The name is absent

II

DEBUSSY: THE PRELUDES

J’adore l’indécis, les sons, les couleurs frêles,
Tout ce qui tremble, ondule, et frissonne, et chatoie,
Les cheveux, et les yeux, l’eau, les feuilles, la soie,
Et la spiritualité des formes grêles;

Albert Samain.

Le désir seul donne la beauté aux choses.

Anatole France.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY was born August 22, 1862, at

Saint-Germain-Cn-Laye, a small town but a few miles
out of Paris and in the Ile-de-France, the province where
French traditions of taste and culture are commonly said
to be the purest. His family was apparently not musical
and his father planned to make a sailor of him. Conse-
quently, the boy had no musical instruction until 1871,
when, during a visit to his aunt, at Cannes, he took some
piano lessons from an Italian named Cerutti, who saw in
him no signs of exceptional talent. A little later Debussy
made the acquaintance of Charles de Sivry, a brother-in-
law of Verlaine and a composer of light operas. It was
de Sivry’s mother who, just about the time her daughter
was separating from Verlaine, divined the unusual musical
talent of the boy who was later to write some of his greatest
songs on poems by her son-in-law. She declared that De-
bussy must become a musician and took charge herself
of his elementary musical education. She must have
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