Claude Debussy quotes

Claude Debussy was a French composer and one of the most influential figures in Impressionist music. His innovative harmonies and unique approach to musical form changed the course of classical music in the early 20th century. He inspired generations of composers and continues to be celebrated for his poetic and evocative works. Here are 49 of his quotes:

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

Claude Debussy

How much has to be explored and discarded before reaching the naked flesh of feeling.

Claude Debussy

Music is in the space between the notes.

Claude Debussy

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

Claude Debussy

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

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

Claude Debussy

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

Claude Debussy

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

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

Claude Debussy

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

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

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

The worship of Adonis is united with that of Christ.

Claude Debussy

Art is the most beautiful of all lies.

Claude Debussy

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

Claude Debussy

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

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.

Claude Debussy

Every sound perceived by the acute ear in the rhythm of the world about us can be represented musically. Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear.

Claude Debussy

Do you really think that my music is devoid of religious antecedents? Do you wish to put an artist's soul under restraint?

Claude Debussy

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

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.

Claude Debussy

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

Claude Debussy