Why Clair de Lune is the Ultimate Piano Piece

Claude Debussy's Clair de Lune is the perfect balance of complexity and beauty while still be attainable to many young pianists.

It’s not so challenging that it requires years of dedicated practice to learn to play, yet it could very easily take years to reach the full depths of the potential beauty this piece contains.

Is it easy? No.

Is it impossibly difficult? Also no.

It’s just…perfect.

And when it comes to a well-rounded classical music repertoire, it very well may be the ultimate piano piece.

I was 13 when Clair de Lune first came into my piano playing life.

Growing up in northern New York, there was this statewide public school music education organization called NYSSMA where kids would go to perform a piece for a judge to get constructive feedback and an overall score.

It wasn’t really a “competition” and there wasn’t much on the line other than your own pride. It was really just meant to be a chance for kids to prepare a piece to perform and to get some feedback from somebody other than their own teachers.

Honestly, it’s a really great thing.

The difficulty levels were 1-6 and pretty much the only thing I cared about was having the bragging rights of performing a level 6 piece as an 8th grader. Literally nobody else cared, but I thought it’d make me cool (it didn’t).

One of the options was this Debussy piece called Clair de Lune.

I hadn’t heard it before, but when I listened to it, I had to learn it.

Clair de Lune was pretty much my first exposure to the Impressionism era of “classical music.” Side note, read more about why “classical music” doesn’t mean what you think it means here.

Immediately I knew that the Impressionism era was my favorite.

The flowing lines, the modern sounding harmony! I was absolutely in awe.

And it was on the list for level 6 options for NYSSMA.

My mind was made up, but then I had a sobering realization:

This thing sounds really hard.

Listening to it, it felt like it' would be impossible to learn, let alone learn in time for NYSSMA. But my teacher assured me that I could do it. So we made the decision to dive in and off I went.

When you look at Clair de Lune on paper, there’s no denying it. It looks really difficult.

Those sweeping lines trading hands looked incredibly daunting! Here’s the thing…

As soon as I started breaking things down, taking them slowly and piecing everything together, I realized something.

While the music looked and sounded intimidating, it was surprisingly easy to execute.

Why?

Lots of notes played really quickly can mean that something is inherently more difficult, but sometimes it’s not actually that hard if the shapes that you’re tasked with playing fit the hand well.

I was quickly learning that speed and quantity of notes didn’t necessarily mean that it would physically difficult. Sometimes these things are just so well designed by the composer that they’re honestly pretty easy to play.

That’s the beauty of Clair de Lune.

It’s so well-composed by Claude Debussy that it winds up feeling very manageable even as a young, less-experienced player.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely a challenge! But it’s not so intimidating that you shouldn’t try it. There’s a reason it’s one of the most widely-played piano pieces of all time.

Turns out, that Debussy guy knew what he was doing.

It took months, but I finally got it together.

I worked on it for hours on end. My parents were probably sick of it.

But when it came time to go to NYSSMA, I was ready.

I got a 99 that year. One point shy of a perfect score.

You know what lost me the single point??

SIGHT READING.

And let me tell you. I HATED sight reading. And even today, I hate that sight reading is SO. DAMN. USEFUL.

Find out why coming soon.