Debussy's legacy and the construction of reputation

Oxford University Press

2017

228 pages

9780190631222

Acknowledgments ; The construction of reputation and the case of Debussy ; Reputational entrepreneurs ; Debussyism, anti-Debussyism, neoclassicism ; The controversy over the Ode âa la France ; Collective memory and the material shaping of Debussy's legacy ; Appendix: Le Floriláege de Claude Debussy ; Notes ; Works cited ; Index.

Today, Claude Debussy's position as a central figure in twentieth-century concert music is secure, and scholarship has long taken for granted the enduring musical and aesthetic contributions of his compositions. Yet this was not always the case. Unknown to many concert-goers and music scholars is the fact that for years after his death, Debussy's musical aesthetic was perceived as outmoded, decadent, and even harmful for French music. In Debussy's Legacy and the Construction of Reputation, Marianne Wheeldon examines the vicissitudes of the composer's posthumous reception in the 1920s and 30s, and analyzes the confluence of factors that helped to overturn the initial backlash against his music. Rather than viewing Debussy's artistic greatness as the cause of his enduring legacy, she considers it instead as an effect, tracing the manifold processes that shaped how his music was received and how its aesthetic worth was consolidated

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