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Claude Debussy on Music

1862–1918 France

← All quotes by Claude Debussy

9 quotes

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

Music should humbly seek to please; within these limits great beauty may perhaps be found.

French Music : From the Death of Berlioz to the Death of Fauré (1951)

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

An Encyclopedia of Quotations About Music (1981)

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

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

On his music for Le martyre de St. Sébastien (1911)

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.

The Cambridge Companion to Debussy (2003)

Music would take over at the point at which words become powerless, with the one and only object of expressing that which nothing but music could express.

Debussy (1989)

Music is a mysterious mathematical process whose elements are part of Infinity. … There is nothing more musical than a sunset.

The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music (1996)

Music is the space between the notes.

Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving (2001)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Claude Debussy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.