Richibi’s Weblog

     “Clair de lune” 

      Jean Cocteau

        __________

two suites 

      Debussy’s “Suite bergamasque“

      his “Children’s Corner”

how are they similar

how are they different

you tell me

a couple o’ clues

      “Suite bergamasque“

             Prélude

             Menuet

             Clair de lune

             Passepied

      “Children’s Corner“

             Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum

             Jimbo’s Lullaby

             Serenade for the Doll

             The Snow is Dancing

             The Little Shepherd

             Golliwog’s Cakewalk

R ! chard

psst: if you said, there are no dance

          pieces in “Children’s Corner“,

          and only three of the four 

          movements in “Suite

          bergamasque” are dances, 

          you’d be right, the others all

          have evocative titles, nothing 

          to do with the cadence, the 

          step

          but that begs the question, 

          what happened to the traditional

          suite, a string of dances preceded

          by a prelude

          well, time, and the vagaries of

          language, intentions, essentially, 

          Debussy did to the suite what

          Chopin had done to the prelude, 

      changed its meaning, took away

          its original purpose, for better or

          for worse, a suite is now, in a

          similar transformation, a piece

          of music, merely, any kind of music,

          with several segments, without

          even, necessarily, gasp, a

          prelude

          you can never step into the same

          river twice, in other words, the

          current just keeps on inexorably

           moving, even immutable,

           apparently, concepts fall by the

           wayside, see democracy, at

           present, for  instance