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The concert of Russian music had been announced several weeks earlier at
the conservatory where Ravel had been accepted just a few months before.
What a disappointment to discover the theater nearly deserted! Some 400
people had shown up, and the scattered audience only accentuated the
emptiness of the room. As for the acoustics, they were as disastrous as the
attendance. After the concert, Ravel spotted Debussy on the first balcony,
the musician he had already seen during concerts at the Société Nationale
de Musique. Then aged 26, Debussy had left the conservatory—his professor
Marmontel once considered him
“lagging in terms of principles”
—and the
Villa Médicis, which he criticized as overly academic. An even more radical
transformation was at work: Achille-Claude would soon stop spelling his
name “de Bussy,” a habit that belied a certain smugness. Or was he trying
to redress an injustice? When he was asked to define his principle virtue, he
replied, cynically or mockingly:
“pride.”
Debussy had still not composed any
fundamental pieces. At the time, he was in the midst of a metamorphosis.
22 DEBUSSY, RAVEL_STRING QUARTETS