Overview

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. Speaking to readers both within and beyond the domain of French music and culture, Debussy's Legacy and the Construction of Reputation enters into dialogue with research in the sociology of reputation and commemoration, examining the collective nature of the processes of artistic consecration. By analyzing the cultural forces that came to bear on the formation of Debussy's legacy, Wheeldon contributes to a greater understanding of the inter-war period--the cultural politics, debates, and issues that confronted musicians in 1920s and 30s Paris--and offers a musicological perspective on the subject of reputation building, to date underrepresented in recent writings on reputation and commemoration in the humanities. Debussy's Legacy and the Construction of Reputation is an important new study, groundbreaking in its methodology and in its approach to musical influence and cultural consecration.

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9780190631222

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A major contribution to understanding the construction of legacies and reputations by exploring the intersection of an artist's output with the artistic, aesthetic, and ideological concerns of his afterlife. These questions intertwine, in the case of Debussy, also with the issue of commemoration in the aftermath of World War I, a topic very much at the forefront of current scholarship. --- Annegret Fauser, Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Music, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Drawing upon a vast body of unknown and unexamined materials, Marianne Wheeldon brilliantly exposes the controversies surrounding Debussy's legacy in the immediate aftermath of his death--a legacy that was sometimes bitterly disputed both within and between pro- and anti-Debussy factions, and involved prominent composers, performers, and critics. Engrossing and eminently readable. --- David Grayson, Professor of Musicology, University of Minnesota Wheeldon is a well-known Debussy scholar, with numerous published works and presentations on Debussy and French musical culture to her name. Her prose style is clear yet detailed, and she illustrates her argument with select scores, translations of texts, and photographs. The perspective of this book is unique: the life and works of a composer are frequently the subject of examination, but Debussy's Legacy considers all the surrounding factors that solidified Debussy's reputation as one of the most important composers of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Those wishing to gain a deep, insider's understanding of how Debussy's reputation was built, and of his musical 'life' during the interwar period, will find this book invaluable. --J.E. Wickell, Western Washington University, Choice -A major contribution to understanding the construction of legacies and reputations by exploring the intersection of an artist's output with the artistic, aesthetic, and ideological concerns of his afterlife. These questions intertwine, in the case of Debussy, also with the issue of commemoration in the aftermath of World War I, a topic very much at the forefront of current scholarship.---- Annegret Fauser, Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Music, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill-Drawing upon a vast body of unknown and unexamined materials, Marianne Wheeldon brilliantly exposes the controversies surrounding Debussy's legacy in the immediate aftermath of his death--a legacy that was sometimes bitterly disputed both within and between pro- and anti-Debussy factions, and involved prominent composers, performers, and critics. Engrossing and eminently readable.---- David Grayson, Professor of Musicology, University of Minnesota

-A major contribution to understanding the construction of legacies and reputations by exploring the intersection of an artist's output with the artistic, aesthetic, and ideological concerns of his afterlife. These questions intertwine, in the case of Debussy, also with the issue of commemoration in the aftermath of World War I, a topic very much at the forefront of current scholarship.---- Annegret Fauser, Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Music, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill-Drawing upon a vast body of unknown and unexamined materials, Marianne Wheeldon brilliantly exposes the controversies surrounding Debussy's legacy in the immediate aftermath of his death--a legacy that was sometimes bitterly disputed both within and between pro- and anti-Debussy factions, and involved prominent composers, performers, and critics. Engrossing and eminently readable.---- David Grayson, Professor of Musicology, University of Minnesota

Author Information

Marianne Wheeldon is Professor of Music Theory at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Debussy's Late Style (Indiana 2009) and co-editor, with Elliott Antokoletz, of Rethinking Debussy (Oxford 2011).

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