The Snow Is Dancing (Children's Corner, No. 4)

Background

The Snow Is Dancing is the fourth of the six pieces in Claude Debussy's Children's Corner, published in 1908. Debussy dedicated the suite to his daughter Claude-Emma, known as Chouchou, who was then about three, adding a playful note in French: to his dear little Chouchou, with her father's tender apologies for what follows. The apology is a joke, but a fair one. These are pieces about childhood rather than pieces for small children to play, and the suite even opens with Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum, a gentle parody of the dry finger exercises that piano pupils of the time had to practise.

In this piece Debussy paints falling snow: tiny flakes drifting endlessly, with a sad little tune heard through them. Almost the whole piece is built on quiet, continuous patterns of quick notes, which makes it an excellent study for an even, feather-light touch.

How to practise it

The piece is in D minor. It begins with the right hand alone, circling round four neighbouring notes, E, F, G and A, in quick, even notes. Soon the left hand joins with the same four notes an octave lower, slotting in between the right hand's notes so the two hands interlock.

Practise each hand alone first, very slowly, with fingers 1, 2, 3 and 4 or 2, 3, 4 and 5, and the same fingering every time. Then put the hands together at a crawl, saying "left, right, left, right" as the notes alternate. The aim is a single stream of tiny sounds with no bumps where one hand hands over to the other.

Next comes the hardest skill. While the figure keeps turning, the slow tune enters underneath it in long notes, starting on B flat and then C. If you take the tune in the right hand, the thumb holds the long note while the other fingers keep the pattern going:

Practise this with the thumb resting on its key and the other fingers playing very lightly, so the long note sings and the snow stays in the background.

In the middle the left hand takes over a different pattern, using notes a whole step apart, such as C, D, G flat and A flat, while the right hand plays the tune above. At the end the snow drifts up into the very top of the keyboard and vanishes.

A plan:

1. The four-note figure, each hand alone, slowly.
2. Hands interlocking, slowly, then a little faster each day.
3. The tune with the figure, a few bars at a time.
4. The whole piece at about half speed, then gradually towards full speed.

Keep the wrists loose and the fingers close to the keys, and use only light touches of pedal. This arrangement has flexible timing, but the snowflakes should still fall evenly: speed matters far less than smoothness.

Finger numbers are explained in the piano finger numbers guide.