17 - From the Fêtes galantes to La mer: 1903

Summary

The year 1903 began with an official honor for Debussy, and the manner in which he was notified put the composer of Pelléas significantly further along the path of contemporary aesthetic recognition. On the first Sunday in January, the poet Fernand Gregh, Debussy's neighbor, knocked on the door of his home on the rue Cardinet and announced that the composer had become a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur. The two men had met at the Pousset tavern, where, according to Gregh, Debussy was called “the hydrocephalic Christ.” Was it a coincidence that this young poet, who had praised the humanity of Pelléas in La revue de Paris, had just a few weeks earlier published an article in Le Figaro that had all the appearances of a manifesto, moving away from Symbolism and the dream in favor of a more humanistic art, and calling for a renewal that would not treat traditional values with disdain?

First Consequences of Fame

The bestowal of this award was due to the initiative of the composer's new friend Louis Laloy, who had approached Jules Combarieu, then director of La revue musicale and head of the office of the minister of public instruction. 4 Debussy thanked him “for the joy you have given my aged parents and all those who love me.” Indeed, one can imagine the pride of the former communard, glimpsing the little piece of red ribbon on his son's jacket when the composer paid him a surprise visit; but this gesture also reveals the true self-satisfaction Claude felt upon finally entering into the world of social respectability, a form of revenge against a lot in life that had been adverse for far too long. Henriette Fuchs, setting aside her resentment of her former accompanist, programmed La damoiselle élue on the Concordia concert in March, which Debussy left to Silvio Lazzari to conduct, feeling no need to attend the dress rehearsal himself. Ernest Chausson's widow would also attempt a reconciliation with the person who had left her family with the memory of a scandal about ten years earlier. In refusing her invitation, Debussy graciously recalled only the kind deeds from the 1890s: “I'm infinitely grateful to you for not having forgotten the already distant past, the memory of which will forever be a part of me, because there are some men [referring to Ernest Chausson] who are irreplaceable.”