietschy, and Edward Lockspeiser. Nonetheless, his access to primary source materials—items such as the journals of Madame Hébert and Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux, and especially letters, such as those to and from Debussy's first wife Lilly as well as to his early publisher Georges Hartmann—that were unknown by these biographers enabled Lesure to explode a number of long-held beliefs and myths about the composer. The reader can almost imagine the author methodically working through Debussy's life experiences, day by day, following Debussy's copious correspondence. Unlike previous biographers, who tiptoed over some of the more unsavory aspects of Debussy's life, Lesure objectively chronicles the composer's activities and his opinions of other composers and performers. Lesure's account, like that of Vallas, documents the critical reception of Debussy's works, and, more than most biographies, fleshes out the cultural context in which the composer developed.