Georges Migot (1891–1976) authored a vast oeuvre founded on two principles that in various ways pervade all of his work: a nationalist aesthetic and a link to the past. This emerges and is reinforced in repeated references to the French lutenists of old, as well as troubadours and trouveÌres, folk song and ancient monodic forms, particularly plainchant. Rather than limit himself to copying their external structure, however, Migot sought to extract the spirit, sensitivity, grace and sense of freedom from these historic forms, which he believed better suited the infinite nature of human sensitivity. Despite strong and professed ties to his contemporaries Faureì and Debussy, Migot cannot be placed in any school or branch of 20th-century music.

Debussy’s “Iberism” was made to glide, in the fashion of a synecdoche, towards a clear and declared “Guitarism”. However, the Frenchman’s explicit citations of and allusions to the guitar would suffice to support such theses. If Segovia’s most cherished vision saw the guitar as a “miniature orchestra”, Debussy overturned it. In some cases, he treated the orchestra itself as a “great guitar”. In Matin d’un jour de fête, from Ibéria, he makes his request of imitation explicit, through the indication of “quasi chitarra” asking the violinists to hold the instrument under their arms. The same premise applies to the articulation and interpretation of the piano prelude La sérénade interrompue.