Debussy : man and artist
The story of Achille-Claude Debussy, as the author tells it, presents with sympathy and understanding the struggles and success of a born Bohemian, in love with, but generally at odds with, the life he lived. His withdrawn childhood, his rebellious years at the Conservatoire, his little-known early Russian adventure as a protégé of Tchaikovsky's benefactor, his controversial, bitterly-won fame - these are highlights in a narrative that discloses and develops, as it progresses, the personality of the genius, self-styled Musicien Francais. As it thus emerges, this is a personality as distinctive, as unorthodox, as chameleonic as Debussy's music. To an analysis and appraisal of the latter, the author brings his long and rich experience in the field of practical criticism, dealing in detail with Debussy's compositions - piano, vocal, chamber, operatic, orchestral - as well as presenting a fresh and sympathetic study of the essentials of the art which produced The Afternoon of a Faun and Pelleas et Melisande. The book is divided into three main sections. The first deals with the mature Debussy; the second is the chronological story of his life. In the third, the author has done something new which will be of great value to readers; he has written a sort of program note - description and evaluation - of everything Debussy ever wrote. New material obtained from letters and surviving friends, has enabled the author to show the relation between Debussy's life and work in a new way. The early years have been clarified and obscurities of family relationships removed. It has been found possible to treat Debussy's two marriages and his other attachments frankly and, without a suggestion of sensationalism, to give to a double divorce and an attempted suicide their proper place in a narrative stripped of longstanding evasions
eBook, English, 1940
Tudor Publishing Company, New York, 1940