rnest Newman, in writing of Debussy, warmly praises the
delightful naturalness of his early compositions. "One would feel
justified in building the highest hopes on the young genius who can
manipulate so easily the beautiful shapes his imagination conjures
up."

The work of the early period shows Debussy developing freely and
naturally. The independence of his thinking is unmistakable, but it
does not run into wilfulness. There is no violent break with the past,
but simply the quickening of certain French qualities by the infusion
of a new personality. It seemed as if a new and charming miniaturist
had appeared, who was doing both for piano and song what had never
been done before. The style of the two Arabesques and the more
successful of the Ariettes oubliees is perfect. A liberator seemed to
have come into music, to take up, half a century later, the work of
Chopin--the work of redeeming the art from the excessive objectivity
of German thought, of giving it not only a new soul but a new body,
swift, lithe and graceful. And that this exquisitely clear, pellucid
style could be made to carry out not only gaiety and whimsicality but
emotion of a deeper sort, is proved by the lovely "Clair de Lune."

Among Debussy's best known compositions are "The Afternoon of a Faun,"
composed in 1894 and called his most perfect piece for orchestra,
which he never afterward surpassed. There are also Three Nocturnes for
orchestra. In piano music, as we have briefly shown, he created a
new school for the player. All the way from the two Arabesques just
mentioned, through "Gardens in the Rain," "The Shadowy Cathedral," "A
Night in Granada," "The Girl with Blond Hair," up to the two books of
remarkable Preludes, it is a new world of exotic melody and harmony to
which he leads the way. "Art must be hidden by art," said Rameau, long
ago, and this is eminently true in Debussy's music.

Debussy composed several works for the stage, one of which was
"Martyrdom of Saint Sebastien," but his "Pelleas and Melisande" is
the one supreme achievement in the lyric drama. As one of his critics
writes: "The reading of the score of 'Pelleas and Melisande' remains
for me one of the most marvelous lessons in French art: it would be
impossible for him to express more with greater restraint of means."
The music, which seems so complicated, is in reality very simple. It
sounds so shadowy and impalpable, but it is really built up with
as sure control as the mo