Claude Debussy Quotes - Page 2

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• When asked by a grumpily puzzled professor what "rules" he followed, Debussy is said to have retorted, mon plaisir "whatever I please" and he further claimed that more was to be gained by watching the sun rise than by listening to the Pastoral Symphony. Although such remarks were intended to shock, they contain a core of Debussyan verity.

  Claude Debussy

  Past, Symphony, Listening

  56 Copy quote

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

  Claude Debussy

  Beautiful, People, Mind

  "Debussy: Musician of France". Book by Victor Illyitch Seroff, 1957.

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• Beauty seems to strike some people as a personal affront.

  Claude Debussy

  People, Affront, Strikes

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• Extreme complication is contrary to art.

  Claude Debussy

  Art, Complication, Extremes

  "French Music: From the Death of Berlioz to the Death of Fauré". Book by Martin Cooper (p. 136), 1951; later quoted in "Debussy and Wagner", book by Robin Holloway (p. 207), 1979.

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

  Claude Debussy

  Law, Pleasure, Theory

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• Art is the most beautiful deception of all! And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory.

  Claude Debussy

  Beautiful, Hope, Art

  "The Life of the Creative Spirit". Book by H. Charles Romesburg, 2001.

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

  Claude Debussy

  Dream, Iron, Soul

  Claude Debussy's letter to Ernest Chausson, 1894.

  33 Copy quote

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

  Claude Debussy

  Law, People, Wish

  Claude Debussy's statement of 1910, as quoted in "Debussy on Music" edited and translated by Francoise Lesure and Richard Langham Smith (p. 243), 1977.

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

  Claude Debussy

  Children, Vision, Wish

  "Claude Debussy: His Life and Works". Book by Léon Vallas, p. 226, 1933.

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

  Claude Debussy

  Beautiful, Sunset, Sunrise

  Time Magazine, December 7, 1953.

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

  Claude Debussy

  Airplane, Century

  "Music in History: The Evolution of an Art". Book by Howard Decker McKinney and William Robert Anderson, 1957.

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• 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!

  Claude Debussy

  Idols, Ubiquity, Common Sense

  Claude Debussy, François Lesure, Roger Nichols (1987). “Debussy Letters: ,”, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press

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• 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.

  Claude Debussy

  Art, Reality, Trying

  "The Lives of the Great Composers". Book by Harold C. Schonberg, 1970.

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• Inspiration and ideas only come to me when I have not had a woman in a very long time... Ballads, polonaises, even a whole concerto may have been lost forever up your des durka, I can't tell you how many. I have been so deeply engulfed in my love for you I have hardly created anything.

  Claude Debussy

  Love, Inspiring, Inspiration

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• 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.

  Claude Debussy

  Music, Clouds, Silence

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

  Claude Debussy

  Names, Saint, Horror

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• Music is in the space between the notes.

  Claude Debussy

  Space, Notes, Space Between

  "Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving". Book by Jonathan G. Koomey, 2001.

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• 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.

  Claude Debussy

  Crowds, Circus, Dangerous

  "Music in the Modern World". Book by Rollo Hugh Myers, 1948.

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

  Claude Debussy

  Dream, Soul, Desire

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• If we look at the works of JS Bach ... on each page we discover things which we thought were born only yesterday, from delightful arabesques to an overflowing of religious feeling greater than anything we have since discovered.

  Claude Debussy

  Religious, Yesterday, Feelings

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

  Claude Debussy

  Dance, Silence, Steps

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

  Claude Debussy

  Age, Diligence, Automobile

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

  Claude Debussy

  Hype, People, Deception

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• 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.

  Claude Debussy

  Airplane, Victory, Progress

  "Music in History: The Evolution of an Art". Book by Howard Decker McKinney and William Robert Anderson, 1957.

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

  Claude Debussy

  Revolutionary, Composer, Debussy

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