And Debussy has
fixed the two in their confusion.
He has permeated music completely with his impressionistic sensibility.
His style is an image of this our pointillistically feeling era. With
him impressionism achieves a perfect musical form. Structurally, the
music of Debussy is a fabric of exquisite and poignant moments, each
full and complete in itself. His wholes exist entirely in their parts,
in their atoms. If his phrases, rhythms, lyric impulses, do contribute
to the formation of a single thing, they yet are extraordinarily
independent and significant in themselves. No chord, no theme, is
subordinate. Each one exists for the sake of its own beauty, occupies
the universe for an instant, then merges and disappears. The harmonies
are not, as in other compositions, preparations. They are apparently an
end in themselves, flow in space, and then change hue, as a shimmering
stuff changes. For all its golden earthiness, the style of Debussy is
the most liquid and impalpable of musical styles. It is forever gliding,
gleaming, melting; crystallizing for an instant in some savory phrase,
then moving quiveringly onward. It is well-nigh edgeless. It seems to
flow through our perceptions as water flows through fingers. The
iridescent bubbles that float upon it burst if we but touch them.
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