THIS was a reaction to the first British performance of Debussy's Prélude a l’apres-midi d’un faune at the Proms on 20 August 1904; it marked the start of a British fascination with Debussy's new and strange ‘atmospheric’ music. Writing in a similarly general vain, the critic Edward Baughan of the London Daily News described it as ‘a thing of airy nothings’. These responses reflect a genuine sense of encountering something new and intriguing. Building on the work of Roger Nichols and Leanne Langley, this chapter examines the reception of Debussy's and Ravel's orchestral music in Britain. It notes the major performances, particularly in London, but also the ripple effect throughout the whole of Britain. Debussy's own presence as conductor in 1908 and 1909 generated significant attention on the composer. Indeed, the first biographies of Debussy were published that year by British rather than French authors, who attempted to identify a language in which to describe Debussy's highly original music. Ravel's reception in Britain was more mixed; he was generally regarded as less spontaneous and original than Debussy. While some of his orchestral works dazzled British audiences, others disappointed or confounded critics. Only his Boléro made a real impression and, like Debussy's Prélude, became a firm favourite with British audiences. Finally, Edwin Evans and Georges Jean-Aubry emerged as outspoken advocates for French music and sought to use their influence to reorient the direction of British music at a critical political moment in Britain and Europe. The chapter teases out how Debussy and Ravel were understood in Britain and the impact their music had on British composers.

❧ Debussy in Britain

Henry Wood had a considerable role in making Prélude a l’apres-midi d’un faune widely known in Britain. He claimed that the work quickly became a staple of the British performing repertory after he introduced it during the 1904 Proms season. From 1906 Debussy's Prélude appeared almost every year until the Second World War, and sometimes more than once (see Table 4.1).

In the years immediately following Debussy's death in 1918 initial assessments of his significance as a composer tended to concentrate on his middle-period works, which seemed to represent him at his most characteristic. At this early stage, there was some agreement that Debussy's reputation had been shaped by his most memorable and characteristic repertoire, from Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune to the second book of piano preludes. The late works still remained to be fully understood beyond their association with the anguish and struggle of a dying patriotic composer (as Marianne Wheeldon and others have shown), and relatively little was known about Debussy's early works and career. Henry Prunières, the director of La revue musicale, addressed this neglect by devoting a second special issue of his journal to “La jeunesse de Claude Debussy” in 1926, which consisted of extracts from his letters to Henri Vasnier, unpublished early songs, numerous testimonies of those who knew him in his youth and early career, such as Gabriel Pierné, Robert Godet, and Maurice Emmanuel, as well as a study by Charles Koechlin of Debussy's unpublished early songs. The volume provided new insights into a hitherto unexplored and undocumented part of Debussy's career. Prunières took the opportunity to publish four early songs in the musical supplement of the special issue, which initiated debates about their intrinsic value and the extent to which they shed light on Debussy's early style. At stake was what image of Debussy should be remembered, recorded, and published for posterity. There was reluctance on the part of his former colleagues, wife, critics, and biographers to portray a less than perfect side of his genius. At the same time, there was an overreliance on testimony and the presentation of personal documents, including the Vasnier letters, which subsequent research has shown to have been incorrectly ordered and dated. The posthumous documents relating to early Debussy informed subsequent biographies and critical studies of the composer, starting with the Koechlin (1927) and Léon Vallas biographies (1926, 1932, and 1944). In this essay, I tease out the significance of the first attempts to reconstruct and scrutinize the early musical life and work of their near contemporary Debussy. In so doing, I build on the recent scholarly work devoted to Debussy's early compositions by Marie Rolf, Denis Herlin, Richard Langham Smith, James Briscoe, John Clevenger, and many others.

Music criticism extended beyond written commentary in newspapers and journals in interwar France. This chapter examines the activities of critics as concert organisers. It focuses on two concert series after the Great War: the concerts of La Revue musicale, which were set up in Paris by the influential journal director, critic and musicologist, Henry Prunières (1886–1942); and the Petits concerts, which were established in Lyon in 1919 by the critic and musicologist Léon Vallas (1879–1956) and associated with his journal La Nouvelle Revue musicale. I show how criticism could be performed in the concert hall, alongside other forms of unwritten and written communication, such as pre-concert talks and lectures, as well as reviews, leader comments and features. To what degree did these sonic and oral forms support Prunières's and Vallas's central occupations as critics, musicologists and biographers? Recent studies of interwar criticism have revealed the considerable ideological differences between Prunières and Vallas, particularly over their efforts to remember Debussy. This chapter explores the extent to which these concert series and the repertoire they featured reflected the aesthetic and ideological orientations of their organisers. Both critics were committed to promoting a common canon of French music, which drew on music from the generations of Rameau and Couperin, on the one hand, and Debussy and Ravel, on the other.

Prunières was also determined to promote international contemporary music, which had been almost inaccessible during the Great War. While the two critics may have broadly agreed about the significance of upholding French music of the past, what contemporary and foreign music did they bring to life in their concerts? Finally, the chapter considers the extent to which these concerts provided yet another platform for these influential critics to persuade and educate their regional, national and international audiences.

Origins and Motivations for the Concert Series

Writing anonymously in Le Progrès (Lyon), Vallas announced the launch of the Petits concerts in 1919, indulging in some self-publicity.

Music Criticism in France, 1918–1939: Authority, Advocacy, Legacy examines the aesthetic battles, discursive strategies and cultural stakes that animated and informed French music criticism during the interwar period. Drawing on a rich corpus of critical writings and archival documents, the primary goal of its twelve essays is to uncover some of the public debates that emerged around classical music at this time. As such, it provides significant new insights into the period's musical priorities and values while also highlighting some of the challenges confronting this war-bound generation. The book examines the ways in which influential critics played prominent roles in promoting the careers and defending the reputations of both young and established composers. It considers the efforts that critics took to shape the history of France's musical past. Finally, it questions how critics used their professional and social affiliations as a means of better buttressing their own aesthetic and political agendas.

The interwar period in France is often described as problematic, more famous for the deaths of major figures including Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré and Camille Saint-Saëns than the achievements of its living composers. Until fairly recently it has been marginalised, in contrast to the ‘golden’ generation of Debussy and his circle on the one hand and the ‘renewal’ of French musical life with Olivier Messiaen on the other. Yet the ‘Années Folles’ are distinctive in several respects. Having inherited the pre-war musical aesthetics of Debussy and Fauré, but also confronted with the iconoclastic works of a new generation (including Les Six) who used the press to reject the aesthetics of its forebears, interwar French music critics were drawn into an acute battle over conservative and progressive musical trends. Whereas critics including Henri Collet (1885–1951), Paul Landormy (1869–1943) and Henry Prunières (1886–1942) energetically supported the works and aesthetic paradigms of the younger generations, figures such as Émile Vuillermoz (1878–1960), Léon Vallas (1879–1956), Dominique Sordet (1889–1946) and Lucien Rebatet (1903–72) frequently denounced the avant-garde and attempted to influence a musical climate for which they felt a fair measure of dissatisfaction. As a result, the period is characterised by often fraught debates around what it meant to be avant-garde and modern.