[pohl]

This piece is to Debussy what Liebestraume No. 3 is to Franz Liszt: it's simultaneously the cloying, overplayed hit that distracts from the rest of the oeuvre, while also being the masterpiece that serious music people love to pooh-pooh.

I agree with the "painfully beautiful" characterization. I must avert my ears. I'd rather listen to any other Debussy piece – I never tire of Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum for some reason – but only because I can't bear its perfection.

[jinfiesto]

I'd never claim it's not a masterpiece. Both it and the 3rd Liebestraume are in my repertoire. But since it's more in line with the Romantic idiom, Clair De Lune and Suite Bergamasque in general gets compared against the masterpieces of Chopin/Liszt/Brahms/Schumann, and against that bar I'm not sure it necessarily measures up. Debussy was obviously a/the pioneer of impressionism, and in that idiom, his work is unmatched. I haven't seen a serious argument that he could out-compose any of the composers that are the pillars of romanticism in that idiom though, and since Clair de Lune is in that style, that's what it gets measured against.