Lesure maintains, "Debussy's inventions bear equally on harmony, rhythm, texture and form, and might be summarized as a lifelong quest to banish blatancy of musical expression. His harmony inseparably binds modality and tonality" (Lesure)
Trezise asserts that his music "dwells in the hazy spaces where sexual fantasies are born, between dream and memory, the conscious and the unconscious, reverie and reality, sleep and wakefulness, and desire and music making. The ambiguous, erotic images and intangible language of the poem are mirrored in the music where tonalities are only suggested and rarely confirmed, were themes remain undeveloped:" (Trezise 131)