Clair de Lune

Written originally for piano in 1890 - although it was not published until fifteen years later, when it became the centrepiece of the Suite bergamasque - Clair de lune sounds so natural on the harp that one could almost believe that Debussy was thinking of that instrument as he composed it. The arpeggios in the pianist’s left hand in the middle section and towards the end, on the recall of the main theme, are obviously idiomatic harp figures. Nothing has to be changed in transferring it from piano to harp and nothing of the nocturnal atmosphere suggested by Verlaine’s evocative line “Au calme clair de lune triste et beau” (In the still moonlight sad and beautiful) is lost in the translation.

arranged for orchestra by André Caplet (1878-1925)

Highly regarded as a composer in his own time, particularly in his twenties and thirties, André Caplet is remembered for little more these days than his friendship with Debussy and their various collaborations. He made two-piano versions of Debussy’s major orchestral works Nocturnes, La Mer, and Images, wrote orchestral arrangements of his Children’s Corner as well as some shorter pieces, helped him out with Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien when Debussy was under pressure to get it finished, and completed the orchestration of the ballet Boîte à joujoux after the older composer’s death. So there is every chance that, had he lived to hear it, Debussy would have approved of his old friend’s orchestral arrangement of one of his most popular piano pieces, Clair de Lune, which was written in 1890 but not published until fifteen years later, when it became the centrepiece of the Suite bergamasque. Certainly, although it is unlikely that Debussy would have orchestrated it in the same way - the violin solo that emerges in the second half is not characteristic of the composer himself - Caplet’s score is highly effective both in the preserving the radiantly moonlit serenity of the original and in profiling the central climax without overloading the texture.