Editing Claude Debussy (section)

=== 1903–1918 ===
[[File:Emma Debussy after Léon Bonnat.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=drawing of profile head of youngish woman|Emma Bardac (later Emma Debussy) in 1903]]
In 1903 there was public recognition of Debussy's stature when he was appointed a Chevalier of the [[Légion d'honneur]],<ref name=timeline5/> but his social standing suffered a great blow when another turn in his private life caused a scandal the following year. One of his pupils was [[Raoul Bardac]], son of [[Emma Bardac|Emma]] and her husband, Parisian banker Sigismond Bardac. Raoul introduced his teacher to his mother, to whom Debussy quickly became greatly attracted. She was sophisticated, a brilliant conversationalist, an accomplished singer, and relaxed about marital fidelity, having been the mistress and muse of [[Gabriel Fauré]] a few years earlier.<ref>Nectoux, pp. 180–181</ref> After despatching Lilly to her parental home at Bichain in [[Villeneuve-la-Guyard]] on 15 July 1904, Debussy took Emma away, staying incognito in [[Jersey]] and then at [[Pourville]] in Normandy.<ref name=timeline5/> He wrote to his wife on 11 August from [[Dieppe]], telling her that their marriage was over, but still making no mention of Bardac. When he returned to Paris he set up home on his own, taking a flat in a different [[arrondissement]].<ref name=timeline5/> On 14 October, five days before their fifth wedding anniversary, Lilly Debussy attempted suicide, shooting herself in the chest with a revolver;<ref name=timeline5/>{{refn|A fictionalised and melodramatic dramatisation of the affair, ''La femme nue'', played in Paris in 1908.<ref>Orledge, p. 21</ref> A myth grew up that Lilly Debussy shot herself in the Place de la Concorde, rather than at home. That version of events is not corroborated by Debussy scholars such as Marcel Dietschy, [[Roger Nichols (musical scholar)|Roger Nichols]], [[Robert Orledge]] and Nigel Simeone;<ref>Dietschy (1990), p. 125; Nichols (1998), p. 94; Orledge (2003), p. 21; and Simeone (2000), p. 54</ref> and no mention of the Place de la Concorde appeared in even the most sensational press coverage at the time.<ref name=j85/><ref>"Un drame parisien", ''Le Figaro'', 4 November 1904, p. 4</ref> Another inaccurate report of the case, in ''[[Le Figaro]]'' in early January 1905, stated that Lilly had made a second attempt at suicide.<ref name=j85>Jensen, p. 85</ref>|group= n}} she survived, although the bullet remained lodged in her [[vertebra]]e for the rest of her life.<ref>Nichols (2000), p. 115</ref> The ensuing scandal caused Bardac's family to disown her, and Debussy lost many good friends including Dukas and Messager.<ref>Nichols (2000), p. 116</ref> His relations with Ravel, never close, were exacerbated when the latter joined other former friends of Debussy in contributing to a fund to support the deserted Lilly.<ref>Nichols (2011), pp. 58–59</ref>

The Bardacs divorced in May 1905.<ref name=timeline5/> Finding the hostility in Paris intolerable, Debussy and Emma (now pregnant) went to England. They stayed at the [[Grand Hotel, Eastbourne]] in July and August, where Debussy corrected the proofs of his symphonic sketches'' [[La mer (Debussy)|La mer]]'', celebrating his divorce on 2&nbsp;August.<ref name=timeline5/> After a brief visit to London, the couple returned to Paris in September, buying a house in a courtyard development off the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne (now [[Avenue Foch]]), Debussy's home for the rest of his life.<ref name=timeline5/>
[[File:Debussy's house, Sq. de l'av. Foch.jpg|thumb|left|upright|alt=exterior of large Parisian house|Debussy's last home]]

In October 1905 ''La mer'', Debussy's most substantial orchestral work, was premiered in Paris by the [[Orchestre Lamoureux]] under the direction of [[Camille Chevillard]];<ref name=grove/> the reception was mixed. Some praised the work, but [[Pierre Lalo]], critic of ''[[Le Temps (Paris)|Le Temps]]'', hitherto an admirer of Debussy, wrote, "I do not hear, I do not see, I do not smell the sea".<ref name=lalo>Lalo, Pierre. "Music: ''La Mer'' – Suite of three symphonic pictures: its virtues and its faults", ''Le Temps'', 16 October 1905, ''quoted'' in Jensen, p. 206</ref>{{refn|Lalo objected to what he felt was the artificiality of the piece: "a reproduction of nature; a wonderfully refined, ingenious and carefully composed reproduction, but a reproduction none the less".<ref name=lalo/> Another Parisian critic, Louis Schneider, wrote, "The audience seemed rather disappointed: they expected the ocean, something big, something colossal, but they were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer."<ref>Parris, p. 274</ref>|group= n}} In the same month the composer's only child was born at their home.<ref name=timeline5/> Claude-Emma, affectionately known as "Chouchou", was a musical inspiration to the composer (she was the dedicatee of his ''[[Children's Corner]]'' suite). She outlived her father by scarcely a year, succumbing to the [[diphtheria]] epidemic of 1919.<ref name=timeline7/> Mary Garden said, "I honestly don't know if Debussy ever loved anybody really. He loved his music – and perhaps himself. I think he was wrapped up in his genius",<ref name = Garden>Garden and Biancolli, p. 302</ref> but biographers are agreed that whatever his relations with lovers and friends, Debussy was devoted to his daughter.<ref>Jensen, p. 95</ref><ref>Hartmann, p. 154</ref><ref>Schmidtz, p. 118</ref>

Debussy and Emma Bardac eventually married in 1908, their troubled union enduring for the rest of his life. The following year began well, when at Fauré's invitation, Debussy became a member of the governing council of the Conservatoire.<ref name=timeline5/> His success in London was consolidated in April 1909, when he conducted ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' and the ''Nocturnes'' at the [[Queen's Hall]];<ref>"M. Debussy at Queen's Hall", ''The Times'', 1 March 1909, p. 10</ref> in May he was present at the first London production of ''Pelléas et Mélisande'', at [[Royal Opera House|Covent Garden]]. In the same year, Debussy was diagnosed with [[colorectal cancer]], from which he was to die nine years later.<ref name=timeline5/>

Debussy's works began to feature increasingly in concert programmes at home and overseas. In 1910 [[Gustav Mahler]] conducted the ''Nocturnes'' and ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' in New York in successive months.<ref name=timeline6>
[http://www.debussy.fr/encd/bio/bio6_10-14.php "From Préludes to Jeux"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120628052255/http://www.debussy.fr/encd/bio/bio6_10-14.php |date=28 June 2012 }}, Centre de documentation Claude Debussy, Bibliothèque nationale de France, retrieved 18 May 2018
</ref> In the same year, visiting Budapest, Debussy commented that his works were better known there than in Paris.<ref name=grove/> In 1912 [[Sergei Diaghilev]] commissioned a new ballet score, ''[[Jeux]]''. That, and the three ''[[Images pour orchestre|Images]]'', premiered the following year, were the composer's last orchestral works.<ref name=timeline6/> ''Jeux'' was unfortunate in its timing: two weeks after the premiere, in March 1913, Diaghilev presented the first performance of Stravinsky's ''[[The Rite of Spring]]'', a sensational event that monopolised discussion in musical circles, and effectively sidelined ''Jeux'' along with Fauré's ''[[Pénélope]]'', which had opened a week before.<ref>Simeone (2008), pp. 125–126</ref>

[[File:Claude Debussy portrait.jpg|thumb|upright|Debussy in 1908]]

In 1915 Debussy underwent one of the earliest [[colostomy]] operations. It achieved only a temporary respite, and occasioned him considerable frustration ("There are mornings when the effort of dressing seems like one of the twelve labours of Hercules").<ref>Vallas, p. 269</ref> He also had a fierce enemy at this period in the form of [[Camille Saint-Saëns]], who in a letter to Fauré condemned Debussy's ''[[En blanc et noir]]'': "It's incredible, and the door of the [[Institut de France|Institut]] [de France] must at all costs be barred against a man capable of such atrocities". Saint-Saëns had been a member of the Institut since 1881: Debussy never became one.<ref>Nichols (1980), p. 308</ref> His health continued to decline; he gave his final concert on 14 September 1917 and became bedridden in early 1918.<ref name=timeline7>[https://web.archive.org/web/20171117105415/http://www.debussy.fr/encd/bio/bio7_15-18.php "War and Illness"], Centre de documentation Claude Debussy, Bibliothèque nationale de France, retrieved 18 May 2018</ref>

Debussy died of colon cancer on 25 March 1918 at his home, aged 55. The [[First World War]] was still raging and Paris was under German [[German spring offensive|aerial and artillery bombardment]]. The military situation did not permit the honour of a public funeral with ceremonious graveside orations. The funeral procession made its way through deserted streets to a temporary grave at [[Père Lachaise Cemetery]] as the [[Paris Gun|German guns]] bombarded the city. Debussy's body was reinterred the following year in the small [[Passy Cemetery]] sequestered behind the [[Trocadéro, Paris|Trocadéro]], fulfilling his wish to rest "among the trees and the birds"; his wife and daughter are buried with him.<ref>Simeone (2000), p. 251</ref>