''Children's Corner'', L. 113, is a six-movement suite for solo piano by

Claude Debussy (Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...

. It was published by Durand in 1908, and was first performed by

Harold Bauer Harold Victor Bauer (28 April 1873 – 12 March 1951) was a noted pianist of Jewish heritage who began his musical career as a violinist. Biography Harold Bauer was born in Kingston upon Thames; his father was a German violinist and his mot ...

in Paris on 18 December that year. In 1911, an

orchestration Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra (or, more loosely, for any musical ensemble, such as a concert band) or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orc ...

André Caplet André Caplet (23 November 1878 – 22 April 1925) was a French composer and conductor of classical music. He was a friend of Claude Debussy and completed the orchestration of several of Debussy's compositions as well as arrangements of severa ...

was premiered and subsequently published.

History

Debussy composed ''Children's Corner'' between 1906 and 1908. He dedicated the suite to his daughter, Claude-Emma (known as "Chou-Chou"), who was born on 30 October 1905 in Paris. She is described as a lively and friendly child who was adored by her father. She was three years old when he dedicated the suite to her in 1908. The dedication reads: "A ma chère petite Chouchou, avec les tendres excuses de son Père pour ce qui va suivre. C. D." (To my dear little Chouchou, with tender apologies from her father for what follows). The suite was published by Durand in 1908, and was given its world première in Paris by

on 18 December that year. In 1911, an orchestration of the work by Debussy's friend

received its premiere, and was subsequently published.

Structure

The suite is in six

movements Movement may refer to: Common uses * Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece * Motion, commonly referred to as movement Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * "Movement" (short story), a short story by Nancy Fu ...

, each with an English-language title. This choice of language is most likely Debussy's nod towards Chou-Chou's English governess. The pieces are: # Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum # Jimbo's Lullaby # Serenade for the Doll # The Snow Is Dancing # The Little Shepherd # Golliwogg's Cakewalk A typical performance of the suite lasts roughly 15 minutes.

1. Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum

The title of the first movement alludes to sets of piano exercises of that name (''

Gradus ad Parnassum The Latin phrase ''gradus ad Parnassum'' means "steps to Parnassus". It is sometimes shortened to ''gradus''. The name ''Parnassus'' was used to denote the loftiest part of a mountain range in central Greece, a few kilometres north of Delphi, of wh ...

'' translates as "Steps to

Parnassus Mount Parnassus (; el, Παρνασσός, ''Parnassós'') is a mountain range of central Greece that is and historically has been especially valuable to the Greek nation and the earlier Greek city-states for many reasons. In peace, it offers ...

"), several of which had been published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including one by the prolific publisher of piano exercises

Carl Czerny Carl Czerny (; 21 February 1791 – 15 July 1857) was an Austrian composer, teacher, and pianist of Czech origin whose music spanned the late Classical and early Romantic eras. His vast musical production amounted to over a thousand works and ...

. This piece is a rather ingenious study in finger independence with a twentieth-century vocabulary. In the middle, the pianist slows down and tries the material in other keys for exercise. Debussy's "Doctor Gradus Ad Parnassum" is of intermediate difficulty and requires experienced fingers. Debussy told his publisher that the movement should be played "very early in the morning".

2. Jimbo's Lullaby

This work describes an elephant,

Jumbo Jumbo (about December 25, 1860 – September 15, 1885), also known as Jumbo the Elephant and Jumbo the Circus Elephant, was a 19th-century male African bush elephant born in Sudan. Jumbo was exported to Jardin des Plantes, a zoo in Paris, and t ...

, who came from the French Sudan and lived briefly in the Jardin des plantes in Paris around the time of Debussy's birth. The misspelling "Jimbo" betrays the Parisian accent which often confuses the pronunciation of "um" and "un" with "im" and "in". It is a beautiful lullaby with some dark moments and whole-tone passages in the middle.

3. Serenade for the Doll

This piece, in triple meter, is marked ''Allegretto ma non troppo'' (moderately fast, but not too fast). It is a description of a porcelain doll and features the Chinese

pentatonic scale A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic scale, which has seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale). Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancien ...

throughout. Debussy notes that the entire piece should be played with the soft pedal.

4. The Snow Is Dancing

Technically, this piece is quite difficult as it requires precise semi-detached playing in both hands with the melody between them. Again, there are darker moments in the bass near the middle.

5. The Little Shepherd

"The Little Shepherd" depicts a shepherd with his flute. There are three solos and three commentaries following them. The first solo has a breath mark at the end. This piece has different modes in it and uses dissonances which resolve into tonality.

6. Golliwogg's Cakewalk

At the time of its composition,

Golliwog The golliwog, also spelled golliwogg or shortened to golly, is a doll-like character – created by cartoonist and author Florence Kate Upton – that appeared in children's books in the late 19th century, usually depicted as a type of rag ...

gs were in fashion, due partly to the popularity at that time of the novels of

Florence Kate Upton Florence Kate Upton (22 February 1873 – 16 October 1922) was an American-born English cartoonist and author most famous for creating the Golliwog The golliwog, also spelled golliwogg or shortened to golly, is a doll-like character – ...

("golliwog" is a later usage). They were stuffed black dolls with red pants, red bow ties and wild hair, reminiscent of the

blackface Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-Black people to portray a caricature of a Black person. In the United States, the practice became common during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereo ...

minstrel show The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of racist theatrical entertainment developed in the early 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people spe ...

s of the time. The

cakewalk The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on Black Slavery in the United States, slave plantations before and after End ...

was a dance or a strut, and the dancer with the most elaborate steps won a cake ("took the cake"). The piece is a

ragtime Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...

with its syncopations and banjo-like effects. The dynamic range is quite large and very effective. During the piece, Debussy alludes satirically to

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

's opera ''

Tristan und Isolde ''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was compose ...

''. The opening bars turn the famous half-diminished

Tristan chord The Tristan chord is a chord made up of the notes F, B, D, and G: : More generally, it can be any chord that consists of these same intervals: augmented fourth, augmented sixth, and augmented ninth above a bass note. It is so named as it is h ...

into a jaunty,

syncopated In music, syncopation is a variety of rhythms played together to make a piece of music, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat. More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "place ...

arpeggio A broken chord is a chord broken into a sequence of notes. A broken chord may repeat some of the notes from the chord and span one or more octaves. An arpeggio () is a type of broken chord, in which the notes that compose a chord are played ...

, while the middle 'B' section of this dance is interrupted on several occasions by the love-death leitmotif, marked ''avec une grande émotion'' (with great feeling). Each quotation is followed by banjo imitations. Debussy composed one more piece in the same style a year later, "

The Little Nigar ''The Little Nigar'' (CD 122, L. 114) is the original title by composer Claude Debussy for a short piece for piano, composed in 1909 for a piano method and published the same year. It was later also published as a single piece, entitled ''The ...

", as part of a piano method.

Orchestrations and arrangements

* French composer

orchestrated the entire suite in 1911. * Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen orchestrated the entire suite in 2015. *

Leigh Howard Stevens Leigh Howard Stevens (born March 9, 1953 in Orange, New Jersey) is a marimba artist best known for developing, codifying, and promoting the Stevens technique or Musser-Stevens grip, a method of independent four-mallet marimba performance based on ...

transcribed five of the six movements for

marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...

. * Japanese composer

Isao Tomita , often known simply as Tomita, was a Japanese composer, regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music and space music, and as one of the most famous producers of analog synthesizer arrangements. In addition to creating note-by-note realiz ...

transcribed the fourth and sixth movements for

Moog Synthesizer The Moog synthesizer is a modular synthesizer developed by the American engineer Robert Moog. Moog debuted it in 1964, and Moog's company R. A. Moog Co. (later known as Moog Music) produced numerous models from 1965 to 1981, and again from 20 ...

in 1974 (RCA CD RCD14587).

References

Sources

* * *

External links

* * *
G is for Gradus and Golliwogg – ''Children’s Corner'' Suite – Debussy
notesfromapianist.wordpress.com 2012

(in German) jochenscheytt.de
''Children's Corner'' – Eine Werkbetrachtung
(in German) christianjahl.de {{Use dmy dates, date=August 2019 Compositions for solo piano Suites by Claude Debussy Music dedicated to family or friends 1908 compositions Orchestral suites