Debussy & Claude Thornhill's band. That's what I hear when listening to Kind Of Blue or Milestones or Paul Horn's Something Blue (the first sequel?). Now, my study of classical is limited, so I'm going more from my own sense of "mood" than anything else.
Thornhill's band had this way of getting into "zones", a track like Snowfall is very ornate and pretty...but there's some sort of underlying mystical quality about it. An implied drone if you will. Then you've got Gil Evans' charts which of course links directly to KOB.
And for whatever reason, when I hear the mellower sections of KOB, I always end up hearing fragments of "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun".