More than anyone else of his century, Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-94) restored to French music the essential French traits of clarity, emotional vitality, wit, and tenderness, at the time when the music of the 1900s was struggling under a Wagnerian hangover on the one hand and academic dryness on the other. So profound was Chabrier's talent that Ravel especially named him as the composer who had influenced him more than any other. Debussy was entranced...