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.