Paris: the importance of geography

In 1928 a handful of Debussy supporters formed a committee to raise money to erect a monument to Debussy. Initially the location for the monument was to be in his birthplace, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, but it was soon felt that Debussy's significance and profile were too great and that two statues should be erected, with the main one in Paris in the Bois de Boulogne. The conductor Gabriel Astruc gave a speech entitled ‘Le Monument de “Claude de France”’ at an official concert on 17 June 1932 to celebrate the unveiling of the monument; he revealed that the aim was ‘to honour … the memory of Debussy, who so many times had led the great battle of music’. This shift in the monument's location from the periphery to the centre was symbolic of Debussy's own artistic relocation from the margins of Parisian musical life to the centre as the symbol of French musical identity.

By the time of Debussy's birth in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Paris was consolidating its position as a hub in all aspects of social, political and cultural life. When he came to Paris to enter the Conservatoire in 1872, he experienced a city recently invaded and defeated by the Prussians, and reduced to turmoil by the Commune. Given his father's imprisonment on account of his involvement in the Commune, his memory of these events was painful and personal. In a letter to Jacques Durand at the beginning of the 1914 war he admitted the lasting impact of this time: ‘the memories of 1870 … prevent me from yielding to enthusiasm’.