The Dilettante Hater

Even after success came to Claude Debussy with his Pelleas et Melisande and Prelude a l'Apres-midi d'un Faune, the bearlike composer helped support himself for nearly ten years by scribbling pieces for Paris journals. A collection of his musical criticisms called Monsieur Croche, the Dilettante Hater (Lear; $2.75), long out of print in the U.S., was republished this week. Music-lovers who admire Composer Debussy may not always agree with Critic Debussy--but some of his judgments are as luminous as his music. For his critical 'dirty work and malicious humor Debussy invented a "Monsieur Croche" (Mr. Eighth Note) to do his arguing for him.

Debussy on Saint-Saens' musical tours of Europe and Africa: "Does no one care sufficiently for Saint-Saens to tell him he has written music enough and that he would be better employed in following his belated vocation of explorer?"

On Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel: "An hour of original music in a lunatic asylum." On Edvard Grieg: his music gave "the charming and bizarre sensation of eating a pink bon-bon stuffed with snow." On Richard Wagner: "His impunity as a despot almost excused his imperturbable vanity." Debussy admitted that Wagner had his points: the music of Parsifal is "incomparable and bewildering, splendid and strong . . ."

Like most composers, Debussy was no ardent admirer of conductors. He thus saluted one of the day's most famed, Felix Weingartner: "He . . . conducted [Beethoven's] Pastoral Symphony with the care of a conscientious gardener. He tidied it so neatly as to produce the illusion of a meticulously finished landscape in which the gently undulating hills are made of plush at ten francs the yard and the foliage is crimped with curling-tongs."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.