Debussy Arabesque No. 2

I burst into giggles every time I hear this piece. Those of you who know me also know that I do that fairly often without much prompting, but it really is that fun, I promise. It's so cute. This is the second of two arabesques that Debussy wrote for piano. The first is well-known. It's standard pedagogical literature. I played both of them my freshman year of college. I played the first one well, but it didn't inspire me the way this one did. I try to put this piece out in the open as much as possible because I think it's just lovely.

Debussy lived in France during the 1800s, and is thought of as a sort of pioneer of Impressionism in music. Critics called his music "impressionistic" from the beginning, even though he hated the term. As much as I love dear Monsieur Debussy, his music does fit the description. I've talked about program music in previous posts. I think of Impressionism as a reaction to that. Rather than telling a story, a piece of music conveys a mood or atmosphere. Une *impression*. Quelle surprise! (I'm using a French composer as an excuse for smatterings of bad French. Don't judge me.) Anyway, whether or not he liked it, Debussy was quite a talented Impressionist.

I really love that he called this piece an Arabesque. Because frankly, "arabesque" is a vague name for a piece of music, and this piece could have been called anything, really. An arabesque (in music) is a piece of music which is highly ornamental. That is quite literally the only criteria. There is a genre of Turkish music known as arabesque music which is highly ornamental. That's where the classical Western composers got the name. The Western arabesque, incidentally, has nothing to do with Turkey or Turkish music. But who cares, right? Most people in 19th century France probably didn't care about Turkish music anyway. But they LOVED Debussy. And that's all that matters. And I'm sure they thought it was very avant-garde of him to name pieces after Turkish music. As I said before though, this piece fits the description of an arabesque as well as anything can fit such a vague description.

The piece itself is lovely, as I said before. It is very ornamental. Listen here. This is Debussy playing his own music! I get really excited about composers playing their own music. It feels very authentic to me. This piece is so impish. It makes me think that Debussy was probably a handful as a child. Incidentally, he was a handful. His music teachers had all kinds of behavioral problems with him. It's also rousing fun to play. It's less difficult than it actually sounds, and your fingers just dance when you can manage to play it that fast. Also, if you have a good ear, you can hear that it changes keys a surprising amount of times over the course of the three minutes. It adds to the mischievous quality, I think. I also particularly like the abrupt ending. It's bubbly and effervescent and frothy and I'm really just describing a glass of champagne but it reminds me of something like that. Like a charming child and a glass of champagne.