_Pelleas
et Melisande_, "the land of ninths," has a poetic atmosphere which is
like no other musical drama ever written.

Lastly, the orchestration is purposely restrained, light, and divided,
for Debussy has a fine disdain for those orgies of sound to which
Wagner's art has accustomed us; it is as sober and polished as a fine
classic phrase of the latter part of the seventeenth century. _Ne quid
nimis_ ("Nothing superfluous") is the artist's motto. Instead of
amalgamating the _timbres_ to get a massive effect, he disengages their
separate personalities, as it were, and delicately blends them without
changing their individual nature. Like the impressionist painters of
to-day, he paints with primary colours, but with a delicate moderation
that rejects anything harsh as if it were something unseemly.

* * * * *

I have given more than enough reasons to account for the success of
_Pelleas et Melisande_ and the place that its admirers give it in the
history of opera. There is every reason to believe that the composer has
not been as acutely conscious of his musico-dramatic reform as his
disciples have been. The reform with him has a more instinctive
character; and that is what gives it its strength. It responds to an
unconscious yet profound need of the French spirit. I would even venture
to say that the historical importance of Debussy's work is greater than
its artistic value. His personality is not without faults, and the
gravest are perhaps negative faults--the absence of certain qualities,
and even of the strong and extravagant faults which made the heroes of
the art world, like Beethoven and Wagner. His voluptuous nature is at
once changeable and precise; and his dreams are as clear and delicate as
the art of a poet of the Pleiades in the sixteenth century, or of a
Japanese painter. But among all his gifts he has a quality which I have
not found so evident in any other musician--except perhaps Mozart; and
this quality is a genius for good taste. Debussy has it in excess, so
that he almost sacrifices the other elements of art to it, until the
passionate force of his music, even its very life, seems to be
impoverished. But one must not deceive oneself; that impoverishment is
only apparent, and in all his work there are evidences that his passion
is only veiled. It is only the trembling of the melodic line, or the
orchestration which, like a shadow passing before the eyes, tells us of
th