In his editor’s Preface to this latest instalment in Cambridge University Press’s excellent ‘In Context’ series, Simon Trezise outlines his desire to create ‘an accessible volume that covers the full gamut of Debussy’s life and work without the constraints of a chronological biography’. Thus we have 32 manageable-length essays from 27 experts drawn from around the world, grouped to position Debussy in the context of the world in which he lived, and then within that of our own 21st-century world. Trezise himself is abundantly well qualified for the editor’s chair, as the author of the Cambridge Handbook to Debussy’s La mer, and editor of both The Cambridge Companion to Debussy and The Cambridge Companion to French Music.

If you just want to know whether the book achieves its aims in a manner worthy of your time and money, then the simple answer is yes. Beyond that, the first thing to say is that everything you would hope to be covered is covered, with clarity and thoroughness, and all sources are clearly listed. Symbolism, modernism, exoticism? Tick. Intersection with the visual arts, and whether Debussy was an ‘Impressionist’? Tick. The Paris Expositions Universelles, where Debussy encountered Russian, American and Javanese music? Tick. Music education and the Prix de Rome; the other composers who surrounded him; the societal and political climates of Third-Republic France? Tick, tick, tick. I found Michael Strasser’s chapter outlining the concert season of Debussy’s Paris particularly fascinating – the politics within and between its major-player orchestras and concert societies, and their different repertoires and audiences.

One I wasn’t expecting was Christopher Moore’s ‘means of modestly redressing the enormous gendered imbalance in early Debussy criticism’ via considering three turn-of-the-century female French critics who all wrote about performances of Debussy’s music: Cécile Max, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus and Marguerite Levadé. This was certainly interesting for learning about La Fronde (typically translated as ‘The Slingshot’), a daily newspaper founded in 1897 by Marguerite Durand that was edited and written solely by women. Perhaps more interesting, though, was what this chapter suggests about 21st-century academic approaches to diversity, in that while it clearly states that there’s no evidence that Debussy either knew of or cared about what these women wrote, it concludes: ‘In short, Debussy’s music and reputation may be profitably understood within the context of the growing implication of women within the public sphere and concomitant anxieties about their challenge to the hegemonic masculine ordering of French society and the fin de siècle.’ Well, if you say so …

Other chapters, though, veritably zing. Martin Guerpin’s ‘Paris, the City’, for instance, makes for a rip-roaring Chapter 1, employing some of the book’s liveliest, most readable writing in painting turn-of-the-century Paris in all its noise, colour and excitement. We learn that in 1900 there were 618 registered private cars in Paris, and that seven years later that number had multiplied by 10, in addition to autobuses beginning service in 1906. Another highly engaging chapter is Trezise’s own in which he unpicks the multiple difficulties in recreating a performance that Debussy himself would recognise and approve of. Brian Hart is especially fascinating on the use of period instruments in Debussy performance, full of references to specific recordings.

Perhaps inevitably, there is an overlap of information between chapters, and I say that as a positive. For instance, Edmond Bailly’s Librairie de L’art Indépendent pops up a few times for its role in bringing together artists and intellectuals to trade ideas on symbolism, esotericism and the occult, and for its brief spell as a bijou publishing house. The resultant effect isn’t of repetition, but of accumulation.

Trezise also appears to have given his contributors genuinely free rein with their ‘Author’s Recommendation’ concluding each chapter – a brief suggestion and explanation of a Debussy work that the reader could listen to in light of what they’ve just read. Both Annegret Fauser and Denis Herlin choose Le martyre de Saint Sébastien (1911), each bringing entirely different perspectives; and talking of perspectives, David J Code’s enthusiastic championing of the children’s ballet La boîte a joujoux has had me reaching for my CD in order to hear what he hears in it.

Debussy himself is refreshingly challenged at times. Take Julia Lu and Kenji Fujimura, who don’t just give us a fascinating explanation of the French musical education system including the Prix de Rome, but also throw some cold water on Debussy’s famous rubbishing of it.

For those diving into Debussy’s biography for the first time, this book’s running theme that he wasn’t the nicest of gentlemen may be a slightly disappointing discovery. Yet Matthew Brown’s final word – opining on the reasons for Debussy’s enduring appeal – points out the optimism of his music, epitomised by the wartime Violin Sonata, completed in 1917 as he succumbed to cancer. ‘It is precisely this capacity to show us how to face the challenges of the world with a sense of humanity and hope’, he concludes, ‘that makes Debussy and his music as relevant today as it was a century ago.’ In short, in our current dark times we need Debussy as much as ever. And this book is a perfect way in if you want to dig deeper beyond the music itself. 

This article originally appeared in the November 2024 issue of Gramophone. Never miss an issue – subscribe today