tsman as the great John Sebastian in his. The difference between the
two is the difference of their ages and races, not the difference of
their artistry. For few composers can match with their own Debussy's
perfection of taste, his fineness of sensibility, his poetic rapture
and profound awareness of beauty. Few have been more graciously rounded
and balanced than he, have been, like him, so fine that nothing which
they could do could be tasteless and insignificant and without grace.
Few musicians have been more nicely sensible of their gift, better
acquainted with themselves, surer of the character and limitations of
their genius. Few have been as perseverantly essential, have managed to
sustain their emotion and invention so steadily at a height. The music
of Debussy is full of purest, most delicate poesy. Perhaps only Bach and
Moussorgsky have as invariably found phrases as pithy and inclusive and
final as those with which "Pelleas" is strewn, phrases that with a few
simple notes epitomize profound and exquisite emotions, and are indeed
the word. There are moments in Debussy's work when each note opens a
prospect. There are moments when the music of "Pelleas," the fine fluid
line of sound, the melodic moments that merge and pass and vanish into
one another, become the gleaming rims that circumscribe vast darkling
forms. There are portions of the drama that are like the moments of
human intercourse when single syllables unseal deep reservoirs. The
tenderness manifest here is scarcely to be duplicated in musical art.
And tenderness, after all, is the most intense of all emotions.

A thousand years of culture live in this fineness. In these perfect
gestures, in this grace, this certainty of choice, this justice of
values, this simple, profound, delicate language, there live on thirty
generations of gentlefolk. Thirty generations of cavaliers and dames who
developed the arts of life in the mild and fruitful valleys of "the
pleasant land of France" speak here. The gentle sunlight and gentle
shadow, the mild winters and mild summers of the Ile de France, the
plentiful fruits of the earth, the excitement of the vine, contributed
to making this being beautifully balanced, reserved, refined. The
instruction and cultivation of the classic and French poets and
thinkers, Virgil and Racine and Marivaux, Catullus and Montaigne and
Chateaubriand, the chambers of the Hotel de Rambouillet, the gardens and
galleries of Versailles, the i