COMPOSER: Claude Debussy
COMPOSED: c. 1890–1905
Where would French music be without the great Claude Debussy? He helped to define a new sound for his era – a so-called ‘impressionist’ style of writing music. Completely different from what German composers were trying to achieve at the time, Debussy was creating sounds and ideas which were suggestive of something; if what he was suggesting isn’t always exactly clear, that’s part of the beauty of Debussy’s musvic. Some of his inspiration came from the exotic music of the east, for example, the Javanese sounds that he heard played on the gamelan ensemble of percussion instruments. Another important
inspiration came from the French poets of the day. In fact, this famous piece ‘Clair De Lune’ or ‘Moonlight’ takes its title from a poem of the same name by Paul Verlaine, which talks about ‘souls ... like landscapes, charming masks and bergamasks, playing the lute and dancing, almost sad in their fantastic disguises.’ Debussy’s piece, veiled in una corda and predominantly within a pianissimo dynamic, beautifully evokes the delicacy of those lines; it’s, shall we say, the second most famous piece about moonlight in the entire piano repertoire?