Claude Debussy’s Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé have, from the start, sparked off protracted controversy, and almost a century after its composition the work still remains widely neglected. That particular issues affected the reception, both positive and negative, of the songs, clearly emerges from the image that was disseminated, not to say forged militantly, by the reviews which appeared at the time of their publication and first performance, as well as by the commentaries written over the following decades. In their own way, these texts are an integral part of the work’s history. Are re-edited here, along with commentaries and a general presentation, a large number of documents revealing how musical criticism and European musicography (up till 1951) welcomed or rejected Debussy’s last Mallarmean opus.
