In Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s characters brags: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” None of those happened to Claude Debussy, however, when his symphonic suite “La Mer”–“The Sea”–had its American premiere on today’s date in Boston in 1907.

It was, as they say, a tough crowd… composed of “easily discomfited dowagers, quiet, academically-minded New England music lovers, and irascible music critics.”

That’s the description of musicologist Nicholas Slonimsky, who collected notably bad reviews in his notably excellent “Lexicon of Musical Invective.” Other reviews of “The Sea” included lines like: “Frenchmen are notoriously bad sailors, and we clung like a drowning man to a few fragments of the tonal wreck.”

Another said: “Debussy’s music is the dreariest kind of rubbish. Does anybody for a moment doubt that Debussy would not write such chaotic, meaningless, cacophonous, ungrammatical stuff if he could invent a melody?”

An even more graphic critic said: “It is possible that Debussy did not intend to call it 'La Mer,' but 'Le Mal de Mer,' which would at once make the tone-picture as clear as day. It is a series of symphonic pictures of seasickness. The first movement is Headache. The second is Doubt, picturing moments of dread suspense... The third movement, with its explosions and rumblings, has now a self-evident purpose: The hero is endeavoring to throw up his boot heels!”