One Piano, Four Hands.

Claude Debussy composed the Petite Suite in 1888 when he was 26. This was four years after he had left the Paris Conservatory, where he won the Prix de Rome in his last year which enabled him to go to Italy. He returned to Paris in 1887 and settled down to the life of a composer, although he associated with more poets and painters than he did with other composers.

The period up to 1890 was a time in which Debussy’s later, distinctive, impressionistic style had not emerged. Only a few piano works, such as the Deux Arabesques of 1888, had appeared. The Petite Suite shows the influence of the french lyric opera composers Gounod and Massenet, as do most of Debussy’s pre-1890 compositions. This “Little Suite” is indebted to the French clavecenists François Couperin and Jean Philippe Rameau in its clarity of patterns and conciseness of form. This work could be considered neo-classical because it contains pseudo-dance movements, and because of the style of keyboard writing used, through which Debussy pays a kind of homage to the French clavecinists.