“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