9 - The Chausson Year: 1893

Summary

The year of 1893 began with two very different events for Debussy, as revealed in the much richer body of correspondence available to us from that year. The first was the premiere, at the Opéra-Comique on 16 January, of Massenet's Werther, which seemed to Debussy a model of nonsense and sentimentality. The second was a “gilded visit” (visite dorée), likely to guarantee an adequate material subsistence “for a year or two.” Poniatowski, seeing that his plans for concerts in New York were not going to come to fruition, felt himself “morally bound” to send Debussy enough money to enable him to compose for some time without financial worries. This assistance arrived at the perfect time since, following “several regrettable incidents,” Claude-Achille had just burned his bridges with his family, who was waging a war “of needlings, some sentimental […] and others unkind” against him.

The subsequent months saw Claude-Achille growing very close especially to Ernest Chausson and his circle. Theirs was a rather complex friendship that calls for analysis. We have already pointed out the social gap that separated the two men, and we could add that their childhoods had differed: one had been gripped with poverty and anxiety for the morrow, while the other had been the object of attentive care and affection from a godmother and a tutor. However, Chausson's open-mindedness, his knowledge of literature as well as the visual arts, his natural and discreet generosity, in addition to his psychological vulnerability, in some ways minimized the distance created by such extremely different lifestyles. The first performance of La damoiselle élue at the Société nationale de musique gave them the opportunity to get to know each other better.

This event, held at the Salle Érard on 8 April 1893, took on something of the character of a family celebration. Claude had invited Godet and the Stevens family, and the program brought together several of his friends—Paul Dukas and Raymond Bonheur, each with an overture, and Chausson with the Poème de l'amour et de la mer. The orchestra and chorus were conducted by Gabriel Marie, and the soloists in La damoiselle were Julia Robert and Thérèse Roger, two singers who would soon reappear in Debussy's life.