Ex. 13-5: Clair de lune

Debussy's first setting of Verlaine's "Clair de lune" from Fêtes galantes (1869), composed in 1882 (L. 32). This is one of five songs Debussy wrote to Verlaine's Fêtes galantes poems in 1882, before revising and regrouping them later.

Debussy was drawn to this poem repeatedly: he set it as a song in 1882 (this version), wrote the famous piano piece inspired by it in 1891 (as the third movement of Suite bergamasque), and set it again as a song in 1892 (the revised version in the Premier recueil). (Ex. 11-7: Clair de lune by Claude Debussy) Fauré also composed his own setting of the same poem in 1887. (Ex. 10-9: Clair de Lune by Gabriel Fauré)