In 1922, Erik Satie offered a curiously plausible explanation for why it had been easier for him to break away from Wagnerism and create a French style than for his friend Debussy, who had won the Prix de Rome:
When I first met him [Debussy], at the beginning of our liaison, he was full of Mussorgsky and very conscientiously seeking a path that was not easy to find. In this respect, I myself had a great advance over him: no “prizes” from Rome, or any other town, weighed down my steps, since I don’t carry any such prizes around on me, or on my back; for I am a man of the type of Adam (from Paradise), who never won any prizes – a lazy sort, no doubt.
– from Robert Orledge’s magnificently well-researched and insightful book Satie the Composer (Cambridge, 1990), which I’m reading for a second time and more impressed with than ever.