Music is a mysterious form of mathematics

Music is a mysterious form of mathematics whose elements are derived from the infinite. Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes. There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little — the book of Nature. . . .

– Claude Debussy.

Vallas, Léon (1929) The Theories of Claude Debussy: Musicien Francais.  Trans. Maire O’Brien. London: Oxford University Press, p.8.


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