DEBUSSY: Clair de lune (6 hands)

• Buy "Browns in Blue," the CD featuring this work.

It was a unique challenge to arrange Clair de lune for six hands at one piano. Clair de lune is remarkable for its transparent, atmospheric sounds. Six hands at one piano, on the other hand, sound best when playing dense passages that utilize the entire range of the piano. My solution: use Paul Verlaine's poem as inspiration while embellishing Debussy's original. Here are four lines from Verlaine's "Clair de lune" from his Fetes Galantes in my own translation:

The still moonlight, sad and beautiful,
Brings dreams to the birds in the trees
And makes the fountains sob of ecstasy,
Tall, slender fountains among the marble statues.

- Greg Anderson & Elizabeth Joy Roe