Finding Inspiration At Debussy’s insistence, the cover of the original 1905 edition of La mer featured artwork inspired by Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. After the undeniable success of works such as Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Nocturnes and Pelléas et Mélisande, he at last won official recognition when he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur in 1903. Debussy currently seems to be tormented by the desire to write music that is bizarre, incomprehensible and unperformable.” Their criticisms, however, are belied by the remarkable accessibility and sensual appeal of his music.
Members of the Académie des Beaux Arts famously condemned him, saying that “M. Predictably, he met with resistance from the French musical establishment. In place of rules of art passed down by his professors at the Paris Conservatoire, Debussy relied on intuition, living “in a world of imagination, which is set in motion by something suggested by my intimate surroundings I find an exquisite joy when I search deeply in the recesses of myself and if anything original is to come from me, it can only come that way.” More succinctly, he wrote, “There is no theory.
Rather than shock his listeners, he sought to seduce them with beautiful sounds long outlawed by established laws of harmony and form. Revolutionaries are often brash, noisy characters, iconoclasts intent on shattering traditions Debussy, however, was a quiet revolutionary.
In this post, discover how Debussy’s masterpiece revolutionized orchestral music. On March 8, 9 and 10, the Houston Symphony presents a delectable all-French program featuring mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and Debussy’s La mer.
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