As the winner of the Prix de Rome, he received a scholarship by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which included a four-year residence at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome to further his studies (1885-7). According to letters from this period, Debussy often was depressed and unable to compose, but he also met Franz Liszt, and finally composed four pieces, which were sent to the Academy; the symphonic ode Zuleima (after a text by Heinrich Heine), the orchestral piece Printemps, and the cantata La damoiselle élue (1887-88), which was criticized by the Academy as “bizarre” and in which some stylistic features of Debussy’s later style emerged for the first time. The fourth piece was the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra, which was still indebted to César Franck’s music and withdrawn by the composer himself.

With his visits to Bayreuth (1888, 1889) Debussy was exposed to Wagnerian opera, which was to have a lasting impact on his later work. Wagner’s influence is evident in the La damoiselle élue and the Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire (1889) but other songs of the period, notably the settings of Verlaine (Ariettes oubliées, Trois mélodies, Fêtes galantes, set 1) are in a more capricious style.

Later, in Paris, during the Exposition Universelle (1889) Debussy heard Javanese gamelan music. Although direct citations of gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, or ensemble textures have not been located in any of Debussy’s own compositions, the equal-tempered pentatonic scale appears in his music of this time and afterward.