Although losing more and more ground to German firms in the 1880s, the large French music publishing houses, such as Hartmann, Heugel, Choudens, and Durand, played a predominant role in French musical life by distributing all kinds of music, from the most popular to the most learned, as well as numerous adaptations and transcriptions, for example when an opera or a work was a huge success. Apart from those publishing houses that dominated the French market, the Parisian market was teeming with small publishers. Before being supported by Georges Hartmann in 1894, the young Debussy tried to have his works published by all sorts of publishers, from the most prestigious, such as Durand or Choudens, to the least known, such as Paul Dupont. Jacques Durand was a both a friend and business associate during the latter part of Debussy’s life, for he took over the publishing of Debussy’s music and helped him out in many ways. Their extensive correspondence is consequently revealing.

Unless one had a personal fortune like Ernest Chausson, it was difficult for composers at the end of the nineteenth century to live solely from their profession. Most of the time they supplemented their income through a position at the Paris Conservatoire or in a musical institution, such as the Paris Opéra, or by making a living as a performer. However, Debussy throughout his life did not fall into any of these categories. The comparison with composers who won the Prix de Rome in Debussy’s lifetime is very enlightening in this respect. Reading Debussy’s correspondence might suggest that he was a poorly paid composer who was always short of money. If in the first years of his career he had a difficult time of it, he became, thanks to Pelléas et Mélisande, a famous musician enjoying a comfortable income. A change in lifestyle linked to his remarriage and a difficult divorce, plus the absence of other operas in his catalogue, explain the spiral of indebtedness that kept increasing right up to the end of his life.

In the highly imaginative issue of La revue musicale of May 1926 dedicated to “La jeunesse de Claude Debussy” we find not only an article by Charles Koechlin entitled “Some Early Mélodies by Claude Debussy,” but also a musical supplement with four (at the time) unpublished mélodies selected by Henry Prunières from the manuscripts Debussy dedicated to Madame Vasnier: Pantomime, Clair de lune, Pierrot, and Apparition. Their publication marked the first time that works were made available from the period during which the composer was still calling himself Achille, as he did as a boy, and not yet “Claude.” Koechlin began his article by revealing that he had always been fond of the “youthful works of the great composers.” “[T]hey exhibit ideas that are fresh,” he continued, “and tender, naïve, and charming—qualities that the master [Debussy] was not always able to recapture in his later works.” A well-known critic of the day, Constantin Photiadès (1883–1949), commented on Prunières's discovery in an article for the Revue de Paris:

Here we learn that Photiadès was aware, already in 1926, of two Debussy manuscripts, most notably including that of Les elfes, whose very existence was completely unknown to modern Debussy scholars until recently, when they turned up in a private collection along with eight more song manuscripts from the pen of the master whom we now affectionately refer to as Claude de France.