6.5/10
claire de lune is higher up for me - the songs flanking it in this suite add a new layer of appreciating it, but are otherwise not anything too great on their own. "filler" (heh)

This is the one that has Claire De Lune in it. Prior to tonight, I had only listened to Claire De Lune from the suite -- and beside that and Arabesque, do I know any other Debussy songs? I do now --

On Wikipedia it says he wrote the suite when he was 28 (!!) but that it wasn't released until 15 years later, with revisions (phew):

"The composer was initially loath to these relatively early piano compositions because they were not in his mature style, but in 1905 accepted the offer from a publisher who thought they would be successful given the fame Debussy had gained in the intervening fifteen years.While it is not known how much of the Suite was written in 1890 and how much was written in 1905, it is clear that Debussy changed the names of at least two of the pieces."

The title, Bergamasque, is from a poem "Claire de Lune" (Moonlight):

"Your soul is a chosen landscape
Where charming masquerades and dancers are promenading,
[Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques - I guess the mask pun doesn't translate]
Playing the lute and dancing, and almost
Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.

While singing in a minor key
Of victorious love, and the pleasant life
They seem not to believe in their own happiness
And their song blends with the moonlight,

With the sad and beautiful moonlight,
Which sets the birds in the trees dreaming,
And makes the fountains sob with ecstasy,
The slender water streams among the marble statues."

^^ That is a good poem. Made better from a Wiki click through to Bergamasque: "The dance is associated with clowns or buffoonery, as is the area of Bergamo, it having lent its dialect to the Italian buffoons."

So, a clown dance among marble statues, singing of good things, but in a minor key, not believing in their own happiness. :<

Regarding clowns - There are definitely some flambuoyant or capricious parts, but nothing that indicates clown to me. But -- why would my reference for clown music be the same as Debussy's? -- so, okay, we'll take the I II and IV as clown songs. What then to make of III - claire de lune -- something that I read as pretty self-serious flanked by clown songs?

Mmm - well, I guess the poem's line "And their song blends with the moonlight" is a fitting description for what happens in the emotional climax of Claire de Lune (song) -- almost like the clown dance music has stopped, for a bit, and maybe these idiot italians are reflecting on some moonlit beach, beginning to lament the sorrow of the realizing the mask -- only to be comforted, enveloped, blended-in by the moonlight? The same moonlight filling them / the fountains with ecstasy, bringing the water / them on the level of marble statues. Hm - maybe the line about marble statues wasn't to show relative insignificance (of the clown) but rather to elevate the clown/clown dance, under the moonlight. This poem is maybe less bleak than I thought at first.

And then returning to IV -- it is clown like (in the same way that I and II are, at least) - but it does seem more triumphant, and there is some tender mischief in the piano beneath it. It's probably a stretch and ridiculous to say at this point that these clowns have taken a bit of the moonlight into the day, but it has already been typed.

On another note, claire de lune is in 9/8 time. So..... 9 beats, with each eighth note as a beat? I am looking along with the music ( https://www.mutopiaproject.org/ftp/DebussyC/L75/debussy_Ste_Bergamesq_Clair/debussy_Ste_Bergamesq_Clair-let.pdf ) as the song plays, and that just does not add up to me.

I learned a nice new poem and reflected on the sadness and beauty in humanity -- and now have another layer to take with me when talking about claire de lune as i grab some water crackers from the imagined spread.