What the described event marks is a moment where an expectation is shattered: the composer, who expected to become a big success in the French capital, had his art rejected by one of the most important figures from the city’s artistic scene. An event such as this is criss-crossed by innumerable social vectors. On one hand, a foreign artist, fresh from the ‘periphery,’ a recent arrival in the great cultural centre of the period; on the other, a Parisian artist completely established and at home in his setting. More than a purely aesthetic question, therefore, a whole series of cultural contents, legitimacies, representations and hierarchies was.
