Bruyéres

My degree is in English, supported mostly by poetry classes, but for the first year of university, I thought that I was going to double with music theory. My primary instrument was piano, and despite my heavy workload as an accompanist (which was not my choice, but rather a requirement of the major, and ultimately the reason I gave up on the whole business), my professors had me playing a whole lot of solo pieces, as well.

I've been sifting through some of my old sheet music, and I found Debussy's Études, which I hadn't thought I'd ever played. Thumbing through it, however, I found one annotated and highlighted throughout with green pencil, and I was shocked to recognize the handwriting as my own. Most likely, Dr. Morgan had slipped this into my frenetic Winter Trimester schedule, during most of which I was conscious in only a loose sense of the term, and had therefore learned and performed it without ever engaging my immediate faculties. It's not, after all, terribly difficult. At any rate, I looked it up on YouTube, and sure enough, I sort of remember playing it.

The piece is named Bruyéres, and is perhaps one of Debussy's most experimental (at least from his études). I suggest you listen to it before reading further.


Bruyéres

The linear theme and the horizontal one
alternate without being prepared,
a novel harmonic structure
with little connection
to the title of the piece: "Heather."

But let's not
hold the French
to too high
a standard.
It's not

a sweeping drama of divergent emotion
bromidic in a pretentiously intelligent way.
When the man wrote in all twenty-four keys
he skipped five of them, and why not?
It is simply an appreciation of musical

creation
and re-creation,
and I guess it needed a name.