Debussy: The Preludes 155
Damozel” a work for chorus of women’s voices, soli and
orchestra, after the well-known poem by Dante Gabriel
Rossetti. But this last composition was not finally com-
pleted until after his return to Paris.
In 1889 Debussy made a trip to Bayreuth and was greatly
moved by performances of “Tristan”, “Meistersinger”
and “Parsifal”. Shortly afterwards, however, a friend
showed him a copy of Moussorgsky’s “Boris Godounow"
—in its original form, that is, before it had been “cor-
rected” by Rimsky-Korsakow. Debussy was struck by the
simplicity of the music, its freedom from operatic oratory,
but he seems to have been even more impressed by the
directness of the style in “Without Sunlight”, a group of
songs by the same composer. Just how clearly he recog-
nized the obscure affinity which doubtless exists between
his own and Moussorgsky’s sensibility, we cannot say. But
we know that when he returned, the following year, to
Bayreuth, the spell was broken. In the light of the new
insights which Moussorgsky’s music had given him, Wag-
ner seemed heavy, grandiloquent and incompatible, there-
fore, with the characteristic qualities of the French tem-
perament, to which clarity, proportion and taste are a
spiritual necessity.
Nothing is more astonishing in the personality of De-
bussy—a personality of brutal force and almost savage
instincts—than its deep and insistent desire for refinement.
During the years in Rome, Debussy was profoundly un-
happy, largely, perhaps, because of the inadequacy of his
culture, which prevented him from revelling, as one might
have expected him to do, in the rich atmosphere of Roman
antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. On his return to
Paris he set resolutely to work, reading voraciously, fre-
quenting poets, painters and visiting picture galleries and