Debussy in His Dialogues with Bach and Wagner

Abstract

Debussy’s published statements about Bach and Wagner are analyzed in the article. The juxtaposition of these two German composers suggested by Debussy allows to touch upon some issues underlying the French innovator’s oeuvre: namely, his specific feeling of musical time both in purely musical genres and in synthetic musical-dramatic genres. Also, the notion of an arabesque, which Debussy applies to Bach’s oeuvre and which expresses his ideal of musical development, is analyzed as opposed to Wagner’s composition technique.