Claude Debussy instead "an exquisite, pellucid style" capable of conveying "not only gaiety and whimsicality but emotion of a deeper sort". In a 2004 study, Mark DeVoto comments that Debussy's early works are harmonically no more adventurous than existing music by Fauré; in a 2007 book about the piano works, Margery Halford observes that "Deux arabesques" (1888–1891) and "Rêverie" (1890) have "the fluidity and warmth of Debussy's later style" but are not harmonically innovative. Halford cites the popular "Clair de Lune" (1890) from the "Suite Bergamasque" as a transitional work pointing towards the composer's mature style. Musicians from Debussy's time onwards have
Au clair de la lune she is singing him into drowsiness. I am on the floor, as usual among the chair legs, and I crawl behind my mother's chair because I do not like the song she is singing and do not want her to see what it does to me. She sings: "Au clair de la lune; Mon ami, Pierrot; Prête-moi ta plume; Pour écrire un mot." Then the vowels darken ominously. My mother's voice deepens dramatically, as if she were singing in a theater. This was the part of the song I disliked most, not only because I knew that it was sad,