Coming Soon 👀 At the beginning of April, you’ll be
introduced to a brand-new GoComics! See more information here. Subscribers, check your
email for more details.
Actually, I had very little education in music, just basic piano lessons through an elderly lady who taught through early grades of popular student instruction books.
I had great interest due to seeing entertainers such as Liberace and Victor Borge — and animated cartoons — and hearing classical piano music on FM radio. I didn’t have money to buy complete record albums, so I borrowed sheet music collections from our city library, and later ordered piano music through Dover Publications.
I knew scant Debussy other than his ‘Clair de Lune’. Then I heard the electronic versions by Isao Tomita that revealed many others in ‘energized’ form. All of the Debussy pieces you mention are ones that I was eventually compelled to play on solo piano thereby.
I am no great virtuoso playing professional venues, but I extended what skills I attained on my own listening to recordings in order to pay in part for college, and to play for my own entertainment and occasional true joy through six-plus decades.
Years ago on the TV program, ‘Candid Camera’, Truman appeared in a skit wherein he walked down the streets of his hometown accompanied by his Secret Service bodyguards. The Camera actor pretended to be amazed that it was the ex-president himself. The actor then asked one or two bystanders what their opinions were at seeing Truman just walking by. One elderly gentleman was not impressed, and said drily, “Oh, that’s just Harry S-for-Nothing Truman.”
“La fille aux cheveux de lin is a musical composition for solo piano by French composer Claude Debussy. It is the eighth piece in the composer’s first book of Préludes, written between late 1909 and early 1910. The title is in French and translates roughly to “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair”. The piece is 39 measures long and takes approximately two and a half minutes to play. It is in the key of G♭ major.
“The piece, named after the poem by Leconte de Lisle, is known for its musical simplicity, a divergence from Debussy’s style at the time. Completed in January 1910, it was published three months later and premiered in June of that same year. The prelude is one of Debussy’s most recorded pieces, both in its original version and in subsequent various arrangements.
I used to play this short piano piece often. It is probably the easiest among the Preludes to play. I would describe its mood as ‘serene’.
‘Sloop to ‘Nauts’ might also work.