“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