CLAUDE DEBUSSY AND RUSSIAN MUSIC

BY ROLLO H. MYERS

IT was in the summer of 1880 that Debussy, while still a student at

the Paris Conservatoire, was engaged by Mme. Nadezhda Filaretovna
von Meek to join her establishment as resident pianist. Mme. von
Meek was the unseen benefactress and admirer of Tchaikovsky, with
whom she maintained over a period of years a voluminous and in-
timate correspondence which would have ensured her a place in
musical history even if she had never met and entertained in her

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house Claude Debussy.
The circumstances which brought Debussy into contact with this
remarkable woman and gave him his first introduction to a Russian
milieu and way of life, as well as to the music of at least one famous
Russian composer, are well known, but can be briefly recapitulated
as follows. Nadezhda von Meek was a fervid amateur musician, and
the fortune she had inherited from her railway magnate husband
enabled her to satisfy her two main passionstravel and music-
making. For the latter purpose she was in the habit of engaging
resident musicians with whom she could play and discuss music
while travelling about, and in the summer of 1880, being in need of
a pianist, she asked Marmontel of the Paris Conservatoire to recom-
mend a student who would be willing to join her establishment. His
duties would be to give piano lessons to her children, be her partner
in duets and play trios with the other two resident musicians she
used to take about with her.
Debussy, wjio had just won the first prize for accompanying and
sight-reading at the Conservatoire, was offered the post, accepted,
and went to join Mme. von Meek at Interlaken. From there the
party went to Arcachon and finally to Florence. Next year Debussy
was invited to Mme. von Meck's estate at Brailov in the Ukraine,
and from there it seems he went to Moscow for the first time. The
following summer he again spent with the von Mecks, joining them
at Pleshcheyevo in August and then travelling to Moscow in
September and Vienna in October. While in Vienna it is said that
he heard 'Tristan' for the first time, under Hans Richter.
Strangely enough, these episodes in his early life (he was eighteen
when he first met Mme. von Meek) have always been shrouded in a
certain obscurity, and Debussy himself unfortunately seems to have
kept no record of what must have been for him a most exciting and
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