Debussy or Monsieur Croche, a musical dialogue

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If there is a composer forever injected into the brains of those of us born in the seventies, it is Claude Debussy. Planeta imaginario (Imaginary Planet), one of the first youth programs broadcast by TVE on Saturday mornings in Catalan, had as its soundtrack his Arabesque number 1, a undulating melody that invited dreaming and that today plays on my mobile every time I get a call. Debussy is also behind one of the most groundbreaking ballets of the early 20th century, the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. In this piece, a possessed Nijinsky scandalized the audience of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris by outlining a gesture of onanism. Then there is also the Debussy of Pelléas et Mélinsande, a Wagnerian-inspired opera that fascinated a contemporary of his, Marcel Proust. One of the characters in In Search of Lost Time, Madame Verdurin, sports dark circles under her eyes because of Debussy, who causes her an addiction "stronger than cocaine."

Among the facets of the musician still considered today, a hundred years after his death, mysterious —one must listen to his Ephigraphes antiques— and outside the norm —La Chute de la Maison Usher—, perhaps the least known is that of music critic and theorist. It was in the small Breton municipality of Bécherel, a paradise for literati, that a few years ago Monsieur Croche Antidilettante (Gallimard, 1926), by Claude Debussy, fell into my hands. The first edition is from 1921. The volume collects the criticisms that the composer made intermittently between 1901 and 1914 in various publications. He began with La Revue Blanche and then wrote for Gil Blas and S.I.M. But Debussy —a friend of Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Verlaine— did not limit himself to writing conventional criticisms. He pulled a character out of his sleeve, Monsieur Croche (Mr. Eighth Note), with whom he dialogues to expose his aesthetic. Antidilettante is the "profession" of this incisive, asthmatic, and nocturnal opinionator: "Monsieur Croche loves music and this is his main topic of conversation. For him, music is not a fanciful diversion, but a serious matter." Later, Debussy evokes him as a friend he has lost sight of: "He spoke very softly, never laughed, sometimes he underlined his conversation with a silent smile that began at his nose and wrinkled his whole face like calm water into which a stone is thrown."

Mr. Croche lashes out at the public for its "indifference" and at "specialists," whom he calls short-sighted. Music? He tries to forget it because it bothers him when listening to music he doesn't yet know. "I try to see, through the works, the multiple movements that gave them birth and what they contain of inner life." Croche defends "impressions," a concept that gives him "the freedom to preserve his emotion from any parasitic aesthetic," and reproaches musicians for not paying attention to "the music that is inscribed in nature." "One should not listen to anyone's advice, but to the passing wind that tells us the story of the world." Despite his wisdom, Croche disappears after three chronicles and it is Debussy who takes the floor. His method is surprising: Can a score be whistled or not? This is his yardstick for separating good composers from bad ones. The "great" Bach, for example, cannot be whistled; Wagner, yes. Saint-Saëns, Massenet... are not to his liking, while R. Strauss seduces him because "there is sun in his music," not forgetting Mussorgsky, his idol. "Nowadays music increasingly serves as an accompaniment to sentimental or tragic anecdotes," he laments. Instead, he believes that one must renounce "parasitic developments that spoil beautiful things" and free music from certain "manias of form." "It is not about loading the repeating echoes with excessive ringing, but about taking advantage of them to prolong the harmonic dream in people's souls. The mysterious collaboration of the curves of the air, the movement of the leaves and the perfume of the flowers is fulfilled, since music is capable of bringing together all elements in such a natural understanding, that it seems to participate in each of them."

Achille-Claude Debussy died on March 25, 1918, a victim of cancer at 55 years old, forgotten by everyone and without seeing the end of the Great War. His impressionistic seed remains alive in 21st-century composers, such as the Finnish Kaija Saariaho. Perhaps that is why one of his articles, "L'oubli," challenges us more than ever: "I have no intention of contributing to the history of music. I only wanted to suggest that perhaps we are wrong if we always play the same works, as it can make people believe that music was born yesterday, when in reality it has a Past from which the ashes should be stirred: these contain the inextinguishable flame to which the Present will always owe a part of its splendor."

Featured images: 1. Portrait of the musician Claude Debussy. June 1908. Photo by LIFE Photo Archive 2. Page from the book The Dilettante Hater, by Monsieur Croche.