on of "Iberia," in which the very silence of the
night, the caresses of the breeze, seem to have taken musical flesh.
Before the body of his work, so clear and lucid in its definition, so
perfect in its organization, one thinks perforce of a world created out
of the flying chaos beneath him by a god. We are given to know precisely
of what stuff the soul of Debussy was made, what its pilgrimages were,
in what adventure it sought itself out. We know precisely wherein it saw
reflected its visage, in "water stilled at even," in the angry gleam of
sunset on wet leaves, in wild and headlong gipsy rhythms, in moonfire,
shimmering stuffs and flashing spray, in the garish lights and odors of
the Peninsula, in rain fallen upon flowering parterres, in the
melancholy march of clouds, the golden pomp and ritual of the church,
the pools and gardens and pavilions reared for its delight by the
delicate Chinese soul, in earth's thousand scents and shells and colors.
For Debussy has set these adventures before us in their fullness. Before
he spoke, he had dwelt with his experiences till he had plumbed them
fully, till he had seen into and around and behind them clearly. And so
we perceive them in their essences, in their eternal aspects. The
designs are the very curve of the ecstasy. They are sheerly delimited.
The notes appear to bud one out of the other, to follow each other out
of the sheerest necessity, to have an original timbre, to fix a matter
never known before, that can never live again. Every moment in a
representative composition of Debussy's is logical and yet new. Few
artists have more faultlessly said what they set out to say.

Ravel is by no means as perfect an artist. He has not the clear
self-consciousness, the perfect recognition of limits. His music has not
the absolute completeness of Debussy's. It is not that he is not a
marvelous craftsman, greatly at ease in his medium. It is that Ravel
dares, and dares continually; seeks passionately to bring his entire
body into play; aspires to plenitude of utterance, to sheerness and
rigidity of form. Ravel always goes directly through the center. But
compare his "Rapsodie espagnol" with Debussy's "Iberia" to perceive how
direct he is. Debussy gives the circumambient atmosphere, Ravel the
inner form. Between him and Debussy there is the difference between the
apollonian and the dionysiac, between the smooth, level, contained,
perfect, and the darker, more turbulent, passionate,