Claude Debussy was the French composer whose orchestral work La Mer was inspired by The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
Debussy composed La Mer, or The Sea, between 1903 and 1905. The three-movement orchestral work, formally titled La mer, trois esquisses symphoniques, explores changing impressions of the sea rather than telling a conventional story. Its shimmering orchestration and constantly shifting textures helped make it a landmark of musical Impressionism.
The first edition’s cover used an adaptation of Hokusai’s Great Wave, helping cement the visual connection between the print and Debussy’s score. Debussy owned a copy of the image and was interested in Japanese art, which was increasingly admired in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe.
The association is sometimes confused with the French Impressionist painters who were also influenced by Hokusai. Camille Saint-Saëns and Maurice Ravel were major French composers, but La Mer belongs to Debussy. Igor Stravinsky, meanwhile, was Russian-born and is not the composer linked to this work.