Romantic with hate in his heart

Press, 8 November 1980, Page 15

Romantic with hate in his heart

. Claude Debussy may • have written, some of the t f most romantic music of i the century', but his atti- ; tude towards his contemporary French composers was one of brooding dist like. • For the first time since his death in 1918, his letters have been brought together by the French National Library, revealing a melancholy, solitary man who was at odds with a musical era that paralleled the . vigorous period of French Impressionist painting. The correspondence was ; collected by the director of the library’s music department, Francois Lesure. ; About 250 of the 1200 letters he is known to have written between 1894 ana 1918 are included and & there is- barely a famous ? French contemporary who gj is cnot savaged by . the : glowering, dark-bearded Gounod, Massenet, and of snobs and imbeciles. Biret is dismissed as a

"lightweight Maupassant of music.” Berlioz is attacked as a “prodigious practical joker who will end up by believing in his own tricks.” The real fascination is

Debussy’s aggressive distaste for Ravel, who is often mistakenly seen as the other half of a lasting musical double act. “What upsets me is his magician’s attitude or.

even better, that of a charming fakir who can make flowers grow under a chair,” Debussy wrote to a friend. “Unhappily, a trick is always prepared and can only astonish once.” In fact, Debussy’s musical emotions seem to have been stirred only when he turned eastwards, admiring Stravinsky and praising Hungary’s folk music. The letters are littered with double-edged images. A conductor is praised for a magnificent production of Saint-Saens’ “Samson and Delilah” and told that he could “even resuscitate stuffed crocodiles.” Vienna appears as a “city in heavy make-up abusing Brahms and Puccini.” In . Geneva “ideas are not admitted unless they are wearing a white lie.*' Contemporary photographs* of Debussy show him with such a fdrbid-

ding frown under masses of black hair and whiskers that his interior loneliness was probably known only to. his correspondents. From his luxurious house in the Bois de Boulogne, he wrote of his inability to straighten out "the sadness of my landscape” and being a “poor number on the happiness bus.” He complains of being “miserably alone” and even threatens to blow his. brains out. His adoration of his daughter Chouchou . prevented him from taking his life and he died naturally in 1918, aged 55. Chouchou wrote the most moving letter in the collection after watching her father slowly die in his sleep. She was 12 years old but refused to cry Until she was alone in her room. She died a year later. — Copyright, London Observer Service.

By

PAUL WEBSTER

“Observe,” London