Well here we are in 2018, and as Debussy went and died on us exactly a century ago, we kick off the year with celebrations, hagiographies, tributes, tombstones, conferences, symposiums, catch-all complete recordings, useful or useless new recordings, not to mention Qobuz offering a few articles just as useful or useless, starting with this one. As everything has already been written about Debussy more than a century ago—since many commenters didn’t even wait for him to die to talk about him, sometimes speaking well, but often rather ill of him—we won’t have the nerve to make the listener go through an umpteenth harmonic, historical and nebulous analysis of this or that work, nor will we do an assessment of his belonging to a hypothetical impressionist musical movement, nor some rehashed copy + paste that you can easily find in hundreds of volumes. Instead, we offer you a more or less autobiographical article, tracing in anecdotal steps (and supported by indisputable documents) from first years of the young adult Achille (as he identified himself as Achille Debussy until December 1889, spending three years as Claude-Achille, before definitely signing as Claude from March 1892 onwards, starting in a letter to Pierre Louÿs) until Claude’s triumph three months before his fortieth birthday, in May 1902 with the creation of Pelléas. The second Panorama will reproduce in its entirety Adolphe Jullien’s beautiful article that had published Le Théatre (sic, without a circumflex accent) in May 1902, with many photos and descriptions, at the time of the creation of Pelléas et Mélisande; as well as several articles, article excerpts and period letters that are completely in favor, completely against, violently indecisive or violently neutral in the wake of the event: from Indy, Dukas, Lalo Jr, Catulle Mendès, Gide, Jean Marnold (pseudonym of Jacques Morland, a renowned and yet respectable art critic), Maeterlinck, Robert de Flers, not to mention Debussy’s fuming and cynical responses. A third article will tackle the piano works, and a fourth and last article will address his life after Pelléas, as well as his huge discography—more precisely his great orchestral works.
Being born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, now a hyper-chic Paris suburb, does not necessarily mean that you belong to the high society, especially in 1862. More precisely on March 25, 1862, when Achille-Claude Debussy was born (Achille-Claude… a tendon, a lame person, did he start off on the right foot?) at 38 rue au Pain (ironic, for a seemingly very fine pianist), above a modest china shop that his parents were running, we were a long way from Paris, its lights and its bustle. The Debussys incidentally had to leave their shop two years later because of money problems. After some time in Clichy, at the place of Achille-Claude’s maternal grandmother, they moved to 11 rue de Vintimille (near Place de Clichy, a quite unsavory neighborhood at the time) in September 1867. Debussy Sr. somehow managed to make a living, as a utensil broker then as a printing laborer, which allowed him to move to 69 rue Saint-Honoré, a slightly better neighborhood. At the beginning of 1870, Mrs. Debussy and her children left for Cannes—the shadow of the Franco-Prussian war was already menacing enough, even if the hostilities only started in July. Debussy’s father stayed in Paris and soon found himself unemployed, before joining the food supply department in Paris' first arrondissement, one of the future hotbeds of the Commune, but we’ll get back to that.
In Cannes, Achille-Claude (then eight years old) seemed to get into music for the first time and gets his first piano teacher, while the Commune insurrection breaks out in Paris; Manuel-Achille (Debussy Sr.) enrolls in the National Guard, and he’s captured in May 1871 by Mac-Mahon’s troops. Council of war, and bam he gets a four year prison sentence, commuted into four years of suspension of civic and familial rights after a year of jail. The rest of the family, who had remained in Cannes during these events, finally came back to Paris, and Mrs. Debussy and her now four children move to rue Pigalle. It seems that Achille-Claude was sort of ashamed throughout his life of his tossed-around childhood, and most of all of his father’s imprisonment, that he never saw as some Commune heroism, but rather as a stigma of poverty. A parental poverty that he doggedly tried to hide by any means: youthful dandyism that went on even beyond his youth (especially since his few lavish sojourns as Madame von Meck’s private music tutor, and two summers when he traveled from palaces to luxurious villas, had left him with a taste for gold, servants and first class parlor cars), a Bohemian life supposedly free of material contingencies (a suitable lifestyle that he’ll give up as soon as his reputation made his life easier) and a refusal of social etiquette and established decorum (on that, he always stayed true to himself).
In 1879, covered in strictly no First Prizes—a few second prizes, many honorable mentions, and many more empty hands—he’s sent by Marmontel, who seems to have perfectly assessed the young bloke, to the Château de Chenonceau to be the jukebox for a really wealthy Scottish lady who owned the castle from 1866 to 84 (no less!) and organized cultural evenings with the upper crust. Coming from his tiny parental two-room apartment, the sudden castle life probably left a lasting impression on the young Achille-Claude, 18 and still displaying jagged features. Back to the Conservatory, he fails to enter composition, is directed by the good Marmontel towards accompaniment where, at last, he earns a First Prize—the only one during his ten years at the Conservatory. As always, Marmontel then recommends him to a rich Russian lady, the famous Nadezhda von Meck—the very one who had so generously sponsored Tchaikovsky, under the condition that he would never try to meet her—who is looking for a summer pianist to accompany her, with her countless children, on her luxurious vacation. Luxury, once again, truly tormented Debussy throughout his life; Nice, Genoa, Naples, Florence, a failed fling with one of Mrs. von Meck’s daughters, and in 1882 Debussy returns to the Conservatory, this time in composition class. Not Massenet’s class (whose music he’ll hate all his adult life), but the one taught by Guiraud, Bizet’s faithful friend.
In order to supplement the family income, and probably to cover the usual but also unusual spendings of his youth, he went and gave lessons and accompanied a singing class for the women of the high society—once again with the high society! Really!—, among the students was a Marie-Blanche Vasnier, a married woman who was fourteen years his senior, but there’s no substitute for experience in learning, right… Mr. Vasnier, admittedly ingenuous but not completely stupid, insistently pushed the spirited young man to try for the Prix de Rome, maybe in order to send him away from Mrs., as for a long time Debussy spent his evenings at the Vasniers, whom he considered his “second family”. To give a bit more information, let’s state that Vasnier kept on supporting his protégé up until 1886, when he learnt that his wife’s romance was a bit more than what was reasonable, or even more than that. Vasnier’s daughter recounts that “little encouraged, with little support, misunderstood, he asked my parents for the permission to work at their place, and from then on the door was opened to him as if he was a child of the household. I see him again in this salon on rue de Constantinople [once again a nice neighborhood, so much better than the then vaguely pitiful Blanche neighborhood] where he composed the major part of what he did for years. He came almost every evening, and often in the afternoon too”. The afternoons of a young faun…
After a first failure at the Prix de Rome in 1883, the 1884 attempt was more successful, with the cantata L’Enfant prodigue; Debussy went to on to spend three boring years in Rome. Shortly after his success, he wrote the first of his famous pleading letters, to Count Giuseppe Primoli as it happens, a descendant of Lucien Bonaparte (once again thanks to his upper society connections, since he probably met him at the place of young viscount Delaborde, perpetual secretary of the Academy awarding the Prix de Rome): “My parents aren’t rich, and I can’t afford my Prix de Rome dinner; I tried in vain to sell music [not really true, since there is still an assignment agreement that exists for L’Enfant prodigue with his publisher Durand; admittedly the sum isn’t mentioned, but still…]. Well, everything was against me. I accumulated some debts that I’ll have to pay before I leave, and I can’t just buy her a few flowers, as she loves them so much [who is he talking about? Marie Vasnier, of course!]. I’m thus asking you to lend me 500 francs. I’ll get them back to you 100 francs at a time, as long as I get my salary [for the record, the residents of the Villa Medici were earning 2500 francs a year at the time]. He engaged in a long private correspondence for many years with Marie Vasnier (through intermediary general delivery), while he only asked to convey his respectful memories to Mr. Vasnier—whom he overwhelmed with letters from Rome. In June 1885, he complained to his friend Gustave Popelin (a painter who just left the Villa Medici) “here you go, it’s been nine days without a letter” [from Marie Vasnier], while to the father of the same Popelin, who had obviously been let in on the secret, he maintained that “I have become too used to only want, and create, through her. It is far from what you advised me, to try and bring back this love that is completely mad to a durable friendship, I know it, but this madness prevents me from thinking clearly”. Phew! Letters from June 22 and June 24, 1885.
In the meantime, to console himself from the decidedly impossible love with Marie Vasnier, Debussy found great comfort with Gabrielle Dupont-Lhéry (1866-1945), called “Green-eyed Gaby”, with whom he moved in during the summer of 1892, until their final break-up in December 1898—which would not prevent him, in 1894, from announcing his engagement to the pianist and singer Thérèse Roger (1866-1906), one of the soloists from La Damoiselle élue, a wedding planned for April 16 (to Henry Lerolle, on February 24, 94: “there’s a wedding plan between Miss Thérèse Roger and Claude Debussy—this is completely supernatural but that is how it is”), even more supernatural, it is true, that he cheerfully kept on living with Green-eyed Gaby. It seems like the affair with Miss Roger stemmed from a potential desire for social advancement, that his marital life with Gaby was seriously hindering, and this marital life always remained some kind of shameful secret; it was only through an anonymous letter (it is said) that Chausson learnt that the happy fiancé had been living for two years with a common damsel—that event led to the separation between the two composers. It’s true that Gaby was only the daughter of a factory worker and a seamstress from Normandy, and between Mrs. von Meck, Chenonceau, the viscount of this and the duchess of that, Debussy had developed a taste for material comfort, that he was feeding thanks to pleading letters—it’s not with the 250 francs a month that he earned with a few lessons that he could afford social follies.
For, from the day he left his parental home (only once he was thirty!) to the success of Pelléas, Debussy spent money and behaved like an aristocrat, while not hesitating to borrow from anyone through many admittedly well-written jeremiads, but still in a schnorrer style: “Can you lend me 20 francs until the end of the month: necessary money for my basic needs” (1890, no date, to a friend; while in the few previous letters he was throwing invitations to dine in brasseries by the dozen); to Chausson, who had however been so generous with him, in March 1893 “It costs me to pain you by refusing what you asked [a favor, probably to accompany an audition or the presentation of a new work by Chausson] but I’m in a position that forces me to neglect my appearance a lot”; to the same Chausson, on March 8, 1894, after having talked a lot about himself and slightly flattered his colleague and friend “Now all that remains is for me to ask you something that costs me a lot, I would still require you help! Because I would like to settle my situation shortly, I’ll let you consider it and don’t want to set any amount!”; on the 16th, he clarifies his demand: “I would still require you to lend me fifteen hundreds francs: first to settle some debts, and then I have to take care of my mother’s dress”. Let’s mention that the end of his engagement, a few days later, also led to the end of his relationship with Chausson. The two musicians will never see each other again; on May 5, 1899, through Pierre Louÿs (“Accept a dinner at Chausson’s on Saturday, that would really make my day!” the novelist wrote him a few days before), there was some attempt at reconciliation, but on May 5, 1899, Debussy cancels their reunion on the flimsiest of excuses—a supposed trip, while in reality he planned at the last minute a steamy evening with Lilly Texier, and never even left Paris—: “A lot of diplomacy, even more goodwill, all of this to end with the terrible pity that makes me leave Paris tomorrow morning.”
When, on June 12, Louÿs tells him that Chausson is dead, with the soft request of “do you want to give me one of your calling card, I’ll add it to mine on a wreath that I’ll send there”, Debussy’s only reaction was to… not present his condolences to Chausson’s widow, and to not go to the funeral service on the 15th. However, on the 13th, he tried to borrow money from his publisher Hartmann in a letter that doesn’t mention, directly or indirectly, the passing of his former friend (and still one of the major composers of his time): “Can you leave me two hundreds francs, I have almost no lessons left and summer is only favourable to cicadas”, and, the same day, to Louÿs “Excuse me if I take advantage of this letter to ask you for the favor of lending me fifty francs, for I am in the deepest mess, not to mention I am 300,000 francs in debt”. While pretending to have lost the nuptial march he had wrote for Louÿs’ wedding that would happen a few days later… Whether he even wrote it or not, the fact remains that the manuscript was never found.
But all these figures would remain pointless without a few historical pointers. So, for comparison and clarification about the “value” of these sums, here are a few advertisements published in newspapers from the 1890s. Le Figaro, May 16, 1894 : Apartment at 11 pl. Malesherbes, big and small living room, 4 bedrooms, 2 washrooms, bathroom, office, nothing overlooking the courtyard, 5,500 francs [per annum]. Or on February 14: Piano lesson 1.50 francs with a young composer. Write to the Figaro. On January 10, 1894: TO RENT Furnished apartment overlooking the street, 250 francs [per annum], 38 r. Clichy, precisely the neighborhood where Debussy lived for a while. Piano lessons were paid between 1.50 and 2.50 per hour in the 1890-95 era. On October 4, 1893, Le Figaro: We’re looking for a very serious teacher, holding an advanced diploma, piano, for boys aged 13 and 7 every day from 1PM to 7PM. 100 francs per month. On October 13, 1893, the composer sold his Quartet to the Éditions Durand for 250 francs. At the time, he adapted works from other composers for sums averaging 100 francs. We can thus measure the effort demanded of Chausson when Debussy tried to squeeze fifteen hundreds francs from him, and the gross exaggeration of his debt of 300,000 francs, knowing that, for example, on February 14, 1894, you could find in the ritzy Victor-Hugo neighborhood someone selling a Superb apartment, reception, magnificent woodwork, 5 master bedrooms, 4 maid’s rooms, bathroom for… 240,000 francs. The average salary of a laborer was 5 francs a day for twelve hours of work, which was the legal limit (eleven for women, and ten for children from 13 to 16). Duly noted; let’s continue with the book of lamentations.
The pecuniary jeremiads would never cease until the success—artistic at first, but also commercial, especially since Debussy held the rights to his partition until 1905—of Pelléas. At Christmas 1895, his friend René Peter received “I need 50 francs. You would be a thousand times so kind to make everything in your power to find them. This is money for the family, and you know this subject through and through”—he never ran short of juicy arguments! Two days earlier, he invited Louÿs to lunch “Monday at half past noon at home, I daresay that we will put on a great spread like in olden days at the Wedding-feast at Cana”. Louÿs who, with a pun, will be milked “we are in a black, green, colorful mess! Claude thus comes to ask his good friend the favor of a LOUIS!!! [that is to say 20 francs]”; Henry Lerolle, Chausson’s brother-in-law (contact hadn’t really dried up between Debussy and Lerolle when Chausson closed the door on Debussy, disgusted with his former protégé who had vivaciously broke his engagement to Thérèse Roger) is greeted with “would you be so kind to come and see me on Wednesday, forgive me for insisting but life is difficult and tormenting for people without a wallet”; it’s worth noting that Debussy summons the good man in order to borrow money from him; also note that on the same day he had also invited Louÿs to come to lunch at his place on the morrow—with Lerolle’s funds, no doubt…
To his unfortunate publisher Hartmann—whose company had been placed in liquidation since 1891, so that he had to use a front man to keep on backing his musical protégés and friends (Saint-Saëns, Franck, Massenet and of course our very own Achille, whom, wishing to “upstart his career”, he brought into the SACEM then whose Pelléas he doggedly pushed at the Opéra-Comique; Debussy, to whom he had been sending since 1895 a regular monthly installment of 500 francs as well as constant advances—advances that his successor tried to recover when Hartmann passed away in 1900): “Naturally, I am in great trouble, complicated by my father’s sickness and I would like some serenity to create my pantomime; would you be once again so good to me and give me an advance of 500 francs on said pantomime” (letter from September 18, 1897; the pantomime in question, Le Chevalier d’or, probably never existed beyond the state of excuse/pretext to milk money: on October 29, 1897 to René Peter, it’s “I would have to finish the pantomime for Saturday morning (they could as well ask me to learn to speak Assyrian)” followed, on November 1, by “Naturally, I haven’t finished Mrs. Forain’s so very beautiful pantomime”, then no further reference will be made of it. Next excuse, please!
Then to Hartmann, on June 20, 1898 (the payment being deferred on the 15th, Debussy probably stayed without paying): “Your departure [for a cure in Karlovy Vary] is truly a sinister adventure for me. You had to once again play the role of Providence in my life. I am going to be sued, sold, in short every barbarian thing that the law holds for poor humans, and this for a mere five hundreds francs!” The turn of phrase is well spun, but in the end there’s a chronic lack of substance… “Finally, would you please once again pull me out of this, I need 150 francs!” to Louÿs at the same period, a period that actually was delicate for the composer who was facing some trouble, to say the least, between to ladies, Gabrielle Dupont (who had stayed with him, even after the interlude with Thérèse Roger) and Rosalie Texier.
And music, in the meantime? Between his first major orchestral opus that is La Damoiselle élue (1887-88), preceded or followed mostly by piano pieces (Arabesques in 88 and 91, Petite suite 86-89) and a rather important number of melodies (Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire in 87-89, Ariettes oubliées in 85-87), and Pelléas created in 1902 (but already started as soon as September 1893 when he attended a performance of the eponymous play by Maeterlinck, the short score [the equivalent of the German Particell: a partition was meant to be orchestrated, but temporarily presented in the form, more or less, of piano for four hands or piano duet, even if it’s not intended to be performed as such; the “partition for piano duet of Pelléas”, admittedly originally written by the irritable master, is “only” the short score finished in August 95, the orchestration being started in 98 and finished, after many revisions and alterations—including at the last minute—a few months before the start of rehearsals in January 02]), between La Damoiselle and Pelléasi then, without dwelling on an aborted incursion into the conformist lyrical world with Rodrigue et Chimène (unfinished), Debussy had mostly offered the astounded world two fundamental masterpieces of the modern music to come: the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune in 1894, then the Nocturnes created and finished in 1899.
But in truth, when you look at it, Pelléas was seen not as a revolutionary work at the time—it is especially in its vocal treatment, which as such has not been widely emulated—but rather as a contemporary work of, or even anterior to, these two masterpieces. That being said, they were enough to get him an unmovable foothold in the French, then European, then worldwide musical sphere, drawing the attention of many international conductors who all wanted to offer him to their audience—for better or worse, as reviews, very conservative, were often devastating. See it for yourself: Musical Courier, New York, October 28, 1895: “M. Claude Debussy is unknown so far as the great public is concerned. The Afternoon of a Faun was certainly fin-de-siecle enough as a title. As a wit remarked, the next would no doubt be The Five O'Clock of a Nymph! The work itself is a curious fantasy, full of unprecise harmonies and fleeting phrases”. The Boston Daily Advertiser, February 25, 1904: “Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun is a perfect example of contemporary ugliness. The faun must have spent an awful afternoon, since the poor beast was hollering on muted horns and braying on flutes, while avoiding any trace of soothing melody. The work offers as many dissonances as almost every other modern musical plays.” The London Referee, August 21, 1904: “We describe emptiness as ‘nothingness enclosed in a box’, and the prelude entitled The Afternoon of a Faun can precisely be considered as nothingness, expressed in musical terms… I was happy when it was finally over.”
Saint-Saëns, in a letter to Maurice Emmanuel on August 4, 1920: “The Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun sounds lovely, but there’s no actual musical idea whatsoever, it resembles a piece of music as much as the palette on which a painter worked resembles a painting. Debussy hasn’t created a style; he has cultivated the absence of style, logic and common sense.” Well, when you know what Debussy said about his illustrious and venerable colleague… Or even the jests of Satie, who spent years going for a hearty lunch every Saturday at the Debussys at 80 avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne (now 24, square de l’avenue Foch), but the facetious Enneague (and not a Decalogue, as there are only nine Satician commandments) sums things up with a touch of humour—tinted with a little jealousy, though Debussy was dead and buried by then—all the paths that his friend had opened. Here are Les Commandements du Catéchisme du Conservatoire (the Conservatory’s Bible Study Commandments) according to Satie:
1. You shall adore only God/Debussy
[Dieubussy, a word play on Dieu—God in French—and Debussy],
And shall perfectly reproduce him.
2. You shall not be melodious,
In fact or consentment.
3. You shall always abstain of planning,
To more easily compose.
4. You shall break with great care
The rules of the old rudiment.
5. You shall make consecutive fifths,
And octaves the same way.
6. You shall never ever resolve
Any dissonance.
7. You shall not finish any piece
With a consonant chord.
8. You shall accumulate the ninths,
And with no discernment.
9. You shall seek the perfect combination
Only in marriage.
Ad gloriam tuam - Erit Satis
[Erit Satis: a Latin pun on Satie’s name, meaning something like It will be enough]
Long live the good, the excellent friends! The next Panorama will talk about Pelléas and Mélisande, and about Debussy from his glory days onwards.
