Clair De Lune: A Song History

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The piece known simply as "Clair de lune" is the third of four movements in Claude Debussy's Suite bergamasque for solo piano, and by far its most familiar part.[1] Debussy started the suite in 1890 and reworked it before it finally reached print in 1905.[1] In his preface for the Henle edition, François Lesure explains that the composer gave the finished version to the Paris firm of Fromont in April 1905 and that it appeared two months later.[2] The first edition, scanned on IMSLP, names E. Fromont of Paris as publisher and orders the movements Prélude, Menuet, Clair de lune and Passepied.[3]

Nineteenth-century photograph of the Piazzetta in Venice by moonlight, looking between two columns across the water to San Giorgio Maggiore

Carlo Naya, Venice: Saint Mark's Looking toward San Giorgio Maggiore, in Moonlight, albumen print, c. 1870. Shown for its moonlit scene; it has no connection to Debussy's piece.

Both titles look back to older art. Britannica traces the word bergamasque to Bergamo, the Italian town long regarded as the home of Harlequin of the commedia dell'arte.[1] Debussy admired the poetry of Paul Verlaine, and the movement shares its name with Verlaine's poem "Clair de lune," part of a collection prompted by paintings of costumed revelers by Watteau and his followers.[4] That collection, Fêtes galantes, was issued in Paris by Alphonse Lemerre in 1869.[5] Before publication the movement carried a different name, "Promenade sentimentale," which Debussy dropped when he prepared the suite for print.[2][4]

The music soon outgrew the piano bench. Walt Disney's studio built an animated "Clair de lune" sequence, recorded by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski, for Fantasia, but left it out of that 1940 film; the animation was later set to the song "Blue Bayou" in Make Mine Music (1946).[6] Program annotator Jane Vial Jaffe calls the piece "extraordinarily popular and, sad to say, trivialized," and urges listeners to hear it afresh.[4] Dana Gruber includes a "Clair De Lune Theme" in Classical Melodies For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer, a collection of thirteen classical melodies, solos and duets, for chromatic mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Clair De Lune"

Sources

  1. Britannica: "Suite bergamasque".
  2. G. Henle Verlag: "Debussy, Suite bergamasque (preface by François Lesure)".
  3. IMSLP: "Suite bergamasque, CD 82 (Debussy, Claude)".
  4. Parlance Chamber Concerts (program note by Jane Vial Jaffe): "Clair de lune".
  5. The Morgan Library & Museum: "Fêtes galantes / Paul Verlaine".
  6. AFI Catalog: "Make Mine Music".
  7. Fingers Of Steel: "Dana Gruber, Classical Melodies For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer".
  8. Image: Carlo Naya, Venice: Saint Mark's Looking toward San Giorgio Maggiore, in Moonlight, albumen print, c. 1870. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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