Briefe an seine Verleger

Claude Debussy’s letters to his publisher document the French composer’s whole professional career and also a musically and politically eventful epoch between the fin de siècle and the First World War. Debussy emerges as a lucid and sometimes waspish and ironic observer of and commentator on the cultural and political circumstances in which he lived and created his works.

Debussy’s letters appear here for the first time in German translation. Commentaries explain backgrounds and contexts. The translation is based on the French edition of Debussy’s complete correspondence edited by François Lesure, Denis Herlin and Georges Liébert (Claude Debussy – Correspondance 1872-1918, Gallimard 2005). The translator: Bernd Goetzke, an expert in French musical culture, is Professor of Piano at the Hochschule für Musik in Hanover and teaches masterclasses around the world; pupil of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli; he describes Debussy and Beethoven as the ‘focal points’ of his repertoire. His life has been rooted in French culture, language and music since his youth.

“… Also I am more and more convinced, that music in its essence is not something that can be poured into a strict and traditional mould. It consists of colours and rhythmic time … Everything else is trickery, invented by cold fools on the backs of the masters, who mostly only made music of their own time! Only Bach divined the truth.” Claude Debussy, 3 Sept 1907 to Jacques Durand