Jardins sous la pluie

Achille-Claude Debussy (1862 r. - 1918 r. ) – francuski kompozytor, przedstawiciel impresjonizmu w muzyce. Muzyka Debussy'ego charakteryzuje się gęstą fakturą, żywą kolorystyką, wpływem orientalnych kultur muzycznych oraz zastosowaniem skal muzycznych spoza systemu dur-mol i nowych systemów tonacji. Jardins sous la pluie to zachwyt ogrodami w deszczu, cały utwór to imitacja spadajacych kropel rozbijających się o liście ogrodów.

Excerpted from the Complete Works of Claude Debussy, Series I, volume 3, critical edition by Roy Howatt with an introductory article by the editor. Debussy's Estamples attest to his lifelong mania for Japanese prints (estamples in French); the suite was composed quite rapidly in July 1903, during his summer holiday in Burgundy. A month later Debussy corrected proofs (a letter to his publisher Jaques Durand reveals that 123 of "Jardis sous la pluie" was added at his stage), and the edition was published on 24 Octember 1903. Debussy's letters reveal his equal mania over the edition's visual presentation, including paper colour and texture and exact layout of the cover and titlepages. He hoped the cover page could omit his name in favour of the more mysterious monogram (as was done two years earlier with his suite Pour le piano), but this idea was apparently thwarted by copyright requirements. Ricardo Vines gave the suite's premiere in Paris on 9 January 1904, at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique in the Salle Erard.