Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918)
French composer, prominent in the style commonly referred to as Impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term.
I love Italian opera — it’s so reckless. Damn Richard Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don’t care about their immortal souls, and don’t worry about the ultimate.
Collect impressions. Don’t be in a hurry to write them down. Because that’s something music can do better than painting: it can centralise variations of colour and light within a single picture — a truth generally ignored, obvious as it is.
What I am trying to do is something different — an effect of reality, but what some fools call Impressionism, a term that is usually misapplied, especially by the critics who don't hesitate to apply it to Turner, the greatest creator of mysterious effects in the whole world of art.
Music expresses the motion of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes.
Is it not our duty to find the symphonic formula which fits our time, one which progress, daring and modern victory demand? The century of airplanes has a right to its own music.
People don't very much like things that are beautiful — they are so far from their nasty little minds.
The worship of Adonis is united with that of Christ.
Music is the space between the notes.
I believe the principle fault of the majority of writers and artists is having neither the will nor the courage to break with their successes, failing to seek new paths and give birth to new ideas. Most of them produce them twice, three, even four times. They have neither the courage nor the temerity to leave what is certain for what is uncertain. There is, however, no greater pleasure than going into the depth of oneself, setting one's whole being in motion and seeking for new and hidden treasures. What a joy to finde something new in oneself, something that surprises even ourselves, filling us with warmth.
The attraction of the virtuoso for the public is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always the hope that something dangerous may happen.
Music should humbly seek to please; within these limits great beauty may perhaps be found. Extreme complication is contrary to art. Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part.
It is necessary to abandon yourself completely, and let the music do as it will with you. All people come to music to seek oblivion.
A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.
Every sound perceived by the acute ear in the rhythm of the world about us can be represented musically. Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear.
Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.
Composers aren't daring enough. They're afraid of that sacred idol called "common sense", which is the most dreadful thing I know — after all, it's no more than a religion founded to excuse the ubiquity of imbeciles!
There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law. I love music passionately. And because l love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth — an open-air art, boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art.
The colour of my soul is iron-grey and sad bats wheel about the steeple of my dreams.
First of all, ladies and gentlemen, you must forget that you are singers.
Search for a discipline within freedom! Don't let yourelf be governed by formulae drawn from decadent philosophies: they are for the feeble-minded. Listen to no one's advice except that of the wind in the trees. That can recount the whole history of mankind...