Suite bergamasque, L. 75, Third Movement ‘Clair de lune’

Welp. I’m not sure if ya can hear it or not but my parents are cutting their fingernails or something in the background.

Yeah… recording this was hard, ’cause I wanted to do it at night for the ‘moonlight’ feel. But at night my parents are all yelling at me to sleep, so…

It also seems much louder in the camera than it should be…

Also, there are numerous mistakes even though this is quite a slow piece…

OH WELL

Claude-Achille Debussy was born in France in 1862. He began his piano lessons at seven years old, and three years later entered the Paris Conservatoire.

Though brilliant, he favoured dissonances and intervals not allowed at the time. It was through these that he became arguably one of the most important French composers ever. His music is extremely sensory (though ya can’t tell what with my horrible playing :V), and almost completely opposite the strict harmonic rules of the Baroque period.

His music basically defines the transition from Post-Romantic to Modern music, a major composer in the Impressionist field. He frequently used parallel chords, bitonality, exotic scales (such as whole tone and pentatonic), and sudden modulations.

When he was 28, in 1980, Debussy began work on his Suite bergamasque, a four-movement suite.

Just before 1905, Debussy made major revisions to the work, changing the names of the last two movements (from Pavane to Passepied, and from Promenade Sentimentale to Clair de lune). One of his most famous piano movements was indeed Clair de lune.

It strongly uses tempo rubato, which leaves many things up to the discretion of the pianist. Thus, the actual sound of the piece isn’t too strongly defined by how he composed it, but how someone plays it. :V I just made it sound horrible, sorry ._.

Anyways, in the middle of World War I, Debussy died of rectal cancer. His funeral procession gravely made its way through the streets of Paris, still being bombarded by German artillery shells.

He was 56 years old, and just about the most influential composer of the time.

ALSO my piano chair is squeaky. :V