Petite Suite

• Debussy composed his Petite Suite for piano four-hands in 1886-9.¹
• The piece’s premiere took place on March 1, 1889, in Paris. The two pianist were Debussy and Jacques Durand.²
  • Durand and Debussy had been friends since they attended the Paris Conservatoire together. Durand was a partner in the firm that would become Debussy’s publisher, Durand & Company.³

“In an attempt to do something to persuade music lovers of the charm of the Petite Suite, it was agreed with Debussy that the two of us should give a performance of it at a Paris salon frequented by the élite among the dictators of fashion. The performance took place and the reception was kind, but no more than that; I was well aware that we had not broken through.”

Jacques Durand⁴

“Debussy was very nervous before sitting down at the piano with me and had urged me not to go too fast. I promised. But hardly had we begun when Debussy began to hurry; and despite all my efforts, I was unable to hold him back. He was in haste to put this public trial behind him. So I followed the somewhat hectic tempi as best I could, and the work finished with a brio that was, probably, an important factor in the polite sympathy with which the work was finally greeted.”

Jacques Durand⁵

• The titles of the Petite Suite’s first two movements are taken from poems from Paul Verlaine’s (1844–1896) Fêtes galantes. Debussy also set many of Verlaine’s poems as art songs.⁶

Meanwhile comes the moon and beams
As the sailboat gaily skims
Briefly over waves of dreams.

From Verlaine’s “En bateau”⁷

Movements

1. En bateau (Sailing)
2. Cortège (Retinue)
3. Menuet
4. Ballet

1. François Lesure and Roy Howat, “Debussy, (Achille-)Claude,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 27, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000007353.
2. “Petite suite (Debussy, Claude),” International Music Score Library Project, accessed August 28, 2019, https://imslp.org/wiki/Petite_suite_(Debussy%2C_Claude).
3. Robert S. Nichols, Nigel Simeone, and Jeremy Drake, “Durand,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 28, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000008375.
4. Quoted in Roger Nichols, The Life of Debussy (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 56.
5. Ibid., 56-57.
6. Arthur B. Wenk, Claude Debussy and the Poets (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 23.
7. Paul Verlaine, trans. C.F. MacIntyre, Selected Poems of Paul Verlaine(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948), 70-71.