Préludes

Two sets of piano pieces, 12 in each, by Debussy, composed 1910–13. The second set includes quotes from the folk song ‘Au clair de la lune’ (7), ‘God save the King’ (9), and a few notes of the Marchseillaise (12).

The first set includes: 1. Danseuses de Delphes/Dancing Women of Delphi; 2. Voiles/Sails; 3. Le Vent dans la plaine/The wind in the plain; 4. Les Sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir/Sounds and scents whirl in the evening air (a quotation from Baudelaire); 5. Les Collines d'Anacapri/The hills of Anacapri; 6. Des Pas sur la neige/Footprints in the snow; 7. Ce qu'a vu le vent d'Ouest/What the West Wind saw; 8. La Fille aux cheveux de lin/The Flaxen-haired Girl (based on a Scottish song by Leconte de Lisle); 9. La Sérénade interrompue/The interrupted serenade; 10. La Cathédrale engloutie/The Submerged Cathedral (on the old Breton tale of the sunken city of Ys); 11. La Danse de Puck/Puck's Dance (after Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream); 12. Minstrels (‘music-hall artists, not troubadours’).

The second set includes: 1. Brouillards/Mists; 2. Feuilles mortes/Dead Leaves; 3. La Puerta del Vino (a gate at Granada); 4. Les Fées sont d'exquises danseuses/The Fairies are exquisite Dancers; 5. Bruyères/Heather; 6. General Lavine-eccentric (a music-hall character); 7. La Terrasse des audiences du clair de lune/The Terrace of the Moonlight Audiences (a reference to an account of George V's Durbar in 1912; the piece contains a quotation of the folk song ‘Au clair de la lune’); 8. Ondine (Water-spirit maiden of 19th-century story); 9. Hommage à S Pickwick Esq., PPMPC (after Dickens; the piece quotes God save the King in the bass); 10. Canope (a Canopic jar holding the ashes of a dead lover); 11. Les Tierces alternées/Alternating Thirds; 12. Feux d'artifice/Fireworks (quoting a few notes of the Marchseillaise at the end.