Chapter 22 - Music Criticism and Related Writing in Paris

Summary

Debussy numbered himself among the army of critics commenting on Paris’s burgeoning musical life. This chapters sets this criticism and other writing in context by relating the writings to the organs in which they appeared and the causes they often sought to promote. Not only was Debussy an active and often brilliant critic for two periods in his life, he also both benefitted and suffered from critical activity. He even numbered a critic or two among his correspondents and friends. Debussy’s attraction to writing music criticism was largely as a source of income, but his writings left their mark on the imagination of his contemporaries, not least because they contain aspects of his thought and, through his elliptical style, raise and sometimes resolve problems of musical aesthetics.