Clair de Lune
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) · sheet music
- Time 3/4
- Levels 2–9
- Passages 12
Your turn · both hands
Preparing your passage…
Claude Debussy, French modern (1862–1918). The reading release has 12 passages from this piece at levels 2–9; the reader above opens on the easiest, bars 15–18 for the right hand alone.
The hardest stretch is bars 29–32 at level 9.
Your practice path
Learn it the way teachers do: each hand on its own, then together, then the hard bars. Each step is a real graded passage of Clair de Lune.
- Right hand alone · bars 15–18 level 2
- Hands together · bars 29–32 level 9
How to play Clair de Lune
- In the original 9/8, feel three slow beats per bar, each split into three, so the tied notes have a steady background.
- The opening is marked pianissimo; play close to the keys and let the top note of each chord sound slightly more than the rest.
- For the wide left-hand arpeggios, let the wrist roll across the shape instead of stretching, and practice each as a block chord first.
- Change the pedal with each harmony; in the quietest passages, partial changes keep the sound clear without breaking the haze.
Structure
The original, in 9/8, falls into three broad parts. The opening is very quiet, with syncopated chords drifting downward and the beat seemingly suspended. The middle part gains motion: a singing melody rises over flowing left-hand arpeggios to the piece's one real swell. The opening melody returns over the arpeggios, and a hushed coda fades away, about five minutes in all.
About Clair de Lune
The Suite bergamasque has four movements; Debussy began it around 1890 and revised it heavily before publication in 1905. The title comes from a Paul Verlaine poem whose moonlit scene of masked figures also gave the suite its name. It is Debussy's best-known piano piece, heard in countless films.
Why the first passage is level 2
That passage is level 2 rather than 1 because it is in 3/4, not 4/4, it has dotted rhythms.
Debussy wrote Clair de lune in D-flat major with long tied notes and floating rhythms, so even its easiest passages ask you to count through ties without losing the beat. Read the melody first and treat the rolling left-hand arpeggios as harmony you can feel rather than spell. It is the third movement of Debussy's Suite bergamasque.
Questions about Clair de Lune
- How hard is Clair de Lune to play?
- Its passages grade from level 2 to level 9 on Real Sight Reader's ten-level reading scale, so the full piece is intermediate to advanced reading. The hardest stretch is bars 29–32 at level 9.
- Is there an easy part of Clair de Lune for beginners?
- Yes. Start with bars 15–18 for the right hand alone, the level-2 passage in the reader at the top of this page; it is level 2 because it is in 3/4, not 4/4 and it has dotted rhythms.
- What key and time signature is Clair de Lune in?
- The engraving on this page is in 3/4 time.
- Who composed Clair de Lune?
- Claude Debussy, French modern (1862–1918). The Suite bergamasque has four movements; Debussy began it around 1890 and revised it heavily before publication in 1905.
- Can I practice Clair de Lune online for free?
- Yes. The reader on this page plays any of the 12 graded passages from Clair de Lune in your browser, with an on-screen keyboard or a MIDI keyboard, and marks every note as you play. No signup.
Every passage, easiest first
The reading release grades 12 distinct passages of this piece. Open any of them in the reader:
- Level 2
- bars 15–18 right hand · bars 21–24 right hand · bars 33–36 right hand
- Level 3
- bars 11–14 right hand · bars 13–16 right hand · bars 15–20 right hand · bars 17–20 right hand · bars 17–24 right hand
- Level 9
- bars 29–32 both hands · bars 33–40 both hands · bars 33–36 both hands · bars 37–40 both hands
More pieces to sight-read
Score: public-domain engraving from the corpus (pdmx), graded by the piano-reading-v2-20261001-mutopia-ly reading release.