Préludes Book 1 No.4: Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir

Description

The fourth piece in Book 1 of Debussy's Préludes, published in 1910. The title is a line from Baudelaire's poem Harmonie du soir. In this collection Debussy printed each title not at the head of the piece but at its end, in parentheses, which is usually taken as a wish that the music be heard before any image is suggested.

It opens in A major with a three-sharp key signature, changes to four flats in the middle, and returns to A major. The metre starts in 5/4 and is mostly 3/4, with frequent bars of 5/4 and 4/4. Its 1,143 notes over about two minutes and thirteen seconds make for thick chords at a slow pace, and the chromatic harmony shifts gently from one sonority to the next. It ends quietly after descending to A0, the lowest note on the piano.

It is rated advanced. The difficulty lies less in speed than in balance: choosing which note to bring out of each layered chord, and blending the sound with the pedal. With so many changes of metre, use the score view to check where the beats fall, and slow the playback to hear each chord change on its own. The range runs from A0 to G#7, so almost the whole of an 88-key piano is needed.

A set of 24 preludes Debussy composed between 1909 and 1913, considered among the finest achievements of Impressionist piano music.