Claude Debussy

Composer

1862-08-22 – 1918-03-25

Claude Debussy was a French composer whose music had a major influence on modern composition. He is associated with the impressionist movement in music, though he rejected the label. His works include Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and La Mer.

Quotes by 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.
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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.
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A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.
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There is nothing is 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.
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I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.
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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.
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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 will happen.
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I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naive candour of a child.
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Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes.
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Grieg's music has the odd and pleasant taste of a pink sweet filled with snow.
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Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.
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