Constance Shacklock:

>Now I'm very fond of Folkestone (although it's not, alas, quite the
>genteel resort it once was) but I'd no idea that the Great Bohemian had
>visited it, let alone been inspired by it to a degree comparable with
>Msr.  Debussy, for whom Eastbourne held a comparable fascination - it
>was there, let us not forget, that he wrote that rather queasy

  ;-) Indeed some performances do fail to capture his strong sense of form.

>piece
>called "La Mer"!

Was Debussy in Eastbourne in May and June 1903 (or was that London?) or
during the summer of 1905?  Information varies from souce to source...

However I think he sketched out "La Mer" far from the sea in Burgundy,
working from September 1903 until he left Burgundy for Jersey in 1904
(where he wrote "L'Isle joyeuse", so happy he was with Emma).  He moved
from Jersey to Dieppe, still in 1904, where he resumed his work on "La
Mer", finishing the piano version in March 1905.  It was premiered in
October of that year, so it is possible he did some of the orchestrating
in Eastbourne if he was there in 1905.

In a letter to Messager, he wrote: "You perhaps do not know that I was
destined for the fine life of a sailor and that it was only by chance
that I was led away from it.  But I still have a great passion for Her
(the sea).  You will say that the ocean doesn't wash the hills of
Burgundy...!  and that what I am doing might be like painting a landscape
in a studio.  But I have endless memories, and, in my opinion, they are
worth more than reality, which generally weighs down one's thought too
heavily."

Amongst doubtlessly many vital others, his "endless memories" may have
included experiences of the Mediterranean because of his visits to Cannes
when young, experiences of sailing in Brittany and maybe the terrible
storm he was caught in off the coast of Brittany in 1889.

Hm... Now was it 1889?... ;-)

Regards,

Christine Labroche