Harvey Lee Snyder - Afternoon of a Faun: How Debussy Created a New Music for the Modern World

PRELUDE
DECEMBER 22, 1894

Always collect the stones that are thrown at you. They may help to build your monument.

Attributed to Hector Berlioz

The first thing you notice is his massive headthe prominent forehead and the bulge above each eyebrow, as if his enormous intellect were about to burst through the cranium. The brow juts forward, the way Jupiters does in those drawings of gods in childrens books. Scattered about the head are heavy-lidded eyes, large ears, the nose a bit too small for the monumental skull behind it. With his curly black hair and beard, average height, and solid build, he looks more like a bourgeois shopkeeper than the ardent, impoverished artiste that he is.

On this important evening, there are few empty seats at the Salle dHarcourt. Some of his former Conservatory companions are here, and friends from the citys dense population of writers and artists. Some influential critics, too. His new Prlude LAprs-midi dun faune will be heard for the first time, and its certain that many in the hall know the steamy Mallarm poem that inspired it. The music will be judged harshly if it doesnt measure up. But can this composer, any composer, capture the mythic symbolism at the heart of the poem? Can music possibly simulate the opulent language, or evoke the languor, the torrid atmosphere of a sylvan afternoon, or portray the erotic ambitions of the faun?

Mallarm will be in the audience. What will he think of it?

Backstage, amidst a flock of agitated musicians, Debussy greets the conductor, Gustave Doret, with a self-conscious smile that betrays his anxiety. Like all of Debussys friends, Doret knows how thirsty for recognition the composer is. At twenty-one Claude won Frances highest honor for young composers: the Prix de Rome. In the ten years since, hes written dozens of songs and piano pieces that have been heard in Paris but nowhere else in the world. A year ago the first performance of his String Quartet left some musicians aghast because it departed arrogantly from the Beethoven model. Nevertheless, it drew a few accolades from the critics, who more often condemn his music as if he had brought shame on the French republic. But this work, this Faune , is so very different.