Saturday


“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

Thursday

“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


Sunday

 

‘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

Friday

 

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

Claude Debussy, 1908

Thursday

 

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


Friday


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

Monday

“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

Tuesday

 

“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

Friday

 


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

Gustav Meyrink, 1927

Monday

 


“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

Wednesday

 

“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

Friday

“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

Wednesday

 

“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

Saturday

“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

Monday

“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

Thursday

 

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