21 - Orchestra Conductor: 1908

Summary

Taking the Plunge: Marrying Emma and Conducting La mer

Claude and Emma had lived together for more than three years. The topic of marriage must have often strained their conversations. It has been said that Debussy was likely uncertain about this matter. He referred to it, in a slightly ambivalent way, in a letter to Laloy from 15 October 1907: “I work on important things, alternating between joy and sadness… in short, peace does not dwell in my soul! Is this because of the hectic environment in this part of Paris. .? Am I truly not cut out for domestic life? So many questions, and I lack the strength to answer them.”

A few days before, he had announced to Victor Segalen: “I don't even talk about music with my wife. Unless it's about inconsequential music.” And yet, he gave in to Emma's pleas, under pressure from elsewhere: a law of 9 November 1907 regarding children born out of wedlock allowed them to legitimize Chouchou. So Claude married Emma on 20 January 1908 at the town hall of the 16th arrondissement. He was forty-five years old.

The day before, he had taken another plunge by stepping up to the podium in a concert hall for the first time. Although he had considered conducting for some time, the occasion was unplanned: Colonne was supposed to conduct La mer on 12 January; as the rehearsals proved to be “lamentable,” Debussy told Segalen: “I was asked to conduct the performance.”

It was not without a pounding heart that I mounted the podium yesterday morning for the first rehearsal. It's the first time in my life that I'm playing the role of conductor; rest assured that my genuine inexperience must disarm those curious beasts called “orchestral musicians,” their goodwill notwithstanding.

Other impressions…: one really feels the heart of one's own music… When it “sounds” quite well, it feels as if one has oneself become an instrument issuing many different sonorities, unleashed merely by the movements of the little baton.