Claude Debussy (1862-1918):
Clair de lune*
(No. 3 of Fetes Galantes, série I)
(composed in 1891; first published in 1903)
Text: Paul Verlaine
Original Key/Recorded Key: B Major
Teach-Track begins: m. 3 (2 mm. before voice enters)
Accompaniment Track begins: m. 1
Pianist: Daniel Michalak
* Not to be confused with Debussy?s earlier (ca. 1882) and very different setting of the same text (which was first published in 1926 as the second of the four Chansons de Jeunesse, and which appears in Volume I of the Hal Leonard ?Vocal Library? edition of Debussy?s complete songs [Milwaukee, 1993, ed. James R. Briscoe] as the fourth of the five Fetes galantes pour Madame Vasnier).
Notes © 1999 by Daniel O. Michalak
Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Your soul is a landscape chosen
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
That go charming masks and bergamasks
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Playing the lute and dancing and almost
tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques,
sad beneath their disguises strange,
Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
All in singing on the mode minor
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
Love conqueror and the life opportune,
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire a leur bonheur,
They don't have the air of believing in their happiness,
Et leur chanson se mele au clair de lune,
And their song itself mixes with the clear of the moon,
Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
With the calm clear of the moon sad and beautiful,
Qui fait rever les oiseaux dans les arbres
Which makes dream the birds in the trees
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau
And sob with ecstasy the jets of water
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.
The great jets of water slender midst the marbles.