The name is absent

Debussy: The Preludes 177
sees in a mere technical problem so many possibilities of
delight and beauty.

XII. “Fireworks” (Feux d’Artifice)

A brilliant piece of pictorial virtuosity, containing, at the
very end, an “impressionistic” citation from the “Mar-
seillaise”.¹

Musicians are loath to write about music, too add, as
we have done here, verbal commentary to compositions
like the “Préludes”, compositions whose beauty and poetry
speak so eloquently that one is ashamed to have approached
them except in silence. One has only to listen to such music
to love it and to understand why it is that all nations honor
the memory of Claude Debussy and recognize him, not
only as the representative of a characteristic moment of
French sensibility, but as one of the truly great composers
of the world.

¹It would be difficult to read over the “Preludes” without remembering
what those who had the good fortune to hear Debussy play have said
about his touch. His manner of playing was quite inimitable. So ex-
quisite was the delicacy, the richness of his sonorities, and so masterly
were the effects of color which he conjured forth from his pedals, that
one forgot that the piano was an instrument with hammers.

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