"To love and understand Fauré, one must at all costs have a musical nature. Fauré is pure music in the strictest, acoustic meaning of the word. It is no good bringing anything in the way of painter's or sculptor's gifts to listen to him. One may be unmusical and still love Beethoven or Berlioz. That is what explains the imposing number of the clientele of these two composers. But the same does not apply to Fauré. If you are not sensible to the pleasure given by certain modulations, if you do not taste the disturbing flavor of certain harmonies, if you are not interested in the subtle laws of the gravitation of notes around a tonic, a dominant or leading note, you will understand nothing of this style, disconcerting in its apparent simplicity. Certain foreign amateurs of music have experienced no difficulty in becoming initiated into the style of Debussy or Ravel, but they are put off by the nonchalant fluidity of Fauré's writing, which under its apparent classicism contains the most magnificent revolutionary audacities. There is between this music and the great majority of listeners of every country a terrible lack of comprehension."