In 1913, one of the most curious, fascinating coincidences in music history occurred: both Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel set three poems by Stéphane Mallarmé to music, two of which coincided. The close proximity of these compositional ideas provides an excellent basis for identifying the similarities and differences in the two composers’ approaches to Mallarmé’s texts. A direct comparison is complicated by the fact that the two works are scored for different ensembles. Nev