Quotes by Claude Debussy

About Claude Debussy:

Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music, though he himself disliked the term when applied to his compositions. He was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in his native France in 1903. Debussy was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his use of non-traditional scales and chromaticism influenced many composers who followed.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Art is the most beautiful of all lies.

Claude Debussy

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

Claude Debussy

Extreme complication is contrary to art.

Claude Debussy

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

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

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.

Claude Debussy

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

Claude Debussy

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

Claude Debussy

In opera, there is always too much singing.

Claude Debussy

A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.

Claude Debussy

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

Claude Debussy

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

Claude Debussy

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.

Claude Debussy

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.

Claude Debussy

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

Claude Debussy

Music is the silence between the notes.

Claude Debussy

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

Claude Debussy

Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes.

Claude Debussy

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

Claude Debussy

Author Bio

  • NameClaude Debussy
  • DescriptionFrench composer
  • AliasesClaud Debussy; Debussy; Ballets by Claude Debussy; Claude Achille Debussy; Achille Claude Debussy; C. Debussy; Debussey; Claude-Achille Debussy; Claude-Emma Debussy; Achille-Claude; Achille-Claude Debussy
  • BornAugust 22, 1862
  • DiedMarch 26, 1918
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionComposer; Pianist
  • WorksPelléas Et Mélisande; Préludes; Children's Corner
  • AwardsKnight Of The Legion Of Honour; Prix De Rome