Claude Debussy Quotes

There is nothing more musical than a sunset.

But music, don't you know, is a dream from which the veils have been lifted. It's not even the expression of a feeling, it's the feeling itself.

Music is the space between the notes.

Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art.

Music begins where words are powerless to express. Music is made for the inexpressible. I want music to seem to rise from the shadows and indeed sometimes to return to them.

Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes.

[on Richard Wagner] A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.

I am more and more convinced that music is not, in essence, a thing which can be cast into a traditional and fixed form. It is made up of colors and rhythms.

Listen to no one's advice except that of the wind in the trees. That can recount the whole history of mankind.

I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.

Art is the most beautiful deception of all!

On those who overanalyze his music: When you tear the wings off a butterfly, it is no longer a butterfly

If I am not making music, I have no reason for existing.

Anyone who calls my music "impressionist" is an imbecile.

Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear.

The colour of my soul is iron-grey and sad bats wheel about the steeple of my dreams.

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.

To complete a work is just like being present at the death of someone you love.

In opera, there is always too much singing.

I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naive candour of a child.

People don't very much like things that are beautiful - they are so far from their nasty little minds.

Life is the space between our things.

Claude Debussy was a rare phenomenon a composer profoundly and subversively revolutionary.

I have a horror of sentimentality, and I cannot forget that its name is Saint-Saëns.

He was the incomparable painter of mystery, silence, and the infinite, of the passing cloud, and the sunlit shimmer of the waves-subleties which none before him had been capable of suggesting.

Beauty seems to strike some people as a personal affront.

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.

The age of automobiles and aeroplanes cannot express itself in the same manner as did the age of the diligence.

The century of airplanes has a right to its own music.

There is no theory. You merely have to listen. Pleasure is the law.

The music I desire must be supple enough to adapt itself to the lyrical effusions of the soul and the fantasy of dreams.

Extreme complication is contrary to art.

People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?

The century of aeroplanes deserves its own music. As there are no precedents, I must create anew.

Peter Townsend Music is the silence between the notes.. So could it be said that dance is the stillness between the steps?

First of all, ladies and gentlemen, you must forget that you are singers.

Do not allow the accents in the brass to produce space between the notes.

Music is in the space between the notes.

The trouble with the opera is there's always to much singing.

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.

The worship of Adonis is united with that of Christ.

Works of art make rules rules do not make works of art.

Art is the most beautiful of all lies.

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 will happen.

Music is the silence between the notes.