Preludes, Book I

Claude Debussy’s Préludes are a collection of 24 piano pieces composed between December 1909 and April 1913. The title is a nod to the Préludes composed by Frédéric Chopin’s, who not only gave freedom to the musical form, but also ennobled it by regarding the prelude as a whole, standalone work worthy of performance in its own right. Greatly inspired by Chopin’s work, Debussy rapidly composed two sets of 12 preludes, Book I and Book II, for a total of 24 pieces. He wrote Book I in just a few months, even managing to write some of them in a day. He composed each piece to programmatically depict a unique idea; such as the sails of a vessel adrift fickle waters, or a mighty sunken cathedral arising from the depths in glory to sink back below the surface. Ingeniously, he did not put the titles of the preludes atop the score of each new work but the very end after the final bar, implying that the title shouldn’t impose upon the listener’s imagination. Debussy sought to free the imagination of his audience and, maybe, even his own. As Debussy himself said of his Estampes “If one cannot afford to travel, one substitutes the imagination.”