Extracts From A Schimpflexikon: One Of A Series

The Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un faune has pretty sonority, but one does not find in it the least musical idea, properly speaking; it resembles a piece of music as the palette used by an artist in his work resembles a picture. Debussy did not create a style; he cultivated an absence of style, logic, and common sense.

—Camille Saint-Saëns in a letter to Maurice Emmanuel, 4 August 1920

(From Nicolas Slonimsky's, Lexicon of Musical Invective)