The Prodigal Son

• Debussy composed L’enfant prodique (scène lyrique [cantata]) in 1884¹ when he was 21.
• Debussy won the Prix de Rome with this work in 1884.²
  • The Prix de Rome was a French government scholarship awarded for students in the arts to study abroad in Rome. Other famous music winners included Hector Berlioz and Georges Bizet.³
• Debussy was not a fan of this work later in life. He said it was “boring.”[efn_ntoe]Mark DeVoto, Debussy and the Veil of Tonality: Essays on His Music (Hillsdale N.Y., Pendragn Press, 2004), 66.[/efn_note] However, he published it 1908,⁴ 24 years after he wrote it, so he must have thought someone somewhere would find it interesting.

“Someone looks up the winning formula to all the previous prize-wining cantatas, and that’s all there is to it.”

Debussy, on how to win the Prix de Rome⁵

• Story: based on the biblical story of the prodigal son. When rebellious runaway Azaël returns to his parents Lia and Siméon, begging to be accepted back into the family, Lia convinces Siméon to forgive their son.⁶

1. François Lesure and Roy Howat, “Debussy, (Achille-)Claude,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 27, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000007353.
2. Ibid.
3. “Prix de Rome,” Encyclopædia Brittanica (2019), https://www.britannica.com/art/Prix-de-Rome.
4. Lesure and Howat, “Debussy, (Achille-)Claude,” Grove Music Online.
5. Quoted in David Grayson, “Debussy on Stage,” in The Cambridge Companion to Debussy, ed. Simon Tresize (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 62.
6. Grayson, “Debussy on Stage,” in The Cambridge Companion to Debussy, 64.