Oh, what a title! Clair de Lune is a very popular piece from the musical Modern Era. Claude Debussy wrote this piece to be incredibly dreamy, and it’s actually the third movement of a 4 movement in Suite Bergamasque (also by him). Despite all of this, I literally grew to hate Clair de Lune over time, and in this post, I’ll tell you how it happened.
Why I Hate Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy
It all started when I had played this piece for a Spring piano recital.
For this recital, I was one of the last ones on the roster. With the piano instructor I had at the time, it meant you had the longest and/or most difficult piece.
This is the hardest piano piece I’ve ever had to work on. During those 4 months of practice, I learned around 6 pages of sheet music, and per my piano teacher at the time, I thought I was doing well.
Clair de Lune Time Signature
I had only listened to the Debussy’s Clair de Lune only a couple times…and this was before I really started playing it. I noticed that each pianist that played it had their own style, but this isn’t uncommon.
However, I failed to realize that there was something in common: The song was played in 9/8 time. I was playing the song in 3/4 time.
I practiced and performed with the 3/4 time signature in mind and muscle memory, so I had absolutely no clue that I was playing this song all wrong.
A few months later, I switched to a new piano teacher. He asks me to play my most recent piece, so I played Clair de Lune confidently.
I thought I did a great job!
But, after I finished, he began listing off all of the parts that I played wrong, and especially emphasized that incorrect time signature I was playing it in.
In addition to the time signature, the speed of the scales and arpeggios weren’t fast enough, and I think some of the notes were off.
As a result, he started to break down the song measure by measure.
I was already kind of tired of the song at that point, but once I heard that I would have to practically start over, I began to hate Clair de Lune.
I felt that all of that work really didn’t mean that much.
The Aftermath
I didn’t play or listen to this song for years without feeling sick or annoyed. Every time I heard it on the radio or on a streaming service, I would just skip it. I do believe it is a beautiful piece by Debussy, but I was sick of it to the point that it was coming out of my ears.
Now, some years later, I think I can tolerate hearing it, I just still dislike it. It probably took me at least 3 years to get to this point, and it’s still not the same.
I probably played that song in public for other people as well, and the other people that actually knew how to play the song probably cringed. I didn’t worry too much about that though.
This is one thing I meant when Piano Teacher #2 was overfocused on pieces too. It was a really hard song, and I think it was to the point where it was like, let’s just get this song finished. All that time, I was practicing it and playing it for her in the wrong rhythm, and she didn’t say a thing…even in the beginning.
For the other details, I most definitely could have practiced much much more. I would say that most of the blame does fall on me, since I didn’t practice like I should have, and we ended up having to cram learning the rest of the piece.
One thing I can do in the future play along with the original track and request additional details if it’s a time signature that looks wonky. Also, practice more.
I’m thinking about taking up piano lessons at some point in the future, and I talk about practice a bit in this post if you want to check it out.
Conclusion
So, my story of learning to hate Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy, has nothing to do with how the piece sounds. It’s just because of how much time I spent on it, only just for it to be mostly wrong. I realize how strong the word “hate” sounds, but I absolutely have no problem using it in this case.
How about you? Do you have any pieces you played that you hate? If so, how did it happen?
Cool article