Rêverie is a piano piece by Claude Debussy, composed in 1890.

Presentation

Rêverie was composed in 1890. The work was published by Choudens in 1891, and appeared in the musical supplement of L'Illustration (no. 2751) of November 16, 1895, then with E. Fromont in 1905.

Claude Debussy, in a letter to Mme Fromont in 1905, described the score as “a thing of no importance, done very quickly as a favor to Hartmann; in two words: it's bad”.

The piece is nevertheless famous, and has been transcribed several times, notably for violin and piano by Alberto Bachmann (Fromont, 1912), for piano four-hands by Henri Woollett (Fromont, 1913) and for cello and piano by Ferdinando Ronchini (Fromont, 1914).

The first known public performance of the work was given on February 27, 1899 by pianist Germaine Alexandre.

Analysis

For musicologist Harry Halbreich, Rêverie is “a very pleasant, well-sounding little piece, with a melodic charm that is a little easy, but certain, and an elegant, light pianistic style”.

Guy Sacre considers that “it takes a great performer to conceal the syrupy side of this piece, all the more famous for its shameless flattery of the sensibilities of everyone”. Nevertheless, he points out that the opening of the work, in particular, is “beautifully found”, with its "melody (in F major, andantino without slowness), which spreads over a B-flat pedal (subdominant), with syncopations in the accompaniment that end up losing the sense of meter“, just as, after a central interlude in E major that evokes Grieg and Borodin, the ”return of the initial theme in the middle voice, in the labyrinth of arpeggios in the extreme parts".

The average running time of the piece is around five minutes.

In musicologist François Lesure's catalog of the composer's works, the Rêverie for piano is numbered L 76 (68).

Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rêverie_(pièce_pour_piano) / License: CC BY-SA 4.0