“I might tell you that the sun will be hurled from Heaven and you would believe me. I might tell you that a worm is creeping through my brain—you would believe me—you would even see it and catch it!”

Hanns Heinz Ewers, 1910

 

“As for the song of the Sirens in the celestial concerts, very rash would be anyone who attempted to analyze it. It is one of those ineffable harmonies of which the Divinity keeps the secret, one of those luminous sounds of which mortals only grasp the shadow.

“The song of the Sirens-birds, souls of the stars, stars themselves, belongs to this class of cosmic harmonies. We can define it even less easily than we can define the voice of the speaking statue, that is to say the sound of the rising sun and the setting sun, the sound of the moon whistling its light through space, the moan of nature shivering in contact with the morning breeze, and the music of the rain falling rhythmically on the ground.”

Jean-Georges Kastner, 1858

 

“There are doubtful creatures, the Corallines, for instance, that are claimed by all the three kingdoms. They tend towards the animal, they tend towards the mineral, and, finally, are assigned to the vegetable. Perchance they form the real point at which Life obscurely and mysteriously rises from the slumber of the stone, without utterly quitting that rude starting-point, as if to remind us, so high placed and so haughty, of the right of even the humble mineral to rise into animation, and of the deep and eternal aspiration that lies buried, but busy, in the bosom of Nature.”

Jules Michelet, 1861

“When the god Pan assembled the seven pipes of his syrinx, at first he imitated only the long drawn out and melancholy note of the toad voicing his sorrows in the light of the moon. Later he turned to birdsong. It is probably from that moment that the birds enriched their repertory. These are her sacred origins of which music can well be proud and which enables her to maintain an element of mystery. In the name of all the gods let us try neither to deprive her of them, nor to seek to explain them.”

Claude Debussy, 1913

The Paradise of Flowers is the butterflies’ Inferno. 

“According to the laws of metempsychosis, the soul of a flower, after its time of proof, passes into the body of a butterfly, or some other insect—a fly or a beetle. That ought to suffice to make you understand the secret attraction than brings these various species together.” 

The Graf dared to follow up his question. “And what becomes of a butterfly’s soul?” 

“It passes into the body of a sparrow or an animal of similarly scant importance—but not alone, however, for it requires three butterfly souls to form that of a flycatcher, as it requires three flower souls to form that of a butterfly, and so on; the souls of three flycatchers or wrens form the soul of a wood-pigeon; and always three by three, always progressing in strength and intelligence, they thus climb the scale of beings, step by step, until a myriad of souls of every sort, newly purified by the breath of a god, eventually forms the soul of a human being, the only one created immortal.”

X. B. Saintine, 1864

“Let photography quickly enrich the traveler’s album, and restore to his eyes the precision his memory may lack; let it adorn the library of the naturalist, magnify microscopic insects, even strengthen, with a few facts, the hypotheses of the astronomer; let it, in short, be the secretary and record-keeper of whomsoever needs absolute material accuracy for professional reasons. 

“So far so good. 

“Let it save crumbling ruins from oblivion, books, engravings, and manuscripts, the prey of time, all those precious things, vowed to dissolution, which crave a place in the archives of our memories; in all these things, photography will deserve our thanks and applause. 

“But if once it be allowed to impinge on the sphere of the intangible and the imaginary, on anything that has value solely because man adds something to it from his soul, then woe betide us!”

Charles Baudelaire, 1859

“Paris and its inhabitants strike me as uncanny. The people seem to me to be of a different species from ourselves; I feel they are possessed of a thousand demons.”

SIgmund Freud, 1885

“The photographic lens does not see the forms. They must, therefore, be immaterial—and yet I can see them. Are they, then, the shades of the dead, as Dagerlöff appears to believe? But why should I see the dead revive because I see things 100 years in advance? I’ve only ever seen the present— or, more exactly, the fraction of the present that will endure for a long time. Let’s silence our imagination and appeal to the rationality that has never deceived me. What is it in the present that lasts the longest, and which is immaterial? Answer: ideas. After the bodies, the cadavers, the skeletons, it is the ideas of human beings that are most durable. I am therefore seeing the forms of ideas. Judging by the manner in which the majority of brains function, there’s nothing astonishing in their being a trifle vague—but why do they have faces? An idea has no face.”

Jacques Spitz, 1939

 

‘We’re almost there,’ murmured Jacques, ‘because this opening is the hollow peak of the Menelaus crater.’ And, indeed, the tunnel came to an end and they emerged near the Acherusia promontory, not far from the Plinius crater in the Sea of Serenity,

As far as the eye could see a silent, raging sea was rolling with breakers as high as cathedrals. On all sides were cataracts of congealed spume, avalanches of petrified waves, torrents of mute howling, a whole seething tempest compressed and anaesthetised in a single stroke. It extended so far that the eye, confused, lost all sense of proportion, amassing mile upon mile, regardless of the possibilities of distance and time.

J.-k. Huysmans, 1887

 

“I write solely for myself, and other people’s impatience doesn’t concern me.”

Claude Debussy, 1908

 

The plot I had written for The Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath was a simple one. After the destruction of all life on our planet, Hell was established here, where things were very suitable. The stage looks like a lunar landscape. Satan is seated on top of a Parisian building whose base rests in molten lava. The end comes when the globe itself crumbles. All the spirits are absorbed in the forces of nature, whose chorus is heard in a night crossed by flashes of lightning. The general clamor of the orchestra diminishes little by little. First one instrument, then another, becomes silent. Finally nothing is left but a chorus of harps, and one after the other they too fall silent. Then only one remains, and it fades in a pianissimo sweeter than water falling on leaves. At last these final notes also fade away, and all is silent.

As I was working at the piano that Sunday on the music for the scene of the infernal hunt, someone rang the doorbell. It was the grandmother of one of my pupils. She must have been listening to me outside. “Is it really you,” she asked, “who is responsible for that savagery I have been hearing?”

“Yes,” I answered. “It is I.” 

“I'm sure you wouldn't dare to continue those horrors in front of me,” she said. “To punish you, I want to hear the rest.” 

Because of that challenge I started The Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath over. The wild motifs made her indignant, but I kept going. 

After my grotesque imitation on the piano of the last fading notes of the last harp, the grandmother looked at me with amazement. “Poor girl,” she said. “Those monstrosities really are yours.” I didn't answer. “The most unfortunate thing about it is that there are some good parts there.” 

“If there weren't any good parts,” I said, “I wouldn't be stupid enough to work on it.” 

“You know very well,” she said, “that you have to be either rich or famous to indulge in things like that.” 

“I'm not simply indulging myself. I intend to stay on here as a teacher, and as proof I shall leave this unproducible piece just the way it is now. It really is a dream, you know, whether it is about covens or real life, and I will throw it away as I have thrown away other dreams.” 

She took my hand. Hers was cold. “Your heart,” she said. “Where will you throw it?” 

“To the Revolution,” I said.

Louise Michel, 1886

 

“Lunched with Richard Strauss, his son and daughter-in-law, at the Hofmannsthals’ in Rodaun. Strauss aired his quaint political views, about the need for a dictatorship, and so on, which nobody takes seriously.” 

Count Harry Kesler, 1928

“After the blood of the Commune, Death disguised as a shepherd played his pan pipes beside the Seine, every flower a skull.” 

Jules Verne, 1872

“Music is a nocturnal art, the art of the dream.” 

Odilon Redon, 1893

“Odilon Redon made a collection of bits of rainbows, dust from stars and suns. He memorized the growth of plants, the way a petal falls, the sleep of the chrysalis. But he used this botanist’s arsenal to disclose mutations which he discovered in a light of fear and wonderment.” 

André Masson, 1962

“For several months extraordinary signs had been seen in the sky; the Virgin’s Spica had failed to respond to the Observatory’s summons; the Moon had uttered moans, as if she had been hard at work; Berenice’s hair had first appeared powdered with white and then, with a gust of wind, had become as black as crepe. All the stars seemed to be giving simultaneous signs of sadness. There was no longer the harmonious concert that the celestial spheres once enabled Scipio to hear in the abode of King Masinissa; they only rendered sounds as lugubrious as the false drone of cathedral organs, or as discordant as the howls of various animals. Finally, some people even thought they could see in the region of the stars, something reminiscent of big crocodiles, writhing with horrible contortions.” 

Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, 1798

 

“The result of this music has been to accentuate the German race-feeling, which much of Wagner’s music had already been instrumental in emphasising. Richard Strauss not only caused the Germans to feel even more sentimental about their country than had his predecessor, but, by a grandiose portrayal of battle through the medium of music, he glorified war and strife, creating thereby a thought-form, which was used by the Dark Forces to help precipitate the war itself.”

Cyril Scott, 1933

 

“The world exists for us to think it to tatters.” 

Gustav Meyrink, 1927

 

“At last I was able to catch sight of [the composer Edward] Grieg. From the front he looks like rather a pleasant family photograph. From behind, because of the way he wears his hair, he looks more like a sunflower so loved by parrots and planted in ornamental gardens at country railway stations.”

Claude Debussy, 1903

 

“Because he was a heavenly artist, Beethoven naturally aspired to Silence. That’s why he received the blessing of falling deaf—so he might better hear the song of his genius. 

“Wagner stubbornly believes that music is a combination of different noises, and his supreme ambition is what he calls ‘music-drama.’ You can’t get any more German than that. He needs Beauty that appears to the eyes in your head, which the vilest lowlife’s ears can hear—something anybody at all can fondle like a strumpet. In a word, he gives you the music of materialism and the senses—at the highest level, if you will. 

“Music-drama, good God! Well, it’s been impressively achieved—just as I felt when I heard Tannhäuser—by BOMBARDMENT. A lyric tragedy! Can’t you hear the music of the spheres?”

Leon Bloy, 1893

“The Paduan creates; he is a creator. He tears a thousand souls from out of a thousand bodies and molds them into a single soul with the flames of his speech! There they stand, children, women and men—each separate—ridiculous and pathetic creatures! And the Paduan grasps them and kneads them into a great whole, into a single strong mass in the guise of a mad and mighty beast.”

Hanns Heinz Ewers, 1910

“The passages [in Pelleas and Melisande] I love the most are the ones without text. When Pelleas emerges from the underground vaults, there are a few lines that are truly permeated by the freshness of the sea and the scents of the roses that the breeze wafts to him. Of course, there’s nothing ‘human’ about it, but it’s exquisitely poetic.” 

Marcel Proust, 1911

 

“Is it always like this?…Nothing more? There’s nothing…No music…It doesn’t connect…It doesn’t hold together... It’s very subtle.”

Richard Strauss on Pelleas and Melisande, 1911

“Claude Debussy became the head of a new religion, and there was, in the Opera-Comique at each performance of his Pelléas and Melisande, a sanctuary atmosphere, greetings of initiates in the corridors, fingers on lips, strange handshakes hastily exchanged in the half-light of boxes, crucified expressions and faraway looks.”

Jean Lorrain, 1910

 

“When [the composer Manuel de] Falla went to Debussy’s house without forewarning him of his visit, he was told by a servant the composer was out for a walk. He had to wait in a room which was quite dark and full of Japanese and Chinese masks. One of the doors opened into the dining room. Eventually Falla heard people entering the dining room and recognised the voices of Debussy, Emma and Erik Satie. Whilst no one came to see him, he overheard talk of clarinets. ‘Debussy’s wife began to say something, but Debussy interrupted her: “You know nothing about it,” he said.’ Falla did not reveal his presence and became overcome with nerves, the masks with their gaping mouths inducing hallucinations. When it seemed dinner was over, he peeped through the door into the passage, but still no one came to see him. ‘Finally he heard footsteps. It was Debussy’s wife, who, alarmed at meeting an unexpected man, screamed.’ Apparently the servant had forgotten to tell anyone that a gentleman was waiting. Emma invited him to have some belated lunch, but all Falla wanted was to leave. He did, however, manage to explain to Debussy why he had come and Debussy agreed to orchestrate El Abaicìn by Albeniz, a task he never did carry out.”

Gillian Opstad, 2022

“I find the music of Stravinsky artificial and chimerical, rather like the house of a wizard.”

Claude Debussy, 1911

 

“The terrestrial globe is surrounded on all sides by the rustling of the mysterious Ocean, with its powerful waves, and enveloped in the undulating curves of the atmosphere. In the same way it is flooded from one pole to the other from a sea of infinitely diverse sounds, generated by nature. 

“On the eternal snows of the mountains, where the cold has long numbed all life, the icy storms roar, like the sounds of a gigantic organ. In the depths of the earth, the miner hears the rustling of underground currents, the hiss of gases, the monotonous fall of the drop formed by humidity. For thousands of years, from its dark cradle, the human race has heard the voices of creation; but how much has science been powerless until now to explain the origin and purpose of an infinity of these voices?”

Georges Kastner, 1856

 

“Grownups tend to forget that as children they were forbidden to open the insides of their dolls–a crime of high treason against the cause of mystery. Without their dolls to break open they still try to explain things, dismantle them and quite heedlessly kill all their mystery.”

Claude Debussy, 1902

 

“The cries that Doctor Colombat transcribed are of several species and systematically classified.

“There is first the cry determined by the application of fire (PI. I, series A, no. 1), a serious and deep cry running through the interval of a third, followed by the interjection 'ah!'

“There is then the cry determined by the action of a sharp instrument, a very rapid first sound and a very high of the falsetto register on which it extends.

“Nothing is more moving, more terrible than the cry produced by throbbing pain (no. 5). The voice in the high-pitched tremolo is one that the most indifferent man cannot hear without emotion.

“Twice in our life cries of distress of the most heartbreaking effect have struck our ears. The first by a man who voluntarily killed himself, a few years ago, in Versailles, by falling through a window the height of a third floor.

“We passed near the place where he had just come to fall, his fall had been horrible; his limbs were broken: he uttered in a clear and shrill voice a sinister tremolo (no. 6).”

Georges Kastner, The Voices of Paris, 1857

"I glimpsed a great light, rather pale, and in this light a magical scene: among jets of water fluttered metallic butterflies, marvelous hangings of them, and the splendor of a strange architecture, towers billowing to the sounds of a singular music sung by men and women of tall stature, whose extreme beauty surprised me."

Charles de Sivry, 1873

“Harmony is awakening for all of us. Wagner anticipated it in his enormous choirs. Soon will come sequences of notes as intimate as the breath of the wind, and others, on a larger scale; and when, after glissandos that will no longer be audible to our ears, they cover larger distances, this will be an enormous source of musical richness. We have experienced it down here when, after the quarter-tones sounded by the cyclone to the Canaques in one of our distant colonies, a frisson caused the nerves to quiver as if they were the strings of a harp.”

Louise Michel, 1887

 

“Do you wish to become acquainted with the hierarchy of Angels, the virtue of Numbers, the explanation of germs and metamorphoses?”

Gustav Flaubert, 1874

 

“Strabo speaks of the sound of the sun setting in the sea, between Spain and Africa. Apollo in Greece, like Roudra in India, is represented in the form of an archer-god, who takes his bow and launches his arrows, from which light results. Now, the bow, strongly stretched, resonates; the arrows, crossing space, whistle.

“Since Science has not, in short, yet answered our question concerning the essence of the sound phenomenon, let us open the annals of universal Knowledge, the sacred books where the thought of all humanity is condensed. There, we see the contemporary sound of the origin of Things, and all cosmogony agrees to hail it as promoter of the manifestations of the divine will.”

Edmond Bailly, 1900

 

“No one will ever know how different my music really is from what people think.  Do they realize that I've never heard what I hear in my head, and so often not even what's on the page?"

Claude Debussy, 1911

 

“You know that hashish always invokes the magnificence of light, glorious splendors, cascades of liquid gold; all light favors it: that which flows in sheets, that which hangs like straw on points and asperities, the candelabra of salons, the candles of Mary’s month, the rosy avalanches of sunset.”

Charles Baudelaire, 1860

 

“Debussy spoke enthusiastically of a rather vague project for which he even asked me to provide an outline. His idea was for a cosmogonic drama, without words or plot, in which invisible singers, soloists and chorus would deliver onomonopoetic syllables, to the accompaniment of lighting effects onstage. The orchestra, which would be hidden beneath the scenery, would symbolically represent clouds, the wind, and the sea.”

Jaques Emile Blanche, 1932

A voice from outside: "Ap-raman!"

At these words, a funereal silence fell upon the room, and the door opened by itself.

A specter entered, and what a specter! A gloomy bronze face, a somber, sinister, colossal figure that struck the resonant slabs with its bronze heels. Unlike the other ghosts, it had the advantage of being neither a chimera nor an apparition but a real, solid, and tangible horror that seized you harshly at the core. Its shadow passed slowly and coldly over the foreheads of the guests. It stopped in the middle of the table, cast livid looks over the guests, poured itself a drink into a leaden goblet, which it emptied in one gulp, and blew on the entire banquet as if to extinguish its joy. At this breath, the lights dimmed, the roses wilted in the women's hair, the masks fell, and the faces turned mournful. Indeed, it was the magician's artificial man.

Alphonse Esquiros, 1836

 

“I receive endless requests to write out lines of music along with my autograph. I don't often give them out. I rather fancy writing out false ones and distributing them. The other day I received a letter from Buenos Aires, in which an American lady made such a request and put 500 francs in the envelope for my reply. I kept the 500 francs and the reply.”

Claude Debussy, 1907

 

“I could dispense with explaining myself on the actual musicality of my reconstruction, my title of composer covering, at my risk and peril, the result obtained. If I don't stick to this easy attitude, it's because my ideas on the very nature of inspiration are quite different from those generally held. That the artist is, in the proper sense of the word, a creator, I do not believe. It is easier for me to admit the existence of some immense reservoir where, always and forever, by a volitional phenomenon which exceptionally puts in power certain mysterious springs of consciousness, it is given to draw sometimes unto the perfection, in proportion to the quality of the aesthetic sense of the perceiver.”

Edmond Bailly, The Song of the Vowels in Invocation to the Planetary Gods, 1912

My thanks to Phil Legard/Larkfall for the MIDI creation

 

“From the celestial vault hangs a gigantic spindle, which carries in its eternal course eight orbs of varied colors. On each of these circles sits a Siren 'uttering a single note of her voice, always in the same tone.' It is through the movement of this voice that the movement of the various celestial spheres is accomplished. The sound made by the golden axle of the world, turning on itself, accompanies their hymns. 

“This concert forms the triple voice of time, which tells of the past, the present and the future, and which wise men have sometimes heard on earth by approaching a tomb during the silence of the night.

“From the side of the moon rises a sweet concert; the sounds of the sun are admirable; a voice of thunder comes from Mars, a sweet nightingale song from Jupiter."

Jean-Georges Kastner, 1858

“Edmond Bailly is an improbable publisher who only puts out things that are of high quality, things that please him, and therefore it is not surprising his business is not going well.”

Ernest Chausson, 1897

“In Wagner's operas, the singers never appear without being accompanied by their damned leitmotif; sometimes they even sing it! This is about as crazy as if someone, in handing you his visiting card, were at the same time to sing what was written on it.

“Can you imagine that in a composition the same emotion can be expressed twice? Either one has never thought about it, or else it is just laziness.

“And four evenings for a play! Does that even seem to you admissible? Don't forget that during those four evenings you will be hearing always the same things. The characters on stage and the orchestra go on exchanging the same themes, and then you arrive at the Twilight of the Gods, which is once again a résumé of everything you have been hearing.

“This is inadmissible for those who like clarity and concision.

“I would like to see, and I will succeed myself in producing, music which is entirely free from 'motifs', or rather consisting of one continuous 'motif' which nothing interrupts and which never turns back on itself. Then we shall have a logical development, concise and deductive; there will be no hasty and superfluous padding in between two repetitions of the same 'motif ' which will be a characteristic and essential part of the work. The development will no longer be a purely material amplification, a rhetorical exercise performed by a well-taught professional, but will have a wider and indeed psychic significance.”

Claude Debussy, 1903

 

“Achille de Bussy does not lapse into banality nor is he platitudinous. On the contrary, he has a pronounced tendency—too pronounced—toward an exploration of the strange.”

Académie Report on Achille de Bussy, 1887

 

“I was still on stage when the final curtain had come down, and I saw Diaghilev coming toward me, accompanied by a dark man with a sort of double forehead: it was Claude Debussy.”

Igor Stravinsky, 1910

 

“What he saw happening as he stood back in a detached way was every individual disappearing, dissolving into the mass, melting together with millions of others. Suddenly overnight a young, mighty, titanic being grew into existence, das Volk.”

Hanns Heinz Ewers, 1921

 

“In former times, the bells had their role to play in the forbidden sciences. The art of predicting the future from their sounds is one of the least known and most neglected branches of the occult.”

J.-k. Huysmans, 1891

 

“I recommend the bookseller Edmond Bailly to you, that fellow! If you only knew what that little man harbors within himself— eminent knowledge and really very artistic ideas; and he has a tenacity that at times makes mine pale in comparison.”

Claude Debussy, 1893

 

“For years and years, amidst all the problems I have been concerned with, this one has kept me brooding over its mystery. Today a radiant intelligence, Pythagoras, has held out his hand to me across the twenty-five centuries that separate us...”

Edmond Bailly, The Song of the Vowels as Invocation to the Planetary Gods, 1912

“The possibility of a war preoccupies everyone. All of Europe is moving toward solutions of violence. We are breathing the oppressive air of l’avant-guerre.”

L'Anarchie, 1912

 

“In the music of Claude Debussy, these chords do not represent a continuity of musical thought; they merely exist in space, or more precisely, in musical time, as if drawn to each other by some astrological influence.”

Edward Lockspieser, 1962

 

“I don't see a circle: I only see circles described in one direction or another, what are called cycles. The problem is therefore reduced to this new statement: What are the pleasant directions? What are the unpleasant directions?  In other words: What directions do we associate with pleasure and pain?”

Charles Henry, 1885