Again he says, in a way that shows what delight he feels in beauty that is spontaneous and natural: 

“I lingered late one autumn evening in the country, irresistibly fascinated by the magic of old world forests.  From yellowing leaves, fluttering earthward, celebrating the glorious agony of the trees, from the clangorous angelus bidding the fields to slumber, rose a sweet persuasive voice, counseling perfect oblivion.  The sun was setting solitary.  Beasts and men turned peacefully homeward, having accomplished their impersonal tasks.”

When as a youth Debussy was serving with his regiment in France, he relates of the delight he experienced in listening to the tones of the bugles and bells.  The former sounded over the camp for the various military duties; the latter belonged to a neighboring convent and rang out daily for services.  The resonance of the bugles and the far-reaching vibrations of the bells, with their overtones and harmonics, were specially noted by the young musician, and used by him later in his music.  It is a well-known fact that every tone or sound is accompanied by a whole series of other sounds; they are the vibrations resulting from the fundamental tone.  If the tone C is played in the lower octave of the piano, no less than sixteen overtones vibrate with it.  A few of these are audible to the ordinary listener, but very keen ears will hear more of them.  In Claude Debussy’s compositions, his system of harmony and tonality is intimately connected with these laws of natural harmonics.  His chords, for instance, are remarkable for their shifting, vapory quality; they seem to be on the border land between major and minor—­consonance and dissonance; again they often appear to float in the air, without any resolution whatever.  It was a new aspect of music, a new style of chord progression.  At the same time the young composer was well versed in old and ancient music; he knew all the old scales, eight in number, and used them in his compositions with compelling charm.  The influence of the old Gregorian chant has given his music a certain fluidity, free rhythm, a refinement, richness and variety peculiarly its own.

We can trace impressions of early life in Debussy’s music, through his employment of the old modes, the bell sounds which were familiar to his boyhood, and also circumstances connected with his later life.  As a student in Rome, he threw himself into the study of the music of Russian composers, especially that of Moussorgsky; marks of the Oriental coloring derived from these masters appear in his own later music.  When he returned to Paris for good, he reflected in music the atmosphere of his environment.  By interest and temperament he was in sympathy with the impressionistic school in art, whether it be in painting, literature or in music.  In Debussy’s music the qualities of impressionism and symbolism are very prominent.  He employs sounds as though they were colors, and blends them in such a way as literally to paint a picture in tones, through a series of shaded, many-hued chord progressions.  Fluid, flexible, vivid, these beautiful harmonies, seemingly woven of refracted rays of light, merge into shadowy melody, and free, flowing rhythm.