Claude Debussy Quotes

La musique doit humblement chercher à faire plaisir, l'extrême complication est le contraire de l'art

I wish to write down my musical dreams in a spirit of utter self-detachment. I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naïve candour of a child. No doubt, this simple musical grammar will jar on some people. It is bound to offend the partisans of deceit and artifice. I foresee that and rejoice at it. I shall do nothing to create adversaries, but neither shall I do anything to turn enmities into friendships. I must endeavour to be a great artist so that I may dare to be myself and suffer for my faith. Those who feel as I do will only appreciate me more. The others will shun and hate me. I shall make no effort to appease them. On that distant day — I trust it is still very far off — when I shall no longer be a cause of strife, I shall feel bitter self-reproach. For that odious hypocrisy which enables one to please all mankind will inevitably have prevailed in those last works.

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

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.

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

Proust is long-winded, precious, and a bit of an old woman

Music is a mysterious mathematical process whose elements are part of Infinity. … There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little — the book of Nature.

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...

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.

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

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

Music expresses the motion of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes.

Art is of absolutely no use to the masses

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.

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