"The Sea. Three Symphonic sketches for orchestra. I. Beautiful sea around the Sanquinaire islands,II. Play of waves,III. The wind stirs the sea to dance.I am working from countless recollections and would like to finish it here (Bichain)…" – wrote Debussy (1862-1918) to his publisher Jacques Durand. This letter from 1903 tells us when Debussy began work. The "countless recollections" to which Debussy alludes were partly childhood experiences of the sea, and also depictions of the oceans from contemporary painting and literature. It was the face of the sparkling sea, the rich ever changing impressions it creates, which attracted the impressionist painters to the Southern shores of France in droves. For symbolist poets, water was the most appropriate symbol for the world as its characteristics cannot be clearly recorded. Debussy returned to the problems of depicting water again and again, and soon forged his own independent path away from the Romantic masters. We can regard En Bateau (from the youthful Petit Suite), certain details from Pelléas és Mélisande, Sirene from Three Nocturnes and the piano masterpiece Reflets dans l’eau, as forerunners to La Mer, which was completed in 1905. The work evokes the sea visually, acoustically and by summoning associations of movement and aroma. It is hard to grasp now just why both critics and audiences were so flummoxed at its premiere. Three years later, Debussy tried conducting it himself but with no greater success. It only won a place for itself in the musical repertoire following Toscanini’s superb interpretation.

Although Debussy talked of "three symphonic sketches," at its heart is a three movement symphony. However, Debussy, like many of his contemporaries, refrained from alluding to the genre of symphony. Debussy was attracted by a free, associative variation form of construction and was repelled by the logic of classical formal schemes. This grand form nevertheless retains something from Viennese traditions: for example the introduction to the opening movement, the second movement resembling a scherzo and the rondo finale. Thematically the two outer movements are closely linked. Debussy is thus clearly showing that La Mer is not just a collection of picturesque impulses but a unified work of art that builds on traditions and is subordinated to the logic of musical construction.