Attacks on Debussy

The New Year 1907 did not bring inspiration. Contrary to when bursting with emotion upon first eloping with Emma, Debussy was now suffering from an inability to compose new material in a style which would please both him and his critics. Colonne was anxious to programme Le Roi Lear, to which Debussy replied, ‘it might be necessary to replace this with another piece, which I would like to surprise you with.’ Eventually he provided not a brand new composition, but an orchestrated version of a song, ‘Jet d’eau’, the third of the Cinq Poèmes de Baudelaire, originally com-posed in 1889. When it was performed on 24 February 1907 at the Concerts Colonne, sung by Hélène Demellier, it met with a luke-warm reception. Now Debussy certainly needed the support of his faithful friend Louis Laloy, for Émile Vuillermoz, sixteen years younger than Debussy and a former pupil of Fauré, wrote a stinging attack on Debussy accusing him of providing his followers with material dredged up from the bottom drawer, which is precisely what Debussy had feared people would say when he had written to his publisher a year earlier. This was a foretaste of similar criticism Emma would receive after Debussy's death. Vuillermoz asserted that Debussy was only trying to make sure his name did not miss a year appearing on Colonne's posters. The crowning insult was to insist that the young composers following on from Debussy were composing ‘Debussy … better than him!’

Laloy, however, managed to upset Debussy about another matter. On 12 January 1907 the controversial first performance of Histoires naturelles by Maurice Ravel took place. Laloy, to Debussy's astonishment, expressed great admiration for Ravel's iconoclastic song cycle which ingeniously and to many, shockingly, managed to combine rather frivolous-sounding settings of colloquial speech with contemporary harmonies and rhythms. Debussy wrote to Laloy disputing the whole idea of ‘humorous music’. Debates had already arisen as to who had influenced whom of the two composers. Now this rift was heightened by the migration of some ‘Debussystes’ to the support of Ravel, of whom people were saying, ‘you’ll see he will go further than Debussy.’