For Debussy has set these adventures before us in their fullness. Before
he spoke, he had dwelt with his experiences till he had plumbed them
fully, till he had seen into and around and behind them clearly. And so
we perceive them in their essences, in their eternal aspects. The
designs are the very curve of the ecstasy. They are sheerly delimited.
The notes appear to bud one out of the other, to follow each other out
of the sheerest necessity, to have an original timbre, to fix a matter
never known before, that can never live again. Every moment in a
representative composition of Debussy's is logical and yet new. Few
artists have more faultlessly said what they set out to say.
Ravel is by no means as perfect an artist. He has not the clear
self-consciousness, the perfect recognition of limits. His music has not
the absolute completeness of Debussy's. It is not that he is not a
marvelous craftsman, greatly at ease in his medium. It is that Ravel
dares, and dares continually; seeks passionately to bring his entire
body into play; aspires to plenitude of utterance, to sheerness and
rigidity of form. Ravel always goes directly through the center. But
compare his "Rapsodie espagnol" with Debussy's "Iberia" to perceive how
direct he is. Debussy gives the circumambient atmosphere, Ravel the
inner form.
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