Duration: 7 minutes

Description: Claude Debussy (1862–1918) composed Marche écossaise sur un thème populaire (The Earl of Ross March), CD 83 / L. 77 for piano four hands in 1890, during the formative period preceding such defining works as the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. The piece originated in an unusual commission from the American diplomat and writer General John Meredith Read (1837–1896), who approached Debussy with a traditional Scottish bagpipe melody associated with the ancient Earls of Ross and asked him to write a march based upon it. Dedicated to Read, the score also bears the title Marche des anciens Comtes de Ross and includes a prefatory account explaining that the Earls of Ross, chiefs of the Ross clan in Ross-shire, were traditionally accompanied by pipers who played the march before their lord in battle and on ceremonial occasions. Debussy treats the supplied melody not merely as a straightforward military tune but as the basis for a colorful concert piece, surrounding its distinctly Scottish character with unexpected harmonic shifts, whole-tone writing, contrasting episodes, and effects suggestive of bagpipes, thereby offering an early glimpse of the harmonic and atmospheric language that would soon become central to his mature style. Today, Marche écossaise sur un thème populaire (The Earl of Ross March) occupies a secondary but distinctive place in Debussy’s piano-duet repertoire, considerably less familiar than Petite Suite, Six épigraphes antiques, or the four-hand version of La Mer, yet it remains available in modern Urtext editions and recordings and is valued by piano duos both as an engaging concert miniature and as a revealing document of the young Debussy beginning to transform borrowed musical material through the harmonic color and imaginative sonority that would characterize his mature music. Reprint edition.

• M126491 / 36-M126491 MARCHE ECOSSAISE PNO 4-HNDS BK $5.95Buy Now