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

“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 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