Debussy: Children's Corner No.1 “Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum” - symphonic wind dectet
Children's Corner, L. 113, is a six-movement suite for solo piano by Claude Debussy. It was published by Durand in 1908, and was first performed by Harold Bauer in Paris on 18 December that year. In 1911, an orchestration by André Caplet was premiered and subsequently published.
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.
The suite is in six movements, 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.
This is my arrangement for double wind quintet of the the 1st movement: Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum
The title of the first movement alludes to sets of piano exercises of that name (Gradus ad Parnassum translates as "Steps to Parnassus"), several of which had been published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including one by the prolific publisher of piano exercises Carl Czerny, and Muzio Clementi.
The harshness and mechanicalism is supposed to play a joke at the excessive exercises of Czerny and Clementi. 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 the ability to play more quickly and wildly. The pianist gets more frantic toward the end and finishes the piece with a bang. Debussy told his publisher that the movement should be played "very early in the morning".
Preview links to an mp3.
Other movements are available.
