On March 25, 1918, Debussy, after suffering for a decade from the increasing inroads and escalating pain of rectal cancer, died an agonizing death. His influence was, and is, incalculable, while contemporaries such as Dukas and Roussel, who had watched his career unfold at close range and been constantly startled, then stimulated, by it, felt a peculiar loss. In writing of works such as Roussel's Evocations or Le Poème de la forêt, early expositors (e.g., Norman Demuth) are at pains to downplay their Impressionist sound while stressing Roussel's individuality; legitimate points needing to be made, though the necessity arose because of Debussy's palpable influence. Roussel is but one of many composers for whom Debussy opened doors (Schreker, a fascinating case, is another), and it is of some interest to trace the stages by which Roussel absorbed Debussy—at full strength, so to speak, in Le Marchand de sable qui passe (1908)—and, with his Second Symphony in 1920, finally exorcised him to achieve a linear muscularity of utterance, abandoning the seductive sensuousness of Debussy's orchestral technique for acerbic, sardonically tinged, coruscating brilliance. Nor was Roussel much tempted by the formlessness attributed to Debussy; his designs may be idiosyncratic, but they are usually strongly marked. Nevertheless, winning his individuality against so irresistible a current struck deeply and with a heartfelt, if stylized, resonance heard in Roussel's memorial piece L'Accueil des muses (The Muses' welcome). Playing around four minutes, this grinding processional makes a bass-heavy trenchant statement from the first, set off by keening figures in the treble, to rise to a powerful, if brief, climax and ebb away slowly, as if passing into the night. The prompt for L'Accueil des muses came from the monthly Revue Musicale, whose editor commissioned pieces from the leading composers of the day for a Debussy memorial issue in December 1920. Among the contributors were Bartók, de Falla, Goossens, Malipiero, Stravinsky, Dukas, Ravel, Satie, and Schmitt. Debussy had, himself, contributed an Hommage à Haydn to a Revue Musicale number in 1909 commemorating the centenary of that composer's death (in which capacity his music appeared cheek-by-jowl with that of d'Indy, Ravel, Dukas, Hahn, and Widor). Of L'Accueil des muses, professor Demuth remarked, "...it is one of the most successful of this type of piece of which 'La Revue Musicale' has made such a feature. It would score remarkably well for small orchestra." The premiere was given in Paris by E. Levy on January 24, 1921.

© Adrian Corleonis, Rovi