Over   

the   

centuries   

London   

has   

played   

host   

to   

so   

many   

great   

composers.   

 None has taken the city, and the British way of life, more to his heart, through his visits and through his music, than Claude Debussy.

Between 1902 and 1914 he was a regular visitor to London, sometimes as a tourist, eager to take in what it had to offer, sometimes as a composer or music critic, but always happy to be here.

It was in London, at the Lyric Theatre, that Debussy saw the celebrated Shakespearean actor Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson in his most famous role as Hamlet. The composer spoke very little English, but at the end of that performance a friend said, ‘he seemed like a child in a trance. So profoundly affected was he that it was some time before he could speak.’

Again   

 in   

 London,   

 this   

 time   

 at   

 the   

 Vaudeville   

 Theatre,   

 Debussy   

 saw   

 two   

 other great names of the Edwardian stage, Sarah Bernhardt and Mrs Patrick Campbell, perform, in French, Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande.

Debussy also visited the National and Tate galleries, where he was amazed by some of Turner’s paintings and how they seemed to mirror his own musical impressionism.

As a critic, Debussy came to London to report for a Paris musical journal on   

a   

production   

of   

Wagner’s   

‘Ring’   

cycle   

at   

the   

Royal   

Opera   

House,   

Covent   

 Garden. Afterwards, he impishly wrote to another friend, he sneaked off to the Empire music hall in Leicester Square, ‘as a reward for good behaviour’.

He   

was   

back   

at   

Covent   

Garden   

to   

sit   

in   

on   

rehearsals   

for   

the   

first   

London   

 production of his own opera Pelléas et Mélisande (based on Maeterlinck’s play), with the great Scottish soprano Mary Garden in the starring role. And despite his shy and retiring nature, Debussy accepted an invitation from Sir Henry Wood (of Promenade Concerts fame) to conduct a programme of his own music at the Queen’s Hall, London’s famous old concert hall until it was destroyed by bombs in 1941.

On   

 his   

 last   

 visit   

 Debussy   

 was   

 the   

 guest   

 of   

 financier   

 and   

 arts   

 patron   

 Sir   

 Edgar Speyer, staying in style at the latter’s home in Grosvenor Street, Mayfair. Alas it was also a rather sad occasion. The composer was by then a sick man, and the outbreak of the First World War was only weeks away.

So to the music. It was in fact at the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne, in 1905, that   

 Debussy   

 put   

 the   

 finishing   

 touches   

 to   

 his   

 orchestral   

 masterpiece   

La Mer. It was also there that he probably saw the seaside minstrel show that inspired his piano piece of the same name, with its imitation staccato drum beats and sly snatches of a popular song.

That same year Debussy’s daughter Claude-Emma (known to everyone as ‘Chou Chou’) was born, and a little while later she was given a copy of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. From this book Debussy took the quotation, ‘the fairies are exquisite dancers’, as the inspiration for another piano piece, Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses, with its gossamer finger   

work   

and   

shimmering   

chords.

This piece and Minstrels come from the composer’s two sets or books of piano Préludes. Also included in this wonderfully evocative collection are La Dance de Puck, a portrait of the mischievous and mercurial sprite in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq, P. P. M. P. C., Debussy’s whimsical tribute to Charles Dickens, with its   

 mock-solemn   

 opening   

 to   

 the   

 National   

 Anthem;;   

 while   

 the   

 composer   

 travelled in his imagination north of the border in the soft and delicate La Fille aux cheveux de lin (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair).

Debussy’s attachment to London and to England needs no introduction in his Children’s Corner suite for piano. Dedicated to ‘Chou Chou’, the collective title and that of each piece is in English because the little girl was learning to speak the language from her English nanny. Rather touchingly, Debussy misspelled ‘Jumbo’ in ‘Jimbo’s Lullaby’. The well- known ‘Golliwog’s Cakewalk’ ends this enchanting suite.

One   

more   

English   

reference   

comes   

to   

us   

in   

Gigues, from the composer’s orchestral Images,   

with   

its   

melancholy   

reflection   

on   

the   

old   

Tyneside   

folk   

 song, ‘The Keel Row’.