Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts and Legacies. Essays in Honour of François Lesure (review)

François Lesure (1923–2001) spent most of his career as a librarian at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and was head of the Music Department from 1970–88. Although not a musician, he made an immense contribution to Debussy studies as the driving force behind the ongoing critical edition of his music, and by publishing a catalogue of his works (1977) and a definitive biography and edition of his correspondence. His contribution to Berlioz studies was less extensive, though he was co-editor (with Hugh Macdonald) of two volumes of Berlioz's correspondence. It is worth acquiring this book just for the chapters by three distinguished Berlioz scholars – Macdonald, David Charlton, and particularly Julian Rushton's wide-ranging account of the background to L'Enfance du Christ.

The editors write in their introduction (xxii): "At the heart of the ambivalence surrounding these two figures [Berlioz and Debussy] is a debate concerning the nature and character of French music," and this is a central topic in the book. While the overarching themes of "sources, contexts and legacies" are omnipresent, many essays bring in additional themes of particular interest to their authors. As a result, what the book slightly loses in coherence, it more than gains in the overall quality of the individual chapters. For instance, Richard Langham Smith, in a fascinating chapter on his editing of Debussy's opera Rodrigue et Chimène and Bizet's Carmen, unearths the original mise-en-scène of Bizet's opera from the archives of the ART (Association de la régie théâtrale), which shows that "In the way opéra-comique was first disseminated there was no concept of a 'production' – the work of someone other than composer or librettist who imposed an interpretation of a piece. There was only the régisseur and his team, who followed the ART texts in order to put the work on stage" (95–97). So, an authentic production of Carmen would put the producer out of a job . . .

Jann Pasler focuses on a "sociology" of the Apaches, the friendship group that included Ravel, pointing out that they "represented a spectrum of political, social, religious and musical differences" (161); they appear to have been united primarily in their love of Debussy's music and contempt for philistines. Barbara Kelly's chapter starts with Debussy's death and Ravel's move out of Paris in the early 1920s. She quotes a 1920 article by Paul Landormy, who expresses scepticism about Ravel's ability to lead new music in France and promotes the post-Ravel generation – Roussel, Séverac and Schmitt – as vigorous, counterpoint-focused and virile (168); but the inevitable question (whether Landormy considered Ravel's music to lack these qualities) is not addressed.

Marie Rolf acknowledges her debt to Lesure in her study of Debussy and symbolism (after all, the title of his 1992 biography of Debussy is Claude Debussy avant Pelléas, ou les années symbolistes), here exploring symbolism as a compositional agent in Act IV, scene iv of Debussy's only completed opera. This key scene – the first for which Debussy composed music – went through several drafts over four major source manuscripts. Rolf shows how "the sources demonstrate that Debussy grew increasingly attentive to the Symbolist qualities of irony and ambiguity in the opera; or, perhaps more likely, they show that he had seen the full realm of complex associations inherent in Maeterlinck's play early on, but succeeded in creating a musical means for their expression only over a period of time" (147).

In the final chapter, the pianist and scholar Roy Howat describes the edition of Debussy's Œuvres complètes as "a monument to [Lesure's] dedication that should touch musical lives for many generations" (189). He relates a marvellous story on p. 186: after Howat had played "La Cathédrale engloutie" to M^me de...