[A] knowledge of Bach is the beginning of musical wisdom. - Walter Raymond Spalding

Music is of such power and glory that we should be ready to devote to its study as much time as to a foreign language.

Schumann claimed that his object in writing music was to influence the imagination of the listeners that they could go on dreaming for themselves.

It may be granted that Debussy's melodic line is very fluid and elastic, like Wagner's "continuous melody," not definitely sectionalized by balanced phrases or set cadences. But it surely has its own right to existence—music being pre-eminently the art of freedom—and let us remember that Nature herself has melting outlines, shadowy vistas and subtle rhythms. Debussy, in fact, is the poet of the "indefinite" and the "suggestive" and his music has had great influence in freeing expression from scholastic bond.