Part one
Imagine an actor saying following, saying it with a nice deep voice with perhaps a hint of a French accent. Imagine me saying the following: Honour to whom honour is due. It’s not that Claude Debussy lacked honours in his own day, after a slow start Claude Debussy was recognised as the greatest French composer of his time. But today he is more than that, he is considered not only the greatest French composer who ever lived, he is considered the revolutionary who set 20th century music on its way.
Part two
Imagine an actor saying following, imagine me saying the following. Debussy thought in a new manner. He said, “I am more and more convinced that music by its very nature is something that cannot be cast into a traditional and fixed form. It is made up of colours and rhythms, the rest is a lot of humbug invented by frigid imbeciles riding on the backs of the masters who, for the most part, wrote almost nothing but period music. Bach alone had an idea of the truth.”
Part three
Imagine an actor saying following, imagine me saying the following. When Debussy died, on March 25th 1918 in Paris, it was being bombarded by the Germans and it was raining.