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.
—Claude Debussy
Topics: Music
How much has to be explored and discarded before reaching the naked flesh of feeling.
—Claude Debussy
Topics: Emotions
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.
—Claude Debussy
Topics: Music
Music is the space between the notes.
—Claude Debussy
Topics: Music
Do not allow the accents in the brass to produce space between the notes.
—Claude Debussy
Topics: Music
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.
—Claude Debussy
Topics: Enjoyment
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Hector Berlioz French Composer
John Cage American Composer
Igor Stravinsky Russian-born American Composer
Stephen Sondheim American Musician
Jean Sibelius Finnish Composer
Gian Carlo Menotti Italian-born American Composer
Ludwig van Beethoven German Composer
Frank Zappa American Rock Guitarist, Singer, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach German Composer
Arthur Rubinstein American Pianist